Month: April 2024

By Kim Borges

An EF-3 tornado ripped a path of destruction and despair six football fields wide across Little Rock, Arkansas, last March 31.

The compassion and support that followed the devastation stretched even wider.

One year later, we’re sharing perspective from a Little Rock nonprofit leader whose team immediately sprang into action to help people and families in their greatest time of need. It’s what Our House does – not only when natural disaster strikes, but every day. Learn more about this Regions Bank and Regions Foundation community partner.

“It’s a universal thing; everyone needs support at some point in their lives.”

Ben Goodwin knows. At age 10, his family home burned down. And, in 2009, Goodwin and his wife faced the crisis of their newborn daughter needing significant medical care, bringing their family to Little Rock, and subsequently bringing him to Our House.

“I needed flexible work because we spent a lot of time at the hospital,” he explained. “I had volunteered at Our House before joining the team as a part-time grant writer. I knew the mission, loved the mission – but the hard time I was going through helped the mission resonate even more for me.”

While Goodwin’s trials have offered him greater understanding and empathy, the now-executive director of Our House, which provides housing assistance, career services, child education programs and more, is the first to say the personal challenges by no means compare to the challenges their clients face.

“In most cases, the families we serve don’t have a deep and strong safety net,” he said. “We want to be that support network for people when they need it. We work really hard to help them build a cushion to weather the storms in their lives.”

Meaning, when the actual storm came, Goodwin and team were ready.

“We’re always mobilized for things like this,” he said. “It felt like a dramatic example of the types of things we deal with every day. We’re in the business of helping people who don’t have homes.”

The Regions Foundation, a nonprofit primarily funded by Regions Bank, provided a $10,000 grant to Our House last April to assist with shelter and childcare services for people impacted by the tornado. Regions Bank in Little Rock recently contributed $5,000 to assist with Our House’s operational support and team members also teach financial education classes to the organization’s career center clients.

“Support from Regions Bank and the Regions Foundation is important because, ultimately, we’re all in this together as a community,” said Goodwin. “We’ve worked to build our value proposition at Our House by focusing on what we do best as an organization. Regions Bank and the Regions Foundation care about the community and want to make an impact. There are a lot of deep connections here that mean a lot to us.”

Regions Bank and the Regions Foundation care about the community and want to make an impact. There are a lot of deep connections here that mean a lot to us.

Those connections also mean a lot to Regions Bank Commercial Banking leader and Little Rock market executive Rodney Abston, who’s seen how the organization’s work has lifted the community.

“Our House has bridged the divide between homelessness and homeownership in Greater Little Rock for more than 35 years,” said Abston. “The team offers care in many forms and extends a helping hand to their clients facing crisis moments, so it was natural they extended that same care and helping hand to our larger community impacted by the storm.”

While Our House’s immediate tornado response resembled the usual measures of checking on personal safety and assessing physical damage, it marked only the beginning of their efforts to help their Little Rock neighbors get back on their feet.

“It’s our team’s job to help our clients navigate resources, so we quickly took on the mantle for the larger community by serving as the go-to resource for sharing what support was available,” said Goodwin. “We had our hotline people could call, but we took it a step further with a web-based portal allowing them to learn what support was available such as access to food pantries, clothing, financial assistance, even the schedule when trucks would come by to pick up tree branches from their yard.”

And the support didn’t end there. Several Our House staff members, some personally impacted by the tornado themselves, stepped up to do even more.

“One of our team members went out and bought a chainsaw to help cut tree limbs,” said Goodwin. “Another joined someone for breakfast each day to check in and offer emotional support. There’s a bunch of stories like that of people banding together, working long hours to do what needed to be done.”

Consider it the normal course of business for an organization fielding more than 1,000 calls each month and serving 500 onsite clients daily.

“It’s always a beehive of humanity here,” said Goodwin. “Whatever role you have on our team, if you’re part of this work, you’re getting to know our clients, you’re learning their stories.”

The only thing better than learning those stories? Celebrating their clients’ successes.

“Our House is a home to new beginnings,” said Goodwin. “We say, ‘This is your place, this is your chance, this is where everything hopefully aligns to an inflection point in your lives.’ We know and see people are capable of great things every day.”

