You likely know Charlotte is one of the nation's largest banking hubs with an estimated 100,000 people working in financial services across our region.

You might be surprised to learn some of those executives aren't spending their days inside bank walls.

Instead they're lending their expertise where it's needed most.

Carolina Impact's Jason Terzis joins me now with the details.

- All right, so picture this.

You've been at your job for a long time, years and years, picked up tons of skills and expertise along the way, but then your bosses ask you if you'd like to go work somewhere else.

No, they're not firing you.

Instead they're loaning you out where you'll go to work for a nonprofit for a year or two, helping them learn and grow with the skills that you've mastered along the way.

You'll still be getting paid by your employer and eventually go back there.

What would you say?

Would you do it?

(interviewee speaking in Spanish) - [Jason] Spend a little time around the Camino Health Center and you'll hear a lot of Spanish.

- Our mission is to equip people to live healthy, hopeful, productive lives and we serve primarily the Latino immigrant community.

- [Jason] A bilingual and multicultural non-profit, Camino's wraparound services include a little bit of everything.

- From healthcare, dental, behavioral health, nutrition.

- [Troy] Pastor Rusty Price is the founder and president of Camino.

His mission, simple, help people, but business not necessarily his strong suit.

- I don't think about money.

If I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, the money will come.

I don't ever think that way at all, which is good, but it can also be not great for an organization.

Right?

- So about eight years ago, Rusty got connected with Grace Nystrum, a senior VP with Bank of America.

- I was not familiar with this organization at all.

- [Jason] Grace was asked to temporarily leave her role at BOA and go to work at Camino as the interim executive director.

- It was positioned to me as an opportunity.

Grace, you're heavily engaged in the community.

You're very passionate about serving the community.

- [Jason] Her one year assignment turned into two, Grace helping Camino become more efficient and grow its organization.

- And to help them deliver on their strategic plans.

Actually, they didn't even have a strategy at the time.

They were just fulfilling the mission.

- The corporate world is very different, so she brought things like agenda to meetings.

Next steps, we learned that.

Next steps.

- We had a staff, a very small staff, less than 10, and by the time I left, we had close to 30.

Today, they have over 110.

- [Jason] Grace was Bank of America's first executive on loan, now known as Leader on Loan.

The idea, place senior executives into short term leadership roles at area non-profits and use their expertise to address needs.

- It can be anywhere from finance, to communications, to strategy work, to project management.

It's based on the need of that organization.

- Within Bank of America, we are very focused on community from volunteering two hours a week, to making donations having a matching gift to also making sure that we bring organizations to our home so that we can collaborate and support them.

- [Jason] Bank of America doesn't just wanna provide banking and financial solutions like they do on an everyday basis.

They wanna be good community partners and by helping provide strategic support for nonprofits to be more efficient, free of charge, everybody wins.

- The bank is very committed to doing this, okay, not just here in Charlotte, but all over the United States.

- We have had over 50 Leaders on Loan across the country.

- When we talk about lending a leader, I am not having to report to Bank of America every day.

I'm able to go and live my passion and purpose with a nonprofit organization that I believe in that aligns with my morals and my values.

That's priceless.

- I don't think if Bank of America would've given us a million dollars, it would've been as big of an impact as it was them sending Grace.

She made a bigger impact than if they had given us a million or $5 million.

- It absolutely benefits the community, but it also benefits the bank.

Okay?

We get a better feel for what's going on in the community.

- [Jason] Over at Charlotte Mecklenburg School's main headquarters, John Schleck isn't an educator, nor is he an administrator.

- I have got 40 years of experience in the financial services business.

Spent the first 35 years in the consumer lending space doing mortgages and auto loans.

- [Jason] But for the last year and a half, John's been on loan to CMS helping on the business side of running the nation's 16th largest school district.

- I was assigned to the Office of Strategy Management when I first got here.

When I came down, I had a lot to learn and I just spent a lot of time just sort of getting to know what was going on and you know, just learning about what the issues were and where the problem areas were or the areas that CMS wanted to try and tackle.

- [Jason] While he can't help with teacher pay, which is controlled by the state, John is working on other initiatives to help teacher finances.

- And one of those ways is through housing.

And so they asked me to get involved and we created an initiative called At Home in CMS, working with local developers, landlords, what have you, trying to find programs and put programs together for reduced rent.

- [Jason] And at Dress for Success, a local nonprofit that supports unemployed and underemployed women.

You'll find yet another longtime Bank of America employee working on loan.

- Frenchie Brown, we have known her for a long time, is not just a friend of the organization.

She is a partner in our organization.

- In my 28 years at the bank, Jason, majority of the roles that I've had, I've only had to apply for two.

Every other role was what we call a tap.

And that tap is because you are performing, we see you.

We need your skills and there's an opportunity for you.

- [Jason] Working with Dress for Success for over a year now, Frenchie helped the organization with all the logistics and moving to its new location on Remount Road.

- We knew that we were heading into a season of change with a new building with the construction that goes into that.

I could have never predicted how extensive and intensive moving an organization, not to mention doing upfit and construction before moving would be.

- The second week that I was enrolled, I sat down with the executive director and we talked about the transition.

I created this whole end-to-end project plan and sent it to her.

She said, oh my gosh, all of this is in your project plan.

I'm like, yeah, all of these things we need to think about from your operating budget, your capital campaign budget, what are the tactical things we need to do?

What happens if we don't hit those timelines?

- Because I had another executive to walk alongside me to say, here are the needs that I'm identifying.

What needs are you identifying?

I've got this.

And knowing that I could trust her, that she understood my vision and our team's needs and that she really has our clients at heart.

And so I really don't think we could have done this successfully without Frenchie's partnership and without the investment from Bank of America.

- I love the concept Jason, but why does Bank of America do this?

- It's interesting.

I think what it is, for them, it all goes back to community investment.

The thinking being that a stronger community is a better community.

We recently highlighted their Sports with Us program, which teaches life skills to kids through sports.

They also have another program called Neighborhood Builders, which focuses on economic mobility.

All told in the last 20 years or so, Bank of America has invested $350 million into nearly 2000 nonprofits across the United States.

You know, they wanna support the city and this is a really unique way that they're doing it with this program.

- And I love how you keep digging throughout our community to find these types of hidden gem stories.

Thank you Jason.

- They're really fun to tell.