Our Town Brookline

By Fred Bouchard
Our Town Brookline

January 2006

“This bank is like the perfect date: smart, elegant, funny, liberal, and rich!” – Jonathan Scott, President, Victory Programs, quoting a friend.

How green is your money? I don’t mean color - that identical forest green of our greenbacks, or the grass green of that Treasury seal on the front (it’s bright green on new bills), or even the multicolored green on the twenties on up. I’m not talking about your investment portfolio performance, or even your ‘hedge’ funds. I’m asking, “What does your bank do with your “cabbage” when you don’t need it?”

A Bank with a Conscience

Americans – or anyone else for that matter – are not used to looking at banks as havens for green space, affordable housing, alternative lifestyles, or multi-cultural groups. But, as Bob Dylan sang a generation and a half ago, “the times they are a-changin’.” Today there is a bank for today’s progressive thinkers. Wainwright Bank is that anomaly – a bank with a collective conscience – one that thrives on supporting causes of social justice.

“A bank of a different color [from] banker’s gray” is what Winslow Environmental News calls this Boston-based eleven-office bank. Wainwright’s corporate offices (and main branch) are on Franklin Street in the downtown Financial District, and there is an office on Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay. There’s a branch in Coolidge Corner, four in Cambridge, and one each in Jamaica Plain, Newton, Somerville, and Watertown. And what branches! One features a cybercafé, another a fireplace and pink lounge chairs! Talk about ‘assisted banking’!

Building Green Spaces

The Coolidge Corner branch (and the new branch in Newton Centre) are among the few bank buildings nationwide that qualify as certified ‘green spaces’ by the U.S. Green Building Council. Spiffy and bright as the 301 Harvard St. branch is, it was - amazingly – built with cornstalks, bamboo, and recycled and sustainable building materials, solar-powered lighting, and low energy/low water usage fixtures. Yet Wainwright Bank, institutionally speaking, is neither fluke nor freak. SustainableBusiness.com, the web site from the publishers of The Progressive Investor, selected Wainwright as one of the World’s Top 20 Sustainable Stocks (NASDAQ:WAIN). In fact, the bank handles a half million transactions a month, and is well-capitalized with $67 million of equity.

A Commitment to Social Justice

The bank was founded in 1987 by two young idealist entrepreneurs, John Plukas and Bob Glassman, who actually thought they could combine making money with backing worthy causes. “Our fellow bankers worked by the 3-6-3 principle,” said Glassman wryly in the bank’s art-filled offices on Franklin Street. “Pay 3% on deposits, lend out at 6%, and be on the first tee at the gold course by 3 PM. But I didn’t play golf, so I invested those hours into being a social activist.” Glassman’s keen sense of activism was forged during his service in Vietnam, after which the anti-war movement got him thinking seriously about progressive causes. Glassman, who builds stone walls as a hobby, said that becoming an entrepreneur left him in a position to assert his own value system. “My life and business converge around a single theme of social justice. I admire Kip Tiernan of Rosie’s Place, now a client, and I avidly read the work of Howard Zinn. I take personal pride in the fact that the bank has pressed forward into areas of combating homelessness, creating affordable housing, championing environmental issues, and pursuing civil liberties for gays and other minorities.” Glassman’s committed efforts earned him the Civil Rights Corporate Leadership Award in 2004 from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, just forty years after passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Supporting Local Causes

Wainwright Bank puts its fresh spin on the old adage of “thinking globally and acting locally.” The bank’s patently unusual client list includes environmental organizations such as those celebrated during the bank sponsored Muddy River Environmental Film Series at Coolidge Corner Cinema: Silent Spring Institute, Trust For Public Land, Earthwatch Institute, and Union of Concerned Scientists. As for underwriting socially responsible organizations, the bank has given large sums to food banks, homeless shelters, and HIV/AIDS research. In August, the bank was one of the only 53 banks nationally to be awarded a Bank Enterprise Award of $420,000 from the U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund in recognition of Wainwright’s 2005 lending activities in distressed communities, and for providing $7 million in financial assistance to the Boston Community Loan Fund.

The Progressive Wing Takes Flight

The bank’s recent customer appreciation event at the Copley Fairmont Hotel manifested less of your typical financial institution number-crunching and breast-beating than hearty glad-handing and speaking out in pride for worthy social causes. Co-chairman Bob Glassman’s whimsical, witty address included impressive statistics and disarming history. “My Co-chairman John Plukas and I met 35 years ago when another president from Texas was waging an equally unpopular war…12,000 banks were offering the same products when we opened our doors in 1987…today far fewer stand.” For all its whimsy, Glassman’s message struck home. “We are the progressive wing of the banking industry. In an industry with undifferentiated products, fungible services, and commodity prices, we have a distinctive brand. In our mature markets, most [banks] come and go, leaving neither footprints nor fingerprints. In the last 18 years, much has changed, but not our commitment to remain independent and maintain our progressive voice. Our Mission Statement in its unique duality balances a value system rooted in social justice with a successful economic model.” That model, Glassman continued, was the basis for a Harvard Business School case study and a subject for the newly published Megatrends 2010. (The 1990 edition, Megatrends 2000, sold 14 million copies and made the NY Times’ bestseller list.). The evening’s capper was Glassman’s presentation of the bank’s 17th Annual Social Justice Award to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and its Executive Director, Carol Rose.

