Neighborhood Grants
$2,500–$10,000
Three cycles a year for youth programs, food security, and neighborhood improvement projects in the five communities we serve. Members vote on the shortlist.
Community impact
Profit, returned to sender
A credit union's earnings belong to its members — so what isn't returned as rates comes back as grants, scholarships, classrooms, and hours. This page is our receipt. (A fictional one — this is a sample site — but every program here is how real credit unions do it.)
- $184,000
- in Neighborhood Grants awarded in 2025
- 2,150
- volunteer hours by staff on paid volunteer time
- 31
- school classrooms taught financial basics
- $96M
- lent to Greater Boston small businesses to date
2025 figures — fictional, for this demo.
Three ways the money goes home
First Generation Scholarship
$5,000 × 8 students
For first-generation college students graduating from a Suffolk, Norfolk, or Middlesex County high school. Renewable for a second year.
Storefront Starter
$1,000 + fee-free banking
A yearly boost for six brand-new brick-and-mortar businesses — awarded at our annual meeting by member vote.
Members shortlist and vote on every cycle — grant decisions are the annual meeting's liveliest twenty minutes. Nonprofits and schools in our five communities can apply at any branch.
Sixteen paid hours, on purpose
Every staff member gets 16 paid volunteer hours a year, and most use them all — coaching youth-league teams, staffing food pantries, and teaching our Money Basics curriculum: four plain-language sessions on budgeting, credit, borrowing, and scams, taught in 31 classrooms last year from Dorchester to Waltham.
The same sessions run free at our Dorchester classroom every month — members and non-members alike. The scam-awareness one fills up first; bring a parent.
The best way to fund all this? Bank here.
No donation asks, no galas. Ordinary deposits and loans, kept local, generate everything on this page — and better rates for you at the same time.
Become a member-owner