PAUL WOOLWAY:  Today is called the Community Impact Challenge, and it’s all about ways that we Schwabbies here at Charles Schwab can give back to our community. So we’re partnering with a number of different nonprofit organizations to provide our skills to give back to our communities. 

ELIZABETH O’LOUGHLIN:  Today we’re working with St. Philip’s. They are a community center, a school, and a community development organization. 

RAHIEL ALEMU:  St. Philip’s is an organization that’s been around for 75 years, and while their mission has evolved, their messaging and their communication hasn’t. So our team of volunteers are going to help them improve and define their communication strategy. 

JULIE SAQUETON:  I’ve been really impressed with Charles Schwab. They’ve only been in the area for a couple of years, but they came in listening. They came in really wanting to understand from organizations like ours, what are the challenges and how can we help you solve them? And I just think that approach is really going to have a big impact. 

We’re at the Forest Studio. This location used to be two former liquor stores, and we were able to buy it out of a foreclosure auction, and super excited to transform this. The community is really looking for small business opportunities and places where entrepreneurs can develop. And so the Forest Studio is an entrepreneur incubator for craftsmen. We don’t just go out and start building or renovating, but we do it with a strategy that comes from what neighborhood residents tell us. 

KELLEE MURRELL:  I believe that skills-based volunteering, especially through Charles Schwab, helps in providing our team the resources, the direction that they need in order to better serve the people we work with. So it’s not in a sense that someone from outside is coming in, changing the community, but it’s making those people within the community better to change where they currently live and where they currently serve. And the key thing about St. Phillips and what we focus on is that we believe that growth happens, transformation happens through education, through service, and through partnerships. 

KARL HEGWER:  We are at the House of Parts in sunny South Dallas. I’ve been owner-operator of this place since my dad passed in 2005. It’s been in our family since 1973. It’s raised my family, my two daughters, put them through school, paid for my house. 

Well, St. Phillips has been a great partner with me. They’ve been in this community for a long time. They came in and bought all these buildings and redid the fronts, which was very nice. It was very dilapidated and it’s a beautiful front now. And it’s going all the way down the block, and I hope it continues. 

They’ve demolished old houses and returned other buildings that are more useful to the community. 

St. Philip’s has helped everybody in the community in one way or the other. We’re very connected. This whole community is very connected by them now. 

JULIE:  We are really good at doing, but we’re not really great at telling about what we do. And I think that the extensive skillset that Charles Schwab has is enabling us to get better at really communicating the impact that we have at St. Philip’s. 

I got more specific outcome than I expected to. I thought we would come out of it with a strategy, but we’re actually coming out of it with like hands-on, actual work that we can go and deploy right away in our organization. 

ANDREA GLISPIE:  We are uniquely positioned to support what St. Phillips is doing because we support their vision. We’re willing to roll up our sleeves also and work alongside them. 

We’re nimble, we’re flexible, we’re responsive, and we’re prepared to build this partnership, not just today, but long into the future.