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Call of Duty Endowment helped 11,661 veterans find work in 2019

In what Activision is calling its charitable arm's biggest year ever, Call of Duty Endowment helped over 11,000 veterans find gainful employment in 2019.

Ozzie Mejia

March 5, 2020 10:00 AM

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While Activision has enjoyed a lot of success with the Call of Duty franchise and with the new Call of Duty League, the publisher is also proud of its accomplishments on the charity front. The Call of Duty Endowment fund has managed to top its record-breaking efforts in 2018 and announced on Thursday that it had reached some new milestones, making 2019 the charity's biggest year ever.

The Call of Duty Endowment fund's greatest 2019 accomplishment was finding work for 11,661 veterans of the United States and United Kingdom armed forces. Their average starting salaries were valued to be roughly $60,733, nearly doubled the national annual median personal income. Of those veteran job placements, 93 percent were for full-time work, 90 percent were for post-9/11 veterans, and 81 percent of those employed were retained for over 12 months. On top of that, 19 percent of those veterans were women, compared to the 16 percent placement rate of the U.S. military. These numbers put the Call of Duty Endowment fund closer to its target of helping 100,000 veterans find gainful employment before 2024, a goal that CODE Executive Director Dan Goldenberg discussed with Shacknews back during a 2019 interview.

The Call of Duty Endowment fund will continue its efforts in 2020. While nothing specific has been announced, some of its 2019 promotions included a special DLC pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and a tie-in promotion with Crash Team Racing. Activision also partnered with U.S. Army Esports to present a special exhibition between some of Modern Warfare's top streamers, an event that helped fund 838 individual veteran placements.

To learn more about the Call of Duty Endowment fund and its goals for 2020, be sure to check out the CODE website.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?