This Bank Helped the Community By Redefining Profit

Text, Twin Cities PBS Originals. A man walks across snow and rounds a corner to a sidewalk into town.

(SPEECH)
I’ve been in the restaurant business my entire life. I begged my dad to start working here when I was like 13. My father and I run this place.

(DESCRIPTION)
Workers on a cherry picker renovate the side of a single story building as he walks past. He walks in through a door. Anthony Polski, Owner of Market Bar-B-Que.

(SPEECH)
We have the oldest family owned restaurant in Minneapolis, one of the oldest family run businesses in Minnesota. When I found out that they were going to tear down our old restaurant, I was panicking because I knew what that was going to mean. I knew how much work this was going to cause to recreate and the amount of funding that was going to be needed for this.

And we talked to several other banks and it just was not even close to the same experience that we had with Sunrise. Sunrise wasn’t a little bit different, they were a lot different. Nobody else understood this area, nobody else got what was going on in Northeast Minneapolis and knew why we wanted to be here so bad.

(DESCRIPTION)
He walks a woman around the interior under construction. They laugh. Hard hat workers mull about the space filled with piles of boards, workbenches, and equipment. Blueprints. He holds a material sample with hexagonal pattern.

(SPEECH)
Sunrise saw the diamond in the rough. They knew that there was potential and they knew how important it was to save my family’s history and heritage. And they have been an advocate and a partner in this entire process. I mean, they’ve gone above and beyond being a partner.

(DESCRIPTION)
A two-story stone and brick building with large windows. A sign inside a huge lobby reads, Sunrise Banks.

(SPEECH)
The history of Sunrise Banks really kind of follows my journey a little bit, if you will. I grew up in St Paul.

(DESCRIPTION)
A man types on a tablet in an office.

(SPEECH)
I’m a product of an Italian immigrant. Where the bank is down by the state capital in Frogtown, my immigrant Italian grandmother lived there. So I played stickball with the kids of that time and the immigrants of that time. And that’s how I grew up. And I was a teller one summer and I loved being a teller.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, David Reiling, CEO of Sunrise Banks.

(SPEECH)
I went to work with a bank in downtown Los Angeles, which immediately transferred me to South Central LA.

(DESCRIPTION)
Smiles in front of a vault with his father. Cutting red tape.

(SPEECH)
So I spent a number of years in the urban core of South Central LA which was really a great training ground quite frankly for coming back. Ended up moving back and buying a bank with my father down by the state capital in Frogtown, and developing that bank really based on how do we help the Hmong immigrant people.

(DESCRIPTION)
An article in City Business, The Business Journal, with the headline, University Bank boosts community lending. David Reiling is pictured.

(SPEECH)
We’re going to focus on the urban core. We’re going to make small business loans to have job creation in the urban core.

We want a healthy urban core that’s a great place to live, play, worship. We also have a niche in terms of affordable housing. And so workforce housing if you will, where people can walk to where they work it’s a part of the fabric of a design of a city and a good city.

(DESCRIPTION)
A girl plays guitar for a handicapped girl in a motorized wheelchair in a park. The girl later smiles inside at a gathering as a group of people laugh with her.

(SPEECH)
And lastly, we intersect with a lot of nonprofit organizations. We take care of really our most vulnerable. And there are places generally where banks can’t go, but we can work through those nonprofits to help and have that social safety net to impact our community.

Partnering

(DESCRIPTION)
Cars pass by on the road outside Newgate School. A welder lifts his mask. A group of employees gather in a garage. Sanding metal. Three men work on a car body. Welders, mechanics at work.

(SPEECH)
for us is developing a relationship. It’s a long term commitment, and we want a healthy relationships. We are looking to partner with social enterprises or enterprises that do good that really have an achievement mindset.

(DESCRIPTION)
Two boys follow a line on to a school bus. The back of their shirts read, Ask me about my hopes and dreams. A teacher points to a whiteboard. Students flip pages at their desks. Kids swinging at a park. Playing soccer.

(SPEECH)
The mindset really has to be around shared value that whoever we partner with whether it’s direct to the consumer or with a consumer with a nonprofit and the bank that there has to be a shared win amongst all.

(DESCRIPTION)
A child holds a ball in a stroller.

(SPEECH)
How do I do this and make a living but also have this impact on people, real people, and have that manifest itself in a great way?

So we’re pretty hard when it comes to metrics, we want to measure everything. So we can measure quantitative things very easily. How much money did you make, how many loans did you make. We also are going to do qualitative aspects. How do we feel the community is doing? Is it better, and can we measure that sentiment? So we really do measure what we treasure.

(DESCRIPTION)
Cars drive past a brick building on a snow-lined town street with a sign that reads, Sunrise Banks. Brick three and four story buildings line the block. A banner on a wall of glass panels inside with the text, Ranked Best Bank in the World for Positive Overall Social and Environmental Impact. B the Change.

(SPEECH)
The misconceptions around social enterprise and a public benefit corporation I would say first of all that you can’t be a bank and be a social enterprise or be a for profit organization and be a social enterprise. The corporate structure really doesn’t have anything to do with the impact that you produce and create.

(DESCRIPTION)
Various seating areas in a divided lounge. A Sunrise Banks sign on the wall in the distance. A hand takes a form and uses a chained pen to fill it out.

(SPEECH)
The vision, mission, and values of Sunrise are really to do well and to do good. Despite what I learned in business school, the fact is doing well and doing good I think is the way to do business.

(DESCRIPTION)
A woman in a denim shirt exchanges smiles as a bank teller greets her behind a glass barrier. A man with another teller.

(SPEECH)
It actually is integrated into what we do in terms of our day to day lives of making loans, and bringing deposits into low income communities, and really empowering people from a financial wellness standpoint. And that our mission actually multiplies our margin or our business. We then take that vision, mission, and values and embed them into our policies, our procedures, and our people. If you’re a business owner, being a social enterprise is probably the most rewarding thing that you can do. You are living your values every day.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, A TPT Partnerships Co-Production with Social Enterprise Alliance Twin Cities. Additional funding provided by Knight Foundation. Rewire. Copyright Twin Cities Public Television -2018. All rights reserved. Please subscribe. An arrow points to the right off-screen.