Community Foundation Applauds Ascentra Credit Union’s Corporate Philanthropy

By Kelly Thompson, LMSW

I love sharing examples of organizations and people who are going above and beyond to make the Quad Cities area a better place for all of us. At this moment, Ascentra Credit Union and its CEO Dale Owen are among those at the top of my list. Earlier this week, the Community Foundation distributed one of the first major community grant awards from the Ascentra Credit Union Foundation Fund. The $50,000 grant will help sponsor Habitat for Humanity Quad Cities’ house #93 being built at 1218 Perry Street in Davenport, Iowa.

Not only did Ascentra recommend a grant from their fund, they helped Habitat for Humanity reach out to other funders to leverage the remainder of the dollars necessary to build this home. Ascentra’s willingness to build a relationship in addition to making a grant more than doubled their impact as Habitat raised over $100,000 to support this project.

While they’ve long supported many great community efforts, in October 2014, Ascentra Credit Union took steps to better coordinate their philanthropy and deepen their impact in the communities they serve. To do this, they established an endowment and a non-endowed fund at the Community Foundation. This $2 million collaboration between the Community Foundation and Ascentra Credit Union represents the largest corporate partnership with the Community Foundation to date. Ascentra is able to make grants on their own timeline, to causes that are important to the company and its employees, all without having to establish and maintain a separate foundation.

I’m proud to work with Dale and everyone involved with Ascentra, and I hope that their example will inspire others to think “what is the next level in my company’s approach to giving back to our community?”