2019 Community Impact Month

Helping out in the neighborhood. (You can bank on it.)

Cooking supper for families in transition. Rolling mulch up a slope in a St. Paul neighborhood. Gathering items for a nearby church’s white elephant sale. Providing start-to-finish staffing at a busy food selection event for the poor. These are a few of the innovative activities BankCherokee has planned for Community Impact Month.

Launched by the Minnesota Bankers Association, Impact Month helps showcase the crucial roles bankers play in their communities all year long and spotlight volunteer opportunities statewide, both which help forge strong local communities.

For many years, BankCherokee has proudly participated in Impact Week—an event that, starting this year, has been ramped up to an entire month. For a look at how BankCherokee staff will contribute this September, read on:

Week 1. Shredding paper and hunger in one fell swoop. At our North Oaks location, BankCherokee combines a morning of free document-shredding with a cash and food collection event to benefit Ralph Reeder Food Shelf and Finnegans Reverse Food Truck.

Week 2. Little Bohemia Clean-Up. Team Cherokee returns for trail/bike path clean-up in Little Bohemia, a St. Paul residential neighborhood where residents, landlords, and businesses bond to maintain a safe, clean, pedestrian-friendly place to live. On the agenda: Pulling weeds. Raking. Stuffing compost bags with more vegetation than you ever thought. And sweating. Despite (sometimes) gathering storm clouds and (always) intense physical labor, the Little Bohemia stint is always one of Team Cherokee’s most beloved Impact Month activities.

Week 3. Jeremiah Place. A homemade meal is on the menu at this residential facility where hardworking women and kids live while moms finish school and other training to be the best they can be. On one yummy evening, staff will serve a multi-course meal to some hungry families. Visit www.jeremiahprogram.org/minneapolis-st-paul/ to learn more about this life-changing non-profit.

Week 3. Salvation Army. Staff stocks tables, greets clients and ensures organization and replenishment during the food selection process at Salvation Army in St. Paul. Visit www.salvationarmynorth.org/community/st-paul-w-7th-street/ for a look at the services this history-making organization provides.

Week 4. Douglas Park Clean-up. Staff will remove litter from and weed the playground area and gardens of this charming little gem just two blocks east of our Smith branch.

Week 4 Bonus. St. Stanislaus White Elephant Collection Drive. To ensure a bounty of goods for sale at this church’s fall festival garage sale, BankCherokee staff is unearthing all sorts of new and gently-used treasures from their homes, then organizing and delivering them to this 150-year-old church down the street from our Randolph branch.

All month long. Keystone Community Services. Tellers and other staff working face-to-face with our customers may not have the flexibility to travel offsite to help. So, right here at work, they can craft multi-use t-shirt tote bags for clients of Keystone Community Services, a non-profit providing food shelves, afterschool tutoring and enrichment and other services. The reusable, washable t-shirt totes can, among other things, carry home Keystone client food shelf items!