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Date: 5/25/2021
FLORENCE – For the 19th year, Florence Bank hosted its annual Customers’ Choice Award reception to issue out grants to local nonprofits as voted on by bank customers throughout 2020.
Florence Bank President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Day said the Customers’ Choice Grant Program initially started 19 years ago as a program designed for customers to participate in.
“When we started the idea was to have a program specific to our customers. We ask our customers to vote, and they can vote all year. This year, we are giving $100,000 and that is divided amongst the organizations based on the number of votes, but there is a $5,000 cap,” he said.
This year, 30 nonprofits were awarded grants, with seven taking home the $5,000 cap and each vote counted for about $39.
Day said he was happy to see customers had the same idea to help support businesses that tend to deal with food security.
“Last year one of our main focuses was food insecurity so we have given a lot to many of those organizations. It is interesting that our customer base voted for many of those same organizations. There are four or five of them here that deal mainly in food insecurity,” he said.
When it comes to voting, Day said customers can pick any 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the area.
“Customers can vote for any nonprofit, but they need to be a 501(c)(3), that is why we get a wide variety of nonprofits here. You look at the list and you see all different kinds of nonprofits all doing different things,” he said.
Throughout the year Day said customers can vote and pick which nonprofits receive the funds.
“Customers can vote any time now for 2021 and the voting closes at the end of the year. Usually, we put a big push in September to remind everyone about Customer Choice, so, it ramps in the fall and as we get into December it usually crescendos until we cut it off at the end of the year,” he said.
As the first event the bank has hosted since March 2020, Day said it feels like things are slowly going back to normal.
“Last year our Customers’ Choice was the last event we did in March of 2020 and now this is the first event we have had since then as a bank, so it feels like things are starting to open up a little bit back to normal, obviously we are still doing distancing and we still have masks, but it is nice to be out,” he said.
Day added that the Customers’ Choice grant program symbolizes Florence Bank’s relationship with the wider community.
“This event symbolizes the partnership we have with our customers, our bank, our employees, our staff, our board, and our communities. Everyone works together as a team to help the communities and we do that through some of these non-profit organizations,” he said.
For the ceremony, Day gave some opening remarks before handing off the award presentation to Florence Bank’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Monica Curhan to invite the winners forward and to say what the funds would be used for.
Some of this year’s recipients include the Dakin Humane Society, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, the Goshen Firefighter’s Association, and the Northampton Survival Center.
After the presentation, Curhan announced two additional nonprofits would be receiving $500 each.
“In year’s past we’ve included the folks that got 40 to 49 votes, so they did not get the 50 votes that are required, and we want to share with them for their effort. This year instead of a raffle we decided to award each of the organizations $500 and they are the Williamsburg Firefighter Association and Whole Children of Hadley,” she said.