ShoreBank Blog
The ShoreBank Blog is your place to find ShoreBank news, new product information, and our insight into the banking world.
Archive for April, 2010
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Guest Contributor, Pastor Gregory J. Daggett, Joy of Fellowship MB Church
It is official. ShoreBank 2010 was a success – such a success that we have decided to keep our Friends & Family campaign going throughout 2010! And we will soon be able to reward you for telling your friends that where they bank makes a difference. Check our blog over the next month for more information. Today’s mission minute is shared by ShoreBank loan recipient Pastor Gregory J. Daggett, of Joy of Fellowship MB Church.
It was the honesty and the integrity of Sherri James, Business Development Office for small Faith-Based organizations for ShoreBank that determined the Joy of Fellowship MB Church’s decision to bank with ShoreBank. Not only did she embrace us and our dire need, but she also personally escorted us through the [multi-step] process that secured the financing for our loan. . . . thank you ShoreBank.
Thank you Pastor Daggett and Joy of Fellowship MB Church for banking with ShoreBank and for telling others that where they bank makes a difference!
Blog readers, help us continue to spread the word about ShoreBank and Share This post!
Look for another ShoreBank Mission Minute in 2 weeks. Until then, let’s keep redefining what’s possible.
Tags: Mission Minute, SBK2010, ShoreBank 2010
Posted in Outreach | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Is travel for tourism a human right? Although we might question this recent argument by the EU for subsidizing travel for low-income citizens, I agree with one reason behind its proposal – that travel for tourism can have positive economic, community, and environmental benefits, especially for small towns and local businesses. The more people who can travel, the greater than impact! But, I also think there is quicker low-cost way to responsibly increase access to travel. That way: a staycation to a low- or moderate-income neighborhood.
According to Wikipedia, “a ‘staycation’ is a period of time in which an individual or family stays at home and relaxes or takes day trips from their home to area attractions.” Many amazing things to see and do are nestled in low- or moderate-income neighborhoods. For example, in Chicago, you can take in jazz at the Sunset Café in Bronzeville, the Pullman Historic District in Pullman, or golf at the South Shore Cultural Center. Or, in San Francisco, you can check out the murals in Balmy Alley in the Mission, music at the Great American Music Hall in the Tenderloin, or watch the World Cup at The Pig & Whistle in Western Addition. If you look for it, almost every low- to moderate-income neighborhood has something great to see or do.
Not only are staycations fun, but they can also be far less costly, both financially and environmentally, than a traditional vacation. The American Automobile Association determined the average North American vacation would cost $244/day for two people for just lodging and meals. That doesn’t include travel and carbon output. Can you imagine the economic and environmental impact we could create if we spent the same amount of money in low- to moderate-income communities without flying there? Our reallocated tourism dollars might help create the same support in our city’s neighborhoods that the EU is trying to stimulate.
Many people want to make socially responsible actions, but get inundated by the plethora of options. A staycation is one step that everyone can take. Try it!
1.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7100943.ece
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staycation
Tags: community development, green transportation, socially responsible investing, socially responsible travel, ways to reduce carbon
Posted in Outreach | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
One of the sad truths about urban life is that we often do not know our neighbors well. Yet, our neighbors are working diligently to make our neighborhoods better places to live and work!
Each Earth Day, ShoreBank recognizes one of the unsung heroes in our community by presenting an award to a customer that exemplifies ShoreBank’s approach to sustainable development. Deemed “The Green Neighbor Award,” recipients are nonprofit organizations that promote environmental sustainability in urban neighborhoods, while also catalyzing job growth, community empowerment, and economic inclusion.
This year’s winner is the Resource Center, a nonprofit offering recycling services to neighborhoods throughout the city. Led by long-time Executive Director, Ken Dunn, the organization has pioneered ways to transform trash into economic opportunity for low wealth communities.
To use the organization’s own words, “For 35 years, the Resource Center, a non-profit environmental education organization, has led the way in demonstrating innovative techniques for recycling and reusing materials. Too often in the urban setting, abundant and important resources are wasted. In our recovery work we aim to reverse waste and to improve the quality of life for urban dwellers. We have been devoted from the beginning to the economic and educational revitalization of city neighborhoods through recycling, urban gardening, composting, and other programs that reclaim and reuse resources.”
But, as Earth Day’s 40th anniversary approaches, it is also important to realize how important ShoreBank’s (and your) support is to our green neighbors. When Resource Center needed a working capital loan, following a collapse in the price of aluminum, paper, and glass, it had few alternatives. As a nonprofit, it was ineligible for an SBA loan or any of the other governmental loan programs that support lending to small businesses. ShoreBank, however, offers a novel lending program that enabled the Resource Center to obtain the necessary financing, preserving 23 green collar jobs and ensuring that 14,000,000 pounds of waste continued to be recycled annually.
With commodity prices now largely recovered, the Resource Center is again expanding its services, adding to its payroll, and helping to grow the green (neighborhood) economy. Thanks to green neighbors like the Resource Center, Earth Day is sure to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Tags: environmental sustainability, green banking, green jobs, green neighbor award, recycling tactics, urban gardens
Posted in Green Collar | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 16th, 2010
Guest Contributor: Ted Gonder, co-founder, Moneythink
I am delighted to blog that we blew away our 100 tree goal for ShoreBank 2010. But ShoreBank 2010 is still going until the end of April and everybody, from ShoreBank interns to Facebook fans, are telling their friends that where they bank makes a difference. Today, ShoreBank intern and co-founder of Sparkseed Social Innovation Competition Finalist, Moneythink, Ted Gonder, shares his ShoreBank mission minute.
