EVERETT – Maria Lerma is glad for Wiggums Hollow Park.
She takes her grandchildren there nearly every day, she says. On Sundays, her whole family comes after church, the 10-year Everett resident said in a mix of Spanish and English, escaping their hot apartments for the shade of the park’s tree and cool grass.
“Sundays, every family is here,” Lerma said. “It’s nice. It’s good.”
The Wiggums Park renewal project is one of the most rewarding things the EverTrust Foundation has ever worked on, said Margaret Bavasi, a member of the foundation’s board of directors.
“So many people came together on that,” she said. “It was perfect.”
The EverTrust Foundation was created in 1998 when Everett Mutual Bank converted into a publicly traded company.
Since then, it has given about $500,000 a year to charities and nonprofits, making it one of the top 20 corporate philanthropies in Western Washington and the largest in Snohomish County, according to one recent ranking.
The foundation will outlive the bank that spawned it. EverTrust Financial Group is to be acquired later this year by KeyCorp, which will pay $194.7 million for the Everett-based bank.
That’s a relief, said Bill Tsoukalas, executive director of the Boys &Girls Clubs of Snohomish County, which has received a lot from EverTrust over the years.
“That was the fear a lot of us had,” he said. “They’re keeping that pocket open, and that’s good for the community.”
EverTrust’s community involvement goes all the way back to the beginning, when it was formed as the Scandinavian-American Savings Association in 1916 with a mission to make homeownership possible for working people, Bavasi said.
“For all the evolutions that this bank has gone through, the kind of people who have been here have been people who care about Snohomish County and want to do something to help it,” she said.
“It was just part of our social and civic responsibility to fund some needs in the community,” said Tom Gaffney, a board member for both the bank and foundation. “We had an opportunity. We had the ability. We had a social need to do something.”
That effort took on its present form during the bank’s conversion in 1998. The plan for the initial stock offering called for setting aside roughly $8 million worth of stock to endow the foundation. That endowment has grown to more than $10 million since then.
The foundation has given a lot of money for parks, play fields and youth programs. The Wiggums Park project was the largest of these – EverTrust gave $100,000 – but the foundation also has given as much as $75,000 each to support development of baseball fields in Arlington, Everett and Marysville.
The foundation also has contributed $150,000 to Boys &Girls Clubs in Snohomish County.
“They’ve stepped up every time we’ve asked them,” Tsoukalas said. “They look to do stuff for kids. We obviously do stuff for kids.”
It’s part of a larger focus on youth, Gaffney said. “We’ve thought, and still think, that’s an important part of our community.”
However, in 2003, the foundation began funneling more of its money to agencies that provide basic necessities – food banks, housing programs and low-income health care providers.
That was a direct response to economic problems that were creating more demand for human services at a time when fewer philanthropies could afford to give, said Mary Sievers, the foundation’s executive director.
“The resources aren’t there to meet those needs,” she said. “They were turning away people. There were so many homeless people. They were turning away seniors and families at the food banks.”
That’s one benefit of having a locally based philanthropy, Tsoukalas said. The individuals involved with the foundation and the bank are all connected and involved in the community.
“They don’t operate in a vacuum,” he said. “They have a real sense of what’s critical, what’s important.”
The merger will mean a few minor changes for the foundation.
As EverTrust Bank expanded its operations into King County in recent years, the foundation had followed, making a few grants to organizations such as King County Habitat for Humanity.
Now, with the merger, the foundation plans to pull back to focus on Snohomish County agencies, Bavasi said.
Otherwise, the foundation “just continues to operate as it always has,” Gaffney said.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
