By foregoing a typical year-end holiday party and embracing a “pay it forward” approach to supporting unsuspecting Austinites, Netspend continues track record of giving back to the community it’s called home for almost 20 years.
AUSTIN, TX, November 20, 2018 — Netspend hosted its eighth annual “pay it forward” initiative, Community Connect, on Thursday, November 15, 2018, to benefit the company’s hometown of Austin, Texas. In just eight hours, 72 Netspend teams gifted unsuspecting Austin residents over $30,000 to help cover groceries, gas, bills and other household expenses, as well as Thanksgiving family celebrations. Netspend’s offices in Alpharetta, Georgia, and San Mateo, California, also participated, gifting almost $5,000 collectively to their communities. In addition to what was donated to Austin residents during their annual Community Connect event, Netspend and its generous corporate partners contributed enough donations to award $300,000 in scholarship funds. These awards will provide more than 120 scholarships to worthy recipients around the country in 2019.
Each year, in place of a year-end holiday party, Netspend team members, and highly engaged business partners, have the opportunity to step away from their daily routines and take to the streets of Austin to “walk in the shoes” of Netspend customers. Many Austin residents, and hard-working Americans, must overcome logistical hurdles to manage the financial burdens of everyday life. Community Connect customer journeys, used to guide on-the-ground teams throughout the day, are designed to highlight those hurdles, bringing awareness to how community neighbors sometimes struggle to cover daily expenses, commute to their jobs or manage fundamental aspects of family life.
“Community Connect is now a proud, annual Netspend tradition, and we’re committed to continuing this important initiative, alongside our great partners. We’re dedicated to giving back to local residents, who are the fiber of what makes the beloved communities of Austin, Alpharetta and San Mateo some of the best places to live, work, share and play in the U.S. If other organizations embrace this once-a-year party replacement concept within their own communities, we’re evolving our mission to have more societal relevance across the country. It is a fulfilling gift to have contributed, and fundraised, the most money Netspend Community Connect has raised to date, and we look forward to continuing our active engagement in our communities for years to come.” – Kelley Knutson, President, Netspend
“The annual event has had a lasting, and deep-rooted, impact on participants, both personally and professionally, as well as on the Austin, San Mateo and Alpharetta residents we help every year. It’s a special way to recognize hard working residents in our cities while mobilizing team members and partners to collectively ‘do good’ to support the fiber of our communities.” – Vera Hinojosa, Community Connect Committee Head, Netspend
Due to the generosity and support from Netspend’s top-tier partner sponsors such as Axos Bank, Bancorp, Enacomm, InComm, Mastercard, MetaBank and Republic Bank & Trust Co., along with countless other key sponsor contributors, this year’s event had over 650 people participate in the day’s activities — the most participants in Community Connect history. All money raised through this year’s Community Connect sponsorships are put toward Netspend’s Scholarship Foundation awards in 2019.
The Netspend Foundation is entering its fourth year of awarding scholarships to deserving recipients. To learn more about the Netspend Scholarship, please visit http://www.netspend.com/scholarship, and read more about this year’s scholarship recipients here.
Follow along on through the hashtags #CommunityConnect and #NetspendCares on Twitter.
About Netspend
Netspend empowers people with the choice, control and convenience to manage their money through intuitive, reliable and secure prepaid card and consumer payment solutions. Since 1999, we have helped over 10 million consumers make purchases, budget and pay bills using our seamless physical and digital financial options that fit their lives. Customers can find and reload Netspend Prepaid Cards at convenient locations nationwide through Netspend’s extensive network of 130,000 reload points and more than 100,000 distributing locations and employers, including check cashers, convenience stores, grocers, pharmacies, insurance providers and tax preparers. Headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, please http://www.netspend.com.
