Anchorage Press, March 20th, 2019: PROGRESS: Setting up shop
On March 13, the ACLT was presented with a $75,000 grant from KeyBank to continue growing the Set-Up Shop program.
“At KeyBank, our mission is to help our communities thrive — and nowhere is that more important than for small business entrepreneurs who have a dream and seek support to make that vision a reality,” says Alaska KeyBank President Lori McCaffrey. “At a personal level we are wholeheartedly behind the mission! It’s a proven model and it provides a targeted approach to disrupt concentrated poverty and that impacts everyone in our community in such a positive way.”
KeyBank’s grant funding is part of a $16-billion commitment to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. The agreement divvies the funding up between $2.5-billion for small business lending, $5-billion for mortgage lending and an undisclosed amount for assorted philanthropic endeavors.
“We don’t see these philanthropic efforts as grants, we see them as investments because they truly are investments into our communities,” says KeyCorp Senior Vice President, Corporate Responsibility Bruce Whiting. “We see these investments as a partnership and as long-term. I hope we are back here in another year or two and having another discussion because it is really important to us that small businesses in communities like Anchorage have access to credit because without it, they can’t thrive.”
According to Whiting, this is the second largest investment of its kind in the Alaskan community that KeyBank has made. The previous one was for Covenant House.
“I feel like we are in a sort of non-profit dreamland,” says ACLT’s CEO Kirk Rose. “Bruce [Whiting] actually came to us with the idea and I can tell you that in non-profit world, things like that don’t happen!”
