For the entire month of December, we’re partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC to get 100 men to sign up to become a male mentor by the 31st! Help us by sharing this article with a friend or sign up here.

There’s this stereotype about finance bros.

You know the one, Murray Hill guys rocking Ferragamo ties, corporate card steaks, and 70 hour work weeks.

But, there is one trope that is often overlooked…a gushy, altruistic volunteer. According to Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC, the demographic with the highest number of male volunteers in NYC is.. white men working in finance. 

Exactly how does a finance bro manage to perfectly pair the “lunchtime Wagyu steak” with a “love for volunteering” so effortlessly?

Exactly how does a finance bro manage to perfectly pair the “lunchtime Wagyu steak” with a “love for volunteering” so effortlessly? What is it about the finance industry that makes it the prime ecosphere for male volunteers, especially when globally, men volunteer on average, 30% less than their female counterparts?

According to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, “More than 70% of the children waiting for a Big are boys, but only 3 out of every 10 inquiries to volunteer come from men”. There are currently over 21,000 boys waiting for a Big Brother, twice the amount of girls waiting for a Big Sister.

A Deep Dive into Male Volunteers in New York City

Here in New York City, we see the lack of young, male volunteers even more drastically. For every 3 boys, there is 1 male mentor. 

In order to understand why there’s such a wild division in volunteerism, let’s first take a look into volunteering in general.

The average American has two different volunteering peaks in our lives. 

The first spike takes place in our late teens when students are mandated to perform community service for school. The second, takes place between the ages of 35 – 50+ when adults are more financially secure, and either have older children or none at all. 

In the middle, there’s a huge gap of men in their 20’s + 30’s who probably would be best suited to mentor, being able to bridge the gap between real-world “adulting” and navigating pre-teen HS drama, but simply aren’t. 

Experts blame the lack of male volunteers on “Breadwinner Syndrome” – the societal pressure for men to always be the provider and focus on roles that only support them financially. Other studies show that men claim to not have enough time to volunteer or simply not know where or how to start. Of course, there’s also the argument beaming with toxic masculinity that volunteering or “nurturing” is a woman’s job.

We took a deep dive into the finance industry, and it seems that being the “Breadwinner” and “Giving Back” are not independent of one another, but instead, live symbiotically.  

Finance Bros to the Rescue?

So what is it about the finance bro that supersedes all of the above?

We took a deep dive into the finance industry, and it seems that being the “Breadwinner” and “Giving Back” are not independent of one another, but instead, live symbiotically.  

 “Giving back is one of our company values”, Alex P, VP at a Fortune 500 bank tells me, “there’s a whole section in my performance evaluation asking what kind of volunteer work you did outside of the walls, and for promotions, it could set you apart from others”.

In fact, the finance sector partners with charitable organizations all year round, offering employees benefits such as paid time off to volunteer, donation matching, charity events/sponsorships, and perhaps most important, easy access and distribution of said organizations.

Volunteering or giving back is as ingrained into the finance culture as chatting by the water cooler (in a pre-pandemic world).

“I try to volunteer at least twice a month because I feel good giving back. I found out about them from the company newsletter. The expectation is that you’ll find time to do things after your hours. I’ve never been in a situation where I was frowned upon for volunteering. If I do my tutoring from 6-8, I’m out at 5”, said Alex P.

“There’s a whole section in my performance evaluation asking what kind of volunteer work did you do outside of the walls…for promotions, it could set you apart from others” 

Alex P, VP at a Fortune 500 Bank

A deeper dive into the finance industry as a whole showed that in 2016, 7 of the top 20 most generous companies in the Fortune 500, were in the financial services industry. The benefit of giving back isn’t entirely selfless however, banks see charity as a major tax benefit, but also as a marketing tactic. Banks see higher deposit market share following a natural disaster compared to one that doesn’t.

While one could argue that volunteering with ulterior motives removes the “good” in front of “deed”, isn’t doing some good better than none at all?

What About Non-Finance Bros?

While 2020 (known colloquially to many as a dumpster fire), the year saw a push for diversity and change that galvanized businesses and media alike. On the heels of the George Floyd protests, we saw major Fortune 500 behemoths like PriceWater Cooper announce new diversity initiatives, and even Hollywood taking some steps in creating more diversity on screen.  

The United Nations even stated the Pandemic brought along one of the largest surges of volunteers they’d ever seen.

Despite all of the elements ripe for volunteerism, male volunteers still have not matched their female counterparts in giving back.

Neal Booker, a Senior Manager of Inclusion and Diversity for Tech company, Yext, had this to say,  “I think there is a stigma associated with reaching out and asking for help. That may span across gender lines but especially for men…If you had been able to proverbially pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you may not be a mentor because you don’t realize the benefits of it. And it perpetuates the stigma”.

“Sometimes it’s not necessarily understood that a mentorship relationship is reciprocal – I get to learn as a mentor as much as you are learning as a mentee”

Neal Booker, Senior Manger of Inclusion and Diversity, Yext

Booker attributes much of his success to the mentorship and guidance that he’d received as a youth himself.

His work today as a leader in diversity and inclusion operates hand in hand with that experience. Creating seats at the table for BIPOC creators, leaders, and managers, requires more work than a percentage quota. It requires a deep investment into young BIPOC children getting the opportunity to even KNOW that jobs like programmers, creative directors, and editors exist in the first place. 

Should Other Industries Support Volunteering?

In industries like tech, advertising, and the creative arts, volunteering isn’t necessarily ingrained as part of the career path. Instead, if there is an initiative, it’s usually brought up by someone who is passionate about what they are doing, and hopefully, it expands to leadership and companywide.

The opposite is true in the finance sector. It’s a top-down approach, with opportunities somewhat enforced by management, with resources allocated to make it as simple as possible for employees to participate. 

While newer industries, like tech, are less established than finance and may not have the budget to administer such large endeavors, could there be some resources allocated to employees, even in the form of a volunteer day initiative, newsletter, or having space for a virtual guest to speak?

Whether finance bros are saving America or not, it seems that aligning company culture with volunteering is working, and perhaps other industries could follow suit, in a way that makes sense for them.

If a finance bro working a 70-hour workweek can make a little time, I think we can all as well, right?

For the entire month of December, we’re partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC to get 100 men to sign up to become male mentors by the 31st! Help us by sharing this article with a friend or sign up here.