Pinnacle Monetary Companions on Friday introduced a $15,000 donation to the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute and the enlargement of its providers in Whitehaven with the creation of a Pinnacle Financial Empowerment Useful resource Middle.
Pinnacle stated it made the donation and expanded providers have been in honor of Herman Strickland, a veteran Memphis neighborhood banking and civic chief who died two years in the past.
Strickland served as a senior vice chairman and senior credit score officer for Pinnacle in Memphis. Earlier than becoming a member of Nashville-based Pinnacle, Strickland spent 34 years at First Tennessee Financial institution (now First Horizon) in Memphis, the place he led its variety banking group.
Throughout his time with Pinnacle, Strickland helped develop the financial institution’s community-lending work and helped to ascertain neighborhood lending places of work in Whitehaven.
“Due to his efforts, he has helped us set up an excellent monitor document with serving to these people,” stated Steve Swain, neighborhood lending supervisor for Pinnacle and a board member on the Hooks Institute.
In tribute to Strickland’s legacy, Pinnacle will broaden its providers in Whitehaven and set up a Pinnacle Financial Empowerment Useful resource Middle within the space, a useful resource Swain stated will “be like no different” and can goal to enhance on monetary literacy, small enterprise assist and reasonably priced housing within the space.
“It is simply one other hub, simply one other useful resource, among the group we’re working with, they do a few of these issues as effectively, however I believe when a financial institution steps in and says ‘hey we’re additionally going to supply our bodily constructing as a result of we wish the training middle to be the place they will are available in to do coaching,’ they will have occasions, they’ve employees conferences and issues of that nature,” Swain stated. “So we’re open to all of that. We consider that is the precise factor to do.”
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An official announcement concerning the useful resource middle will come later this yr.
Strickland was additionally a board member on the Hooks Institute. The Hooks Institute is an interdisciplinary middle on the College of Memphis that works to show, examine and promote civil rights and social change. Strickland joined the board in 2010.
“And Herman assumed the position of fundraising chair, so if any of you recognize something about non-profits, you recognize that no person desires to be fundraising chair. However he did, and he did a superb job with it,” stated Daphene McFerren, Hooks Institute govt director. “And since it was the start of my tenure, and the Hooks Institute had no programming once I began, Herman and that core board, have been liable for the creation of lots of the Hook Institute packages which can be signature packages that you just hear about.”
The packages Strickland helped create embody the Hooks Foundations partnership with Splash Mid-South, a program geared toward offering swim classes for undeserved at-risk youth within the Memphis Space.
“That cash that Herman received from companies, and from different entities, and that he donated from his circle of relatives’s private sources helped Hook’s Institute to do the analysis for these packages,” McFerren stated.
As of 2021, McFerren stated, 8,000 college students have gone via the Splash Mid-South program.
Strickland additionally helped assist the Hooks African American Male Initiative, a program that works to get rid of disparities amongst African American male college students attending the College of Memphis.
“We began that program in 2015, we received our first grant from the Tennessee Board of Regents in 2016, however that cash solely lasted for one yr, and I advised Herman, ‘we have to boost cash within the personal sector, as a result of it is privately funded, to maintain HAAMI alive,” McFerren stated. “The primary company donation that we acquired, Herman Strickland received. And the HAAMI program is now in its seventh yr.”
“The one approach to uplift Memphis is thru packages like these,” McFerren stated. “As a result of once we uplift individuals and make them notice their potential to allow them to entry the alternatives establishments like Pinnacle supply.”
Gina Butkovich covers DeSoto County, storytelling and common information. She will be reached at 901-232-6714 or on Twitter @gigibutko.