I chose to intern at ShoreBank because it not only provides an opportunity to gain relevant work experience, but also more importantly, it provides an opportunity to be a part of something bigger. That’s why, when Shashin Chokshi, David Chen, and I started Moneythink, we turned to ShoreBank for our banking needs. It was a no-brainer–we’ve since found (first-hand!) that ShoreBank cares about its clients just as much, if not more than its interns, and that’s saying a lot.
Thank you Ted and Moneythink for banking with ShoreBank and for telling others that where they bank makes a difference!
Look for another ShoreBank 2010 Mission Minute in two weeks. Until then, let’s keep redefining what’s possible.
Tags: SBK2010, ShoreBank 2010
Posted in Outreach | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
I am a proud non-car owner. My family is even taking bets to see how long I will last sans a car. Now, I am fortunate that ShoreBank participates in SASI, which deducts my public transportation costs from my pre-tax salary. But not everybody is as lucky. Just as car owners receive an “alternative motor” tax credit for replacing their vehicles with new eco-friendly ones (and therefore, for positively impacting the economy and environment), why shouldn’t more people receive a financial incentive for not owning a car? I propose that by not owning a car and by taking alternative forms of transportation, people are creating a triple bottom line impact in the following ways:
Financial:
- Generating more disposable income. For people like me, whose savings rates rarely increases, the greater your disposable income, the more you spend can (and I know that I do!) spend locally.
- Saving time (and time equals money). When I lived in San Francisco, I calculated that it would take me the same amount of time to get to the commuter shuttle stop to Silicon Valley via foot as it would via bus. By walking 4 miles every day for a year, I saved $540.
- Increasing local business activity and employment from foot traffic. It is much easier to just duck into an interesting shop if you don’t have to find parking!
- Creating health cost savings from the exercise we get from walking, even if just to another form of transportation. Walking has saved me $1,300 on a gym membership.
Community:
- Decreasing external transportation costs by not contributing to car emissions, noise pollution, and potholes (and the fixing of them!), etc.
- Improving community cohesion – the quality of relationships among people in a community among people of different economic classes and social backgrounds. Running into the same people on the street or waiting for the bus makes my urban Chicago neighborhood feel like my small Missouri hometown (as if to emphasis that point, I really did sit across from a girl I went to high school with in MO on the bus to my Chicago apartment).
Environment:
- Reducing energy consumption and pollution emissions.
- Lowering “heat island” effects, including air condition costs, heat-related illness and mortality, and water quality. “Heat Island” describes how the annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8–5.4°F (1–3°C) warmer than its surroundings.
We really can make a big impact by not owning a car. But more people may need financial incentives to go “non-car owner”. Being a non-car owner is what ‘green’ means to me.
This is my picture for ShoreBank’s “What does ‘Green’ mean to me” photo contest. What does ‘Green’ mean to you? Take a photo and enter it in our contest starting April 22! It is time for us to give you your green credit.
Love ShoreBank Voices? Help me tell others that where they bank does make a difference and leave a comment or subscribe to the ShoreBank Voices feed blog.sbk.com/feed.
Tags: environmental sustainability, green transportation, tax credits, triple bottom line
Posted in Outreach | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
The financial crisis began with too much borrowing, and it won’t be over until the debt burden of American households is manageable. The chart below shows household debt payments as a percentage of disposable income on a quarterly basis since 1985.
Back then, the country had just emerged from a harsh “double-dip” recession and households were just starting to borrow again. The 1991 recession brought on another retrenchment. But, as the long expansion of the Clinton years took hold, we built our debt burden back and then some. By the first quarter of 2008, nearly 14% of our disposable income went to pay debts. The percentage has been falling ever since, but it still has a long way to go before reaching a more reasonable level.
What is a reasonable level? The table below also covers the period 1985 through 2009. It slices and dices households and their debts into several groupings. The first two columns, in yellow, cover all households. The next column, in green, covers renters only, while the three blue columns reflect the debts of homeowners. The first row of percentages shows the ratio of debt service to disposable income for the fourth quarter of 2009. The next two rows show the averages and medians for the whole period. The last two rows show the variances between the last quarter and the long-term trends.
The story is compelling. All households have reduced consumer debt obligations, which are now below historical levels as a percentage of income. Mortgage debt payments have been reduced but are still almost 1% above long-term trend. Looking farther back, the difference is starker. For the 10 years 1985 through 1994, mortgage debt absorbed 9.79% of disposable income. It actually dropped to 9.11% in the following ten years.
It’s taken about two years for mortgage debt service to drop from a peak of 11.30% to 10.55% as a percentage of income. Assuming—and it’s a big assumption—the same rate of decline going forward, the percentage will fall below 10% in two years more. That’s not a bad proxy for how long it will take for the economy to return to full strength.
Tags: debt payment, economic predictors, economic trends, financial crisis, household debt
Posted in Banking Industry | No Comments »