A Web Forum for Non-Profits

Wainwright Bank’s senior vice-president, Steve Young, helped create the bank’s unique CommunityRoom.net, an on-line entity that gives 200 of the bank’s nearly 500 non-profit clients a free web site to display their good works, manifest their latest projects, and accept online credit card donations. (The bank’s own web site is bright, cheerful, and exceptionally easy to navigate.)

“I was a banker for 13 years at Shawmut,” recalls Young. “In 1992, a Wainwright vice-president told me they were starting up a retail division and were looking for someone to help them out…After Bob and John interviewed me, they cancelled their afternoon interviews, sat with me for three hours, and two days later offered me the job. I asked them why they hired me over [better qualified] applicants. They said because I answered their questions very directly, with no hedging. When they asked me how to raise $12 million in IRA deposits, I said do this and this. Other applicants said, ‘We need more data.’”

The Best Job in Banking

“This has to be the best job in banking,” continued Young, who moonlights as a keyboard player in a North Shore rock and blues band. “We’ve created a good business model that incorporates both profitability and social justice, so employees have the satisfaction of knowing we’re doing more than just making money. The larger national banks are having a negative impact on smaller local banks, but we’re doing very well within out peer group because of the high profile of our social mission.”

Young’s comments would seem not to be pure sentiment, as The Boston Business Journal named the bank in it’s “Top 50 Best Places to Work 2004.” In fact, at Wainwright, a commitment to equal opportunity is not just lip service. With the national glass ceiling for women and minorities in executive positions hovering below the 10% mark, nearly 50% of the bank’s directors and officers are minorities or women.

Experiencing the Real Deal Firsthand

What does a reporter have to do to convince his readers? Convince himself first. I went ahead and put my money where my words were: I opened an account at the spiffy new glass and steel Wainwright Bank at Coolidge Corner. (I did the initial paperwork on-line, and made my first deposit with branch manager Tatyana Melnik.) Then I had a word with business development officer Ken Jaffe. Ken’s been a local presence in banking and Rotary Club for longer than the 15 years I’ve lived in the ‘hood. “This bank doesn’t just throw money at social causes as a gimmick,” says Ken cannily. “Wainwright’s the real deal.”

Talking Turkey

This year, Jaffe chaired a Thanksgiving Tailgate Luncheon, jointly involving the Rotary Clubs and football boosters of Newton and Brookline, to raise money for athletic equipment for New Orleans students. “We live in a bubble here in Brookline and Newton, and must be made aware to meet the needs of those less fortunate. The bank encourages me to exercise liberal thinking and philanthropy; and gives me carte blanche to continue to make a difference. What’s more, the bank is never the focal point or ‘sell’; what matters is the effort of doing the right thing.”

Wainwright’s Clients Weigh In

Quotes were easy to come by at the bank’s annual customer appreciation event at the Copley Fairmont Hotel on November 1st. Happy clients from non-profit groups, dedicated to improving people’s lives, felt as if they were at that moment improving their own, as they toasted the occasion with Westport Rivers’ fine native Massachusetts bubbly, the 1996 Cuvée, bottled specially for the host hotel.

David Aposhian, director of Somerville Fair Housing, is expansive in his praise of the bank’s support. “Our affordable housing is near Union Square, Somerville, on the site of former car junkyards. Wainwright is a most amazing bank. They really do have a social conscience; they look at the ethics of every case. I’ve seen them turn down loans that make complete business sense because they don’t like the negative impact on the community or the reputation of the developer. We’re flattered that they handle our loans. They stuck by us through cleanups, political wrangling, and low sales projections, in part because hardly anyone complained about us at community meetings. It was a wonderful process from start to finish.”

Donna Welles of Parents Professional Advocacy Group, a statewide agency that supports families of children with mental health needs, claims, “Our toll-free hot line fields about 80% of calls regarding education. The school systems are always wary because they’re watching their purse – it’s all about money. But Wainwright Bank has been an amazing partner, helping us with a web presence, consultations, technology, and a very friendly, unique kind of banking environment.”

Willy Osborn of Commons Capital, a venture capital firm, is matter-of-factly impressed with the bank’s track record. “We bank with Wainwright because we believe in their distinctly pro-community values,” Osborn said.

Bruce Sylveseter, book editor and volunteer host on WMBR-FM (MIT radio), gives a broader overview of the bank’s policies, saying, “This is a wonderful example of enlightened capitalism, directing its energies both to making money and improving the world in which its clients operate.”

Fred Bouchard writes for Downbeat Magazine and Beverage Magazine; teaches at Berklee College of Music; and runs AGLIO, a wine/dine club. An active birdwatcher, Fred also serves on board of Friends of Halls Pond. Fred can be reached at fbouchard@juno.com. For more information about Fred visit www.fredbouchard.com.

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