2015 Business Leaders of the Year Corporate Citizen Award: Bay State Savings Bank
Bay State Savings Bank's charitable donations last year included $4,500 to the Worcester Junior Sharks Youth Hockey Pre-Concussion Testing Program. Finz, the hockey team's mascot, exchanges a high-five with program coordinator Michelle Domey. At right is bank CEO Peter Alden.
CORPORATE CITIZEN
Bay State Savings Bank, Worcester
Many corporations pride themselves on how they give back to their communities, and in how that fosters and strengthens relationships within the cities and towns they serve.
When that message is communicated from the top of the organization, that part of the mission occupies a high spot on its list of priorities.
“Community banking is community banking,” says Peter Alden, the CEO of Worcester-based Bay State Savings Bank, the 2015 Worcester Business Journal Corporate Citizen of the Year. And that's par for the course for the industry, says the banker whose career stretches back into the mid-1980s. Giving back to the community has always been a hallmark of the local bank.
“If you're going to be in” community banking “and hopefully enjoy it, you embrace it,” Alden says.
Bay State Savings Bank's standing as a place to do business has also earned it the highest rating – A-plus – from the Better Business Bureau. The bank had been a BBB-accredited member since 1968.
The generosity of Bay State, which was founded in 1895, touches many parts of the Greater Worcester community. Last year, its foundation donated $29,000, including $2,000 to the Regional Environmental Council of Central Massachusetts, which used the money to help fund the development of farmers' markets in Worcester and to pay 32 low-income youths who are assisting the farmers markets and learning to grow food, according to Steve Fischer, the council's executive director.
“Bay State certainly has a reputation throughout the community (as an organization that goes) above and beyond” with the support it provides, according to Fischer. “We couldn't do it without sponsors like Bay State Savings.”
Boosting community development
The Worcester East Side Community Development Corp. also received $2,000 from the bank last year. It came at an important time, amid reports that a federal audit found that some community development grant money had been used improperly, leading to tension between city officials and some neighborhood-based community development organizations, including East Side.
The money from Bay State was “important to us,” said Donna Warshaw, East Side's executive director. “It's nice to have foundations that still believe in the” community development organizations.
The bank takes a broader view as well. For instance, Alden sits on the board of directors for the Worcester Business Development Corp. (WBDC), as did his predecessor, Robert J. Lewis. And the bank was one of seven that loaned money to the WBDC to redevelop the bank's next-door neighbor in downtown Worcester, the former Telegram & Gazette building on Franklin Street, into the downtown campus for Quinsigamond Community College as well as workspace for start-up companies.
That drives up the level of excitement about downtown's redevelopment for Alden, whose office overlooks City Hall and the downtown common.
“We've been in this building since the mid-'50s, so as a company, we've seen a lot of change,” he said. “We chose to stay downtown … Everything that's developing around us and that we're helping to support is big. There's a lot of momentum (and even) the naysayers are starting to see a lot of progress.”
While the bank spreads its charity among several organizations — 15 received money in 2014 — it leans toward causes that help children, Alden says. In 2004, Bay State created its “Champions for Children” program to support organizations that help children. The program is supported entirely through fundraising and separate from its charitable foundation. Since its inception, the program has raised more than $110,000 for local organizations and charities.
“When there's a choice of two things, if it's related to helping kids, and specifically underprivileged kids, that's where we go,” Alden notes.
And then there are older kids at Auburn High School who have worked at the bank's branch at the school, which opened in 1989, making Bay State one of the early adopters of the practice in Central Massachusetts.
Students develop their financial literacy. And as for Bay State, “we've gotten some great employees out of it too,” Alden says. n
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