COVID-19: Our Response

The Anthem Foundation is committed to standing with our communities and helping those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through relationships with nonprofit organizations on the forefront of prevention, treatment and recovery efforts, the Anthem Foundation has committed $50 million to support relief efforts across the country.

Our Commitments

The chart below shows how the Anthem Foundation’s $50 million commitment to support COVID-19 relief efforts is being distributed. As of December 2020, $41.9 million of our $50 million pledge had been committed.

National Partnerships

The Anthem Foundation is working closely with our nonprofit partners to deliver relief to the communities we serve. Highlights include:

Emergency Response

American Red Cross

As a $1 million–level member of the Annual Disaster Giving Program (ADGP) of the American Red Cross, the Anthem Foundation helps provide a reliable funding base for relief services. Investments from ADGP members such as the Anthem Foundation are the backbone of Red Cross disaster-services work—ensuring that the organization can help communities prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters and meet the urgent needs of people affected by them anytime and anywhere across the country. Anthem’s advance commitment through the ADGP program is helping the Red Cross make essential preparations to continue safely delivering its vital disaster services nationwide as communities face the increasing impact of the coronavirus.

Direct Relief and Americares

Grants to Direct Relief and to Americares help ensure that medical resources get where they need to be. In total, our emergency relief funding has enabled 38 million units of lifesaving personal protective equipment to be distributed through our COVID-19 emergency relief funding of these two organizations, to help safeguard frontline healthcare workers and protect the most-vulnerable populations.

United Way Worldwide

United Way Worldwide is supporting communities across the globe struggling to cope with COVID-19. To address rapidly escalating needs, the organization created the COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund. Ninety-five percent of all donations will serve the most vulnerable, through local United Ways and 211 operations. This fund will help meet needs at the local level, including, but not limited to, emergency food support, providing meals to school-age kids, rental assistance, lost-wage support and improved health/medical access..

Food Insecurity

Feeding America

By offering $2.8 million in funding, the Anthem Foundation is a Feeding America Leadership Partner. Feeding America and its network of food banks are continuing to serve neighbors in need. Many food banks are adapting their programs to meet increased demand on behalf of kids and families affected by school closures, and by addressing the issue of people needing food while quarantined.

Boys and Girls Clubs

As communities across the country began to experience the closing of schools, we directed $2 million in grant funding to local Boys and Girls Clubs to help distribute food to children and families who rely heavily on school and club meals. At some clubs, funding is supporting virtual programming to improve the physical and mental health of young people during this challenging period.

Kelly’s Kitchen and Portlight Strategies

People with disabilities and those living in areas of food insecurity are disproportionately affected by all disasters, and access to healthy eating is more important than ever in these uncertain times. A new Anthem Foundation grant has enabled Kelly’s Kitchen and Portlight Strategies to create a cutting-edge, disability-focused response to COVID-19. The organizations are partnering with Centers for Independent Living and other entities focused on aging people and those with disabilities to support existing and new food-pantry efforts.

Behavioral Health

Mental Health America (MHA)

The Anthem Foundation announced a new grant to Mental Health America, the nation’s largest independently held behavioral health organization. The grant funds MHA’s Screening to Supports (S2S) program, an online platform offering free, anonymous mental health screenings to nearly one million people a year, with analyses of results and customized recommendations for next steps. S2S has seen a staggering 643 percent increase in anxiety screenings and an 873 percent increase in depression screenings since COVID-19 started spreading across the world. As quarantine and stay-at-home guidelines persist, MHA is promoting, adapting and improving access to this tool so it can more successfully address the effects of loneliness and isolation. With the help of our partnership with MHA, 2.2 million Americans have been supported in their mental health journeys through the challenges of COVID-19.

Economic Insecurity

Goodwill Industries International

The Anthem Foundation directed $750,000 to support Goodwill Industries’ Healthcare Careers Program, which provides students with supportive services, life-skills training, education and assistance in obtaining employment in the healthcare industry.

Per Scholas

Per Scholas received a $700,000 grant from the Anthem Foundation to support its Information Technology Careers Program. Per Scholas provides skills training and access to employer networks to members of demographic groups often excluded from tech careers.

