Fifth Third Bank Pasta Drive Targets Hungry Across Indiana

Feed Our Comm Logo - smallFifth Third Bank, with over 100 financial centers in Indiana, is collecting pasta and cash donations throughout April to combat hunger in our state, with the noble goal of serving one million meals through its annual Feeding Our Communities initiative. See how you can help:

The Feeding Our Communities Greater Indiana Pasta Drive will collect boxes of pasta from now through the month of April. Each pound of pasta or dollar donated will serve four people, with all proceeds primarily benefiting Second Helpings in Indianapolis, Tri-State Food Bank in Evansville and Community Harvest in Fort Wayne. The collection area includes locations in Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky as well.

The local food drive is part of a larger hunger initiative held across the 12-state footprint of Fifth Third Bank as part of its Fifth Third Day (May 3) celebration. For more than 20 years, Fifth Third has dedicated Fifth Third Day to volunteerism and giving back to the community, specifically through campaigns to combat hunger. In 2015, employees and customers provided 800,000 meals as a result of the campaign.

“At Fifth Third, we’re committed to having the broadest impact possible to our customers and our communities,” said Steven Alonso, president and CEO of Fifth Third’s Greater Indiana region. “Food insecurity in Indiana is a serious issue, and this Pasta Drive is a simple way people can contribute and understand they truly are making a difference.”

In Indiana, more than one million residents (including one in six children) face food insecurity, meaning they may not have the money or resources to get the proper nutrition each day.
Customers and employees in Greater Indiana contributed more than 72,000 servings of pasta to the event last year. To donate, customers can simply bring pasta or donations to any Fifth Third Bank location. Collection boxes will be on site.

Second Helpings, a food rescue, hunger relief and job training organization serving the Indianapolis area, has partnered with Fifth Third Bank and Rev Indy, a VIP, red carpet event on May 7 highlighting the top restaurants and driver-inspired cuisine in the city. Fifth Third is the title sponsor the event, which raises funds for trauma centers supported by the IU Methodist Health Foundation. Second Helpings will rescue all food from the Rev event and repurpose it to feed the hungry in the area.

Tri-State Food Bank in Evansville and Community Harvest in Fort Wayne both have a long history of serving their respective communities. Tri-State currently services 33 counties in three states and Community Harvest of Northeast Indiana provides more than 13 million pounds of food each week to its service area.

Fifth Third’s ‘Reemployment’ Campaign Helps Job Seekers

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Fifth Third Bank is taking a rather novel approach to using advertising media with its new effort to leverage those resources to help people find jobs. You can learn more about this effort and see corresponding videos at https://reemploy.53.com. Fifth Third explains:

Fifth Third piloted the first-of-its-kind reemployment program in 2012. The Bank identified mortgage customers who were behind in their payments due to job loss and offered to help them land a new job with NextJob’s comprehensive job search program. The assistance included one-on-one job coaching, NextJob’s proprietary online training program, called the Job Seeker’s Toolkit, and weekly coach-led job club webinars. On average, participants had been out of work for 22 months and were long-term unemployed. After six months, nearly 40 percent had landed jobs. The two companies deployed the full program to mortgage borrowers in 2013 and quickly extended availability of the Job Seeker’s Toolkit to all Fifth Third online customers.

The Bank now launches an unprecedented campaign to showcase three actual job seekers: Katrina Holmes, Elba Pena and Bill Laakkonen to engage the public—customers, friends, family members and community members—to share their stories and help them return sooner to meaningful employment. By visiting 53.com/reemploy, the public can utilize their own social networks to expand the job seekers’ reach, especially with potential employers, in ways that would be otherwise impossible. For every 53 retweets, Fifth Third will fund a job search coaching package for another unemployed person.

The campaign also features Fifth Third customer Randall Jackson, a Chicago resident who actively engaged with the Bank’s reemployment initiative with NextJob. Jackson recently landed a job after being long-term unemployed. Sharing his story via social media will inspire other job seekers, and contribute to the funding of additional job coaching scholarships.

“With this campaign, Fifth Third and Leo Burnett have developed a strikingly creative approach to help our job seekers while engaging the public in a shared mission to impact unemployment,” said John Courtney, CEO of NextJob. “It’s a brilliant way to connect people to their neighbors on one of the most meaningful issues that affects us as a nation.”

During the campaign period, Fifth Third and NextJob are opening up access to the online Job Seeker’s Toolkit to every unemployed job seeker interested in finding their next job. Further, Fifth Third will fund up to 53 one-on-one coaching scholarships for people who apply through NextJob’s application tool. The scholarships will include four months of personalized job search assistance and anyone can apply regardless of whether or not they are a Fifth Third customer.

The campaign will operate from the online hub, 53.com/reemploy, where the candidates’ resumes come to life via short documentary videos and infographics, humanizing and adding dimension to traditional resumes. The campaign also utilizes seeded video and pre-roll as well as flash and rich media banners across high profile websites, networks, and social media, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

“Helping our customers find reemployment is a perfect illustration of the curiosity of Fifth Third Bank,” said Maria Veltre, senior vice president & chief marketing officer. “Our program evolved from the question of how to help unemployed people keep their homes and led to the answer to even bolder question, ‘how do we get our customers back to work?’ We are extremely proud of our relationship with NextJob, and are eager to help these job seekers—and many more—gain employment from this unique approach to a digital advertising campaign.”

Can You Bank on Financial Mergers?

The Kiplinger Letter provides interesting analysis on a weekly basis. I’m not sure who keeps track of the accuracy of its many predictions and forecasts, but the guess is their experts are on target more often than not.

A recent issue calls for a large number of bank mergers over the next three years. In their words, "as many as one-fifth of the nation’s 8,000 banks are likely to disappear by 2013." It projects that about 500 of those will be due to failures.

In Kiplinger fashion, it lists some potential takeover targets — Capital One Financial, SunTrust, Fifth Third and other midsize institutions — as well as those that might be on the acquiring end: Northern Trust, PNC, U.S. Bancorp and Bank of New York Mellon. It notes that Wells Fargo, Bank of America and other biggies have hit their legal limit on growth.

There are a couple of current Indiana ties (primarily Fifth Third and PNC) on the list and who knows what might develop in the next few years. It will be interesting to see what happens.