FLORENCE — Florence Bank recently presented $100,000 in awards ranging from $500 to $5,000 to 57 area nonprofits through its 16th annual Customers’ Choice Community Grants Program.
The funds will support libraries, schools, police, fire departments, hospitals and hospices, and other organizations that benefit people of all ages, as well as animals and the environment, according to a press release from the bank.
Noting that the bank reached the $1.05 million mark in terms of grants made over nearly two decades to 144 community nonprofits, President and CEO John Heaps Jr. offered a toast to roughly 150 volunteers and staff members from the organizations who gathered for the celebration at Garden House at Look Memorial Parkon last week.
“We started 16 years ago with an idea to ask our customers to vote for a worthy organization to receive funds,” Heaps said. “Here’s to the $1 million mark.”
The grants program is an annual offering through which bank customers vote for their favorite local nonprofit in hopes it will receive a share of grant funding. In its early years, awards of $50,000, and later, $75,000, were offered each year by the bank; in more recent years, $100,000 has been disbursed each spring.
To qualify for a community grant, organizations must receive at least 50 votes. Marketing Director Monica Curhan said at the event that this year each vote is worth about $15 to the organizations.
In 2017, before the Dec. 31 deadline, 10,111 votes were cast by customers.
The grant program is a yearlong initiative. Customers’ of the bank can vote via paper ballots until Dec. 31 at each bank branch location or online.