Local Partnerships

The Anthem Foundation has provided $1.5 million to local partnerships that are working to promote equity, improve communities and address racial disparities through training and employment opportunities

COVID-19 Testing and Vaccine Support

XPRIZE

To accelerate the development of high-quality, low-cost COVID-19 testing, XPRIZE, in collaboration with OpenCovidScreen, launched a $5 million competition. XPRIZE is the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges. OpenCovidScreen is a nonprofit founded by scientists and business leaders to drive needed innovation.

The XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing competition called on the world’s brightest, most-innovative minds to develop new, low-cost testing solutions, ranging from testing devices offering results in 15 minutes to distributed lab-testing methods with next-morning results. The Anthem Foundation and Anthem, Inc., serve as the Founding Anchor Partners of the initiative.

The competition will conclude in February 2021; the top five teams will then advance to the deployment phase, in which they will be matched to deployment sites to prepare and administer tests.

CDC Foundation

The CDC Foundation, in partnership with the Anthem Foundation, will issue minigrants to community-based organizations (CBOs) serving populations that lack resources or are disproportionately affected; these grants will allow the CBOs to work with partners to support planning for, education about and facilitation of the delivery of vaccines. These efforts will focus on mitigating the spread of COVID-19 by supporting CBOs in building vaccine-confident communities, combatting the spread of vaccine misinformation and aiding vaccine delivery.

Associate Engagement

Giving

Our associates across the country have stepped up to ask for ways they can give back to our communities during these challenging times. With a specific focus on COVID-19, the Anthem Foundation promoted a “giving opportunity” for associates to contribute to our disaster-relief partners. In 2020, associates donated $2.6 million to support our COVID-19 relief work.

Volunteer

The Anthem Foundation continues to encourage virtual and COVID-friendly volunteer opportunities for associates who are interested in safely giving back to our communities during the pandemic. From teaching remotely to mailing cards, there are plenty of tasks that can be achieved well in a virtual context. Virtual volunteerism is eligible for reward incentives through our Dollars for Doers program, by which associates can direct funds to the nonprofits of their choice. In 2020 our associates logged nearly 110,000 volunteer hours.

Anthem Medical Associate Volunteer Program

Anthem has launched the Anthem Medical Associate Volunteer Program as a way for associates with professional medical training to volunteer and assist in their local communities’ response to COVID-19. This program is also eligible for Dollars for Doers rewards.

* The American Red Cross name and emblem are used with its permission, which in no way constitutes an endorsement, express or implied, of any product, service, company, opinion or political position. The American Red Cross logo is a registered trademark owned by the American National Red Cross.

Relief Work by State

Through relationships with nonprofit organizations that are on the forefront of prevention, treatment and recovery efforts, Anthem Foundation has committed or projected $20 million to support relief efforts in affected areas across the country. A detailed breakdown by state can be found here.

State	COVID-19 Relief (project)
Arizona	$50,000
Arkansas	$50,000
California	$3.8 Million
Colorado	$900,000
Connecticut	$1 Million
Florida	700,000
Georgia	$1.7 Million
Indiana	$2.8 Million
Iowa	$172,000
Kentucky	$1 Million
Louisiana	$187,000
Maine	$306,000
Maryland	$329,000
Minnesota	$138,000
Missouri	$1.2 Million
Nevada	$358,000
New Hampshire	$323,000
New Jersey	$338,000
New York	$1.8 Million
Ohio	$2.2 Million
Tennessee	$413,000
Texas	$682,000
Virginia	$1.9 Million
Washington	$178,000
Washington D.C.	$250,000
West Virginia	$88,000
Wisconsin	$623,000

Additionally, our associates across the country have stepped up to ask for ways they can give back to our communities during these challenging times. Anthem Foundation has collected and vetted virtual volunteer opportunities for associates who are interested in safely giving back to our communities in this uncertain period. From remote teaching to mailing cards, there are plenty of activities that lend themselves well to being done in a virtual context. So far, associates have volunteered nearly 20,000 hours.