Ready to serve in a moment's notice

What if your financial consultant cancelled your meeting at the drop of a hat? Wouldn’t that just be the worst? Well Jack Blanchflower, a financial consultant serving 350 families in the Fort Worth, Texas area is that financial consultant—but his clients are here for it.

Jack started his career as an FC nearly four years ago, and he takes pride in the relationships he builds with his clients.

“I love getting to know my clients as people and being able to make an impact on their families,” he says. “That’s what drew me to this career—making an ongoing, material impact on peoples’ lives.”

However, even that doesn’t stop him from leaving on a moment’s notice for a week or even two at a time, causing him to reschedule standing appointments with almost no warning. 

You see, Jack is a volunteer for Team Rubicon¹, a veteran-led humanitarian organization, built to serve communities when disaster strikes. And that’s the thing about disasters, you just can’t predict when they are going to happen, so people like Jack have to be ready to mobilize.

Last September, Jack left for Live Oak, Florida after Hurricane Idalia devasted parts of the Southeastern United States, especially North Florida. He spent seven days chain-sawing fallen trees that were blocking roads, and then knocking on doors meeting community members to find out what they needed and connecting them with available resources. 

Jack specifically remembers meeting one dad and his two young daughters. A tree had fallen through their mobile home, which let rain inside, leading to mold. Their situation tugged on Jack’s heart, who was thinking of his own little girl back in Texas.

“That one really hit me. I wanted to do right by them,” says Jack.

Team Rubicon was able to help remove some of the mold and put a tarp in place as a temporary solution. It was a step in the right direction, but hardly enough. Jack always wishes he could stay longer and do more.

While there’s always more to do, Jack is thankful for the support he gets. 

His wife holds down the fort at home, taking care of that little girl of his. In the office, he credits his branch manager and assistant branch manager for giving him the flexibility to make it happen and supporting his clients while he’s away. And he says he was surprised that every family he works with was so supportive and understanding, because he knows that they have personal, pressing matters too. But he’s thankful to be surrounded by such an understanding community.

And Jack has been working on bringing Team Rubicon closer to his community with projects nearer to home. Recently, he and other Team Rubicon volunteers helped rebuild a wheelchair ramp at the home of a resident in south Dallas, and he’s organizing a joint volunteer event with the employees of his branch and Team Rubicon as part of Schwab volunteer week, Schwab’s annual week of service.

In the future, Jack sees an opportunity to leverage Schwab’s nationwide branch network and the firm’s commitment to volunteerism as a way to quickly mobilize when disasters strike across the country. And hey, if it works out the way he envisions, who knows, maybe he won’t have to drop everything when disaster strikes? And he’ll be able to have a nice, normal, predictable schedule like most financial consultants.