Frontier Bank Celebrates International Children’s Book Day
What started as a simple promotion at Frontier Bank has turned into a way for the bank to really connect with its communities. To celebrate International Children’s Book Day in April, Frontier Bank set up displays in each of it branches, asking customers to donate books for local organizations. For each book that was donated, Frontier Bank would match that donation. The local elementary school in Rock Rapids provided a wish list of books for people to buy from.
International Children’s Book Day is celebrated on or around Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday in April to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books. The staff at Frontier Bank thought that it offered a great opportunity to get involved in the local schools.
“The project came about as a way for our customer service representatives to interact with customers,” said Linda Soyland, Marketing Officer for Frontier Bank. “We were looking at a list of odd holidays and this one struck us as a great way to bring our small communities together.”
Each month, the bank has a different lobby promotion in which the customer service representatives work to keep conversations going with customers. This promotion was something that they liked to talk about; reading and books.
Over 100 books were donated by Frontier Bank customers, which the bank then matched resulting in over 200 books to be given to local charities. Central Lyon Elementary School in Rock Rapids received 80 books, 43 of which were off of their wish list. The books donated to the Sioux Falls, SD branch were given to a local women’s and children’s shelter to add to the library or to be used as gifts.
As an added incentive, each time a customer donated books, they were entered in a drawing for a gift basket from the bank.
“We had a great reaction from the communities,” said Soyland. “They were very grateful, especially the school in Rock Rapids as they had a need for these books and we were able to provide them to the library.”
The hard work on the part of the bank staff paid off as the project won a Gold Award at the 2006 Best of Iowa Awards in the Community Development Division.
“We are excited to do the program again this spring,” Soyland said. “We took a year off but it was such a fun program that we are going to do it again. I think the libraries are also looking forward to the continuation of the project!”
The project enabled the bank to receive some local publicity as well as engage their customers in the community. By helping their customers help their communities, Frontier Bank established themselves as a true community bank.
Frontier Bank donated over 80 books to Central Lyon Elementary School. The bank matched all books donated by the community. Pictured are (back row, from left) Lisa Warntjes and Steve Sieperda from Frontier Bank; Nancy DeJongh, Central Lyon Elementary librarian, and (front row) Gable Sieperda, Andrea Korthals and Hannah Sieperda, Central Lyon students.
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