April Fidler had no idea what she was walking into. And that’s just the way the folks at Christian Financial Credit Union Outreach & Impact Foundation had planned it.

On the morning of Monday, Oct. 10, the leadership group at Christian Financial Credit Union (CFCU) celebrated the launch of their brand new foundation by giving away $40,000 in grants to four local nonprofit organizations. Each of the nonprofits received a $10,000 grant, something that they had no idea was coming to them. It’s that spirit of giving that motivated the credit union to start the foundation in the first place. And rather than celebrate themselves for starting the Outreach & Impact Foundation, they celebrated the nonprofits that they serve.

It was CFCU’s Director of Business Development and Community Outreach, Christine Quitter, who was tasked with leading the nonprofits to the CFCU headquarters in Sterling Heights while keeping the big surprise a secret.

“Christine had reached out to me and said, Hey, we're launching some new initiatives and we'd like to give you an award for the work you do with the community. I get there on Monday and I'm like, why are all these people here,” says April Fidler, Executive Director of MCREST, one of the four nonprofits to receive a grant.

“As Christine was speaking, she says that they decided to give a $10,000 grant to each of the four agencies. And I was like, Oh, my gosh. I didn't didn't see that coming. We’re very blessed that we're able to get funding that I didn't have to write a grant for and wait for an answer.”

Fidler leads MCREST (Macomb County Rotating Emergency Shelter Team), Macomb County’s largest nonprofit homeless agency. The nonprofit provides a number of services, including a women and children’s shelter in Mt. Clemens that opened earlier this year. She says that the $10,000 grant will support their operations there.

Other local nonprofits to receive grants from the Christian Financial Credit Union Outreach & Impact Foundation include Motown Soup, Society of St. Vincent de Paul Detroit, and Kids on the Go. Each does their banking with CFCU, which is how the foundation leadership team knew their work so well. They were selected because each nonprofit represents one of the foundation’s four foundational pillars: stable housing, improved quality of life, financial well-being, and empowerment of the next generation.

Christine Quitter, Director of Business Development and Community Outreach.Development of the foundation has been in the works for a while, Christine Quitter says, but things really got moving over the past seven months.

“We get tons of requests for help coming through. And we thought, you know what, we're big enough, we've been around long enough. We really want to make an impact and try to help the nonprofits and organizations in the communities that we serve. From there we asked what are the most important things to us as an organization, and that's where we got our four pillars from,” Quitter says. “To launch the foundation, we had this wonderful day of giving planned. We thought, My gosh, we're going to all these nonprofits, we're helping, we're volunteering. Let's piggyback off that and present a grant to four nonprofits that we know, that we have worked with.”

Roots and growth

Christian Financial Credit Union was founded in 1950 as St. Jude’s Parish Credit Union in Detroit. Initially started as a credit union for the parish itself, the credit union has since grown and, though Christian remains in its name, serves people of all faiths and backgrounds. There are 10 locations throughout Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, and Wayne counties. They moved their headquarters from Roseville to Sterling Heights in 2019.

The credit union seeded the foundation with $50,000. From here, they’ll use the $10 charge it takes to open an account at CFCU to help fund the foundation, and accept donations from employees, customers, and elsewhere.

Rebekah Monroe, VP of Marketing & Product Development.Given that CFCU works with so many churches and nonprofits, it was a natural progression to start a foundation to further the work they want to support in the community, says Rebekah Monroe, VP of Marketing & Product Development at CFCU.

“This has been a dream of ours for a long time,” she says. “We've been talking about creating a foundation for a while. We wanted to amplify the difference that we're making in the community. We've always wanted to be a good community partner, that's something we’ve always tried to do. And we knew that with a foundation, we'd be able to do more and make a bigger impact. So that was really the impetus behind it. It's been in the works for a while, but we felt like this was a good time to really get things off the ground.”

Spread the word

Now that they’ve launched the foundation, CFCU will continue to look for new ways to grow and strengthen its impact. They’re hoping that their launch event will help spread the word to the region’s nonprofits that the Christian Financial Credit Union Outreach & Impact Foundation is here to help.

“We're trying to spread awareness that the foundation exists and especially for nonprofits,” says Monroe. “We want to partner with folks that are doing great work, because there are a lot of great nonprofits doing amazing work and we want to know about them and potentially partner with them.”

Monroe recommends local nonprofits to visit the foundation website and to reach out about future partnership opportunities. There’s more support coming, be it financial or otherwise.

“It could be through education,” Quitter says. “Like with the youth, our next generation empowerment pillar. We would love to help educate about budgeting and even financial well being.”

Visit Christian Financial Credit Union Outreach & Impact Foundation online to learn more.