In Alabama, businesses and charitable organizations are reimagining what philanthropy looks like, transforming what once was merely a financial obligation into creative and meaningful long-term investments in the communities that need them most.
AmFirst Credit Union
“I have the best job,” says Jody Mattson, director of philanthropy and community engagement at AmFirst. Founded in 1936, the AmFirst credit union has expanded into almost two dozen branch locations throughout central Alabama and Mobile.
The impact these locations have on their communities, says Mattson, goes beyond traditional lending. “We do what we call our Community First Initiative, where our employees nominate and vote on organizations to raise money for each year… It started out with one organization, then went to two, and now we’re up to four each year.”
In 2024, AmFirst selected SafeHouse, Pathways, Girls Incorporated of Central Alabama and Cahaba Valley Health Care, bolstering efforts supporting health care, domestic abuse survivors, homelessness and more. AmFirst raised more than $150,000 for those groups, plus countless volunteer hours from employees in more than 900 community events annually.
“It starts at the top here. Our CEO is going to be the first one you see [at] a United Way Campaign, whether it’s working on a board or volunteering his time. I’ve seen him at a nonprofit event when it was raining and he was in the parking lot, directing traffic,” she says. “Banks [are] required to give back certain amounts to the community, but we’re not required to do that as a credit union. We do it simply because that’s who we are… Whether it’s our food drive, our book drive, our holiday toy drive; whether it’s our volunteer hours, or just … a table somewhere at a nonprofit… I never have to pull teeth to get someone to go and do those things and represent us. It really, truly is part of our culture.”
Short the Squirrel
Short the Squirrel is a community literacy program that focuses on promoting reading during downtime. As the group’s mission statement says: “Waiting time is reading time.”
The program was co-founded in 2020 by Dr. Dee Bennett, a professor in the College of Education at Troy University, and Monica Anderson Young, head of organizational effectiveness at Allianz Technology of America.
The star of the program is Short, an adventurous squirrel with a magical cape that not only appears in the program’s many interactive booklets, but also as an in-person mascot at school and community events throughout Alabama. “Until you see it in person,” says Anderson Young, “you just don’t realize the impact that this six-foot furry squirrel makes on a child’s mindset toward reading… there’s just no describing how rewarding that is.”
In 2020, Short was named the official mascot for childhood literacy in Alabama. Since then, the Short program has distributed tens of thousands of booklets in key waiting spaces throughout the state with the help of various Chambers of Commerce and grants through organizations such as the Alabama Law Foundation, Alabama Department of Mental Health and Alabama Power. According to Bennett, those grants are investments in the state’s future workforce.
“We pretend to be a literacy organization; we’re really an economic organization for the state of Alabama,” she says. “We are future-forward… these children will not be able to lead Alabama into the future without building this foundation. We want business leaders to pick up that flag with us.”
“We call this our love letter to Alabama,” says Anderson Young. “At the core of innovation is a young person who knows how to read,” says Bennett. “We’re helping grow those students who are going to be our future workforce and our future business leaders… and hopefully our future innovation for the state.”
Thompson Burton Law Firm/Sleep in Heavenly Peace
In August of this year, the Thompson Burton law firm provided the funding and — teaming with Columbia High School — the labor to build beds for a program known as Sleep in Heavenly Peace in Huntsville.
“We built 47 beds in about two and a half hours,” says Mary Ena Heath, an attorney with Thompson Burton and president of the Alabama-Huntsville chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
According to Heath, beds are essential items that highlight the diverse needs of Alabamians. “The estimates are that 2-3% of the [Alabama] population needs a bed… It could be a grandmother that all of a sudden has three or four grandchildren that she’s taking care of… or it could be a mother that, like the one we delivered to on Friday, just escaped from a terrible situation with absolutely nothing…
“We also work with Global Ties, a group in Huntsville that brings in legal refugees from Syria, Guatemala, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and puts them up and gets them apartments, and we deliver beds to the children there.”
“I think there’s something valuable for all of us in doing something for somebody that can never pay you back,” says Heath. “But there’s a huge return… you’re changing somebody’s life. You’re making it where somebody has a space of his own for the first time, maybe in his life, and something secure for a place in a home. That’s what we see… and Thompson Burton did that for them…
“The very first person that we delivered to on October 16, 2022, we’re still in touch with… She said, SHP delivers more than beds; they deliver hope.”
Thompson Foundation
“We formed the Thompson Foundation in 2003, when Thompson Engineering turned 50 years old,” says Chad Brown, chief legal officer and incoming CEO of Thompson Holdings. “We wanted to do something that represented our philanthropy in the communities we serve.”
The Thompson Foundation has supported more than 250 different organizations throughout its eight-state footprint. “In 2020, we gave our millionth dollar back to the communities we serve,” says Brown. And that million-dollar figure has now surpassed $1.5 million today, just four years later.
“We combine corporate giving, employee giving and our community fundraiser to support our foundation’s efforts,” says Brown.
Much of the foundation’s focus is on supporting STEM education. “In the past, we’ve participated personally with Airbus around their program meant to engage youth in STEM services,” says Kendall Kilpatrick, CEO of Thompson Engineering. Some of those programs include Flight Path, a program for high-school students, which was then expanded to Build It Better, meant for middle-school-aged students, and ultimately the new We Will Build It Better program, aimed at getting elementary-school students interested in STEM fields and aviation science.
The Thompson Foundation also funds the Thompson Engineering Foundation Scholarship at Auburn University and helped build and fund the STEM Studio at ACCEL Day and Evening Academy in Mobile.
“There’s a real shortage of STEM professionals out in the field right now,” says Brown, “Our dream would be for a student who learns from a We Will Build It Better kit to one day work for us.”
Kilpatrick concurs with the long-term benefit of STEM education investment. “We’re reinvesting in the community… as we grow the aviation industry, we’re investing in the future of [Alabama].”
Steven Castle is a Mobile-based freelance contributor to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the December 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