Our House will soon have its own new beginning of sorts as well when it opens the doors of its expanded campus in April, allowing the organization to double it housing space and service capacity. The milestone marks quite a journey from Goodwin’s part-time grant writing days.

“We have a great team that really does the hard work and I’m privileged to lead them,” he said. “I feel very fortunate to do this work and be a steward of this organization and the work it does. I see it as the best our community has to offer.”

About Regions Foundation 
Regions Foundation supports community investments that positively impact the communities served by Regions Bank. The Foundation engages in a grantmaking program focused on priorities including economic and community development; education and workforce readiness; and financial wellness. The Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation funded primarily through contributions from Regions Bank.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT, April 12, 2024 /3BL/ — Utah Community Action (UCA) has received a grant from KeyBank for $300,000 in support of the expansion of its workforce development program, which offers training and credentials to help low-income individuals increase wages, benefits, job retention and further their career opportunities.

Founded in 1965, UCA is one of over 1,100 community action agencies across the country providing low- and moderate-income families with comprehensive services to lift people out of poverty. One of UCA’s programs is Workforce Development, designed to increase skills and employability for lower-income community members. The grant from KeyBank will help to expand the current program to include innovative workforce solutions which may include custodial work and various trades, such as HVAC technicians, electricians, plumbers, and other contracted expertise that remains in short supply in Utah. The current Workforce Development Program offers culinary and child development credentialing.

“We have seen the increased need to support and provide workforce development and other essential life skills to disadvantaged adults in our community,” said Drew Yergensen, president of KeyBank’s Utah market. “This grant will help to equip more young adults in our community with the confidence, skills and training needed to navigate the workplace and manage their household budgets.”

“Utah Community Action is grateful for our trust-based partnership with KeyBank. Their investment will foster innovative approaches to workforce development that truly meet the needs of individuals, our agency and the community through tailored supports that increase job readiness. KeyBank’s long-term investment in this program highlights their commitment to making a meaningful impact over time,” said J. Janell Cerva, Chief Impact and Strategy Officer at Utah Community Action. 

Through the administration of six complimentary programs, UCA provided services to approximately 50,000 Utahns in 2023. The programs include Workforce Development, Head Start Preschool, Housing & Case Management, HEAT utility assistance, Nutrition, and home Weatherization.

About Utah Community Action Program 
Utah Community Action has been supporting the local community for 60 years, with the mission of empowering individuals, strengthening families, and building communities through education and self-reliance programs. Through our six core programs – Workforce Development, Head Start Preschool, HEAT utility assistance, Housing & Case Management, home Weatherization, and Nutrition – UCA meets the needs of the community, especially individuals struggling with poverty. Each client receives holistic case management and wrap around supports to help them obtain and sustain self-reliance. 

About KeyCorp 
KeyCorp’s roots trace back nearly 200 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $188 billion at December 31, 2023. Key provides deposit, lending, cash management, and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of approximately 1,000 branches and approximately 1,200 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank is Member FDIC.

In this episode, we welcome back to the show Alex Edmans, professor of finance at London Business School and author of May Contain Lies, to discuss data blind spots, including ESG metrics, with co-host Andie Wood. They delve into the complexities of data interpretation, the nuances of ESG reporting, and the importance of contextualizing data within a broader narrative for effective communication and decision-making.

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The UN Global Compact Network UK has launched the SDG Showcase as a tool for businesses to assess material SDG impacts and showcases good practice examples of the private sector working with a clear plan to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the future we all want.

There are significant benefits for businesses incorporating the SDGs into their operations. New business opportunities through market differentiation, expansion, and growth, increased attractivity for employees, customers, and investors, better employee retention, supply chain resilience, and reduced costs through resource and operational efficiency are some of the positive effects SDG-aligned companies can expect. Furthermore, the SDGs – as the only universally agreed blueprint for a sustainable and prosperous future for all – can enable businesses to stay ahead of the curve, not least with rapidly changing ESG regulations.

The SDG Showcase provides an overview of each of the Goals in turn, showcases good practice examples of how businesses in the UK are already contributing to achieving the SDGs, and encourages businesses to take a leadership role through SDG-aligned policy advocacy.

Download the report here.

Media Contact
Lea Burkart
Governance & SDGs Programme Coordinator

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