Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Easy
At Ally Ring, we are committed to practicing what we preach and living in alignment with our mission. So, when we received our 501
(c)(3) non-profit status approval from the IRS and it was time to open our official bank accounts, we wanted to find a Black-owned bank to do business with. Simple, right? Well…not exactly. It turns out this was a very good example of how we sometimes (often?) need to go pretty far out of our way and make an extra effort in order to do business in ways that are in really in alignment with our values…
We are based in the Bay Area of Northern California, and it turns out, as best as we could tell, there are no local Black-owned banks. Whaaaat? That seems weird…
Since we are doing 90+% of our banking on-line, the question became…Where is the next closest–and/or the best–Black-owned bank for us to do business with? We discovered One United Bank, the country’s largest Black-owned bank, with offices in L.A. and Boston and a very strong on-line presence. Perfect. So we reached out to them and they seemed great, but we discovered that to open our accounts that someone would need to go into one of their branch offices in person. Wow! That’s a trek for us.
Next question… How committed are we to doing business with a Black-owned bank?
Answer? Very.
On Friday March 25th, I got up very early to catch a flight from Oakland to LAX in time to get to the L.A. branch of One United Bank for my 11:00 appointment. Drive to the airport, park, catch the flight, get a Lyft from LAX… easy, right? Well, not quite, but totally worth it for a few reasons:
- We do want to be an example of taking inspired action to create more unity and equality in the world and this was a great opportunity to do just that.
- The team at One United was really impressed with what we are up to at Ally Ring. They were genuinely surprised and impressed by the extra effort we made to do business with them. This felt like the beginning of a very good relationship.
- It was a long day, but you know what? When I got back to LAX, caught my flight, made it back to Oakland, retrieved my car and then was driving home, I felt really good about what we had done.
It was the right thing to do, and the extra effort was totally worth it.
It doesn’t have to be an all-day project like this, but what’s something you could do that is in alignment with YOUR values and would leave you with the feeling that it was the right thing to do and the extra effort was totally worth it? If you have a story of already having done something like this, please share it with us!