ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Operation HOPE, Inc., the nation’s largest non-profit dedicated to financial empowerment for underserved communities, today announced that its Chairman, Founder and CEO John Hope Bryant joined Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf to host a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Wednesday to celebrate its newly redesigned Stone Mountain Memorial bank branch in Georgia featuring the milestone 200th HOPE Inside location.
The updated Stone Mountain Memorial branch, located in Metro Atlanta’s DeKalb County, includes an award-winning HOPE Inside center staffed by a full-time Operation HOPE financial coach, who will provide community members with no-cost financial education and guidance, such as helping them improve their credit scores or purchase a home. This is the first redesigned Wells Fargo branch in the U.S. to feature HOPE Inside and marks the beginning of the bank’s commitment to introduce HOPE Inside centers and coaches in 20 markets by the end of 2023. The plan, part of Wells Fargo’s Banking Inclusion Initiative, also includes redesigning 100 branches in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods across the nation.
“We are proud to be partnering with Wells Fargo to bring HOPE Inside to the Stone Mountain community. It is fitting that our milestone 200th HOPE Inside location has been unveiled in partnership with Wells Fargo, which has committed to help remove barriers to financial inclusion for unbanked and underserved communities,” said Mr. Bryant. “We look forward to continuing to expand our efforts to support low-income communities and communities of color in achieving financial empowerment, ultimately bringing our proven offerings and coaching skills to 1,000 locations across America in the next couple of years.”
The Stone Mountain Memorial branch kicks off this partnership located in one of the most diverse and fastest-growing counties in Georgia. The urgency for financial stability has grown with residents from DeKalb County and metro Atlanta facing rising inflation and greater economic challenges. According to the FDIC, about five percent of metro Atlanta area residents are unbanked, and the unbanked population is disproportionately Black, Hispanic and Native American.
Launched in March 1994, the HOPE Inside model serves clients including individuals, small business owners, disaster survivors and employees with personalized coaching and financial education to equip them with knowledge and tools to create a secure future. Programs and services are offered at no cost to the client and are administered across 200 locations, which serve additional satellite sites. HOPE Inside locations are situated inside leading bank branches to support individuals and small business owners, and inside corporations and municipal offices to serve as a resource and benefit to employees. Operation HOPE has partnered with global corporations including Delta Air Lines, UPS and Uber as well as leading global financial institutions including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Truist, US Bank, and Santander and regional banks including First Horizon, Regions and Fulton to deliver HOPE Inside programming and services for customers and employees.
As of the end of last year, HOPE Inside has served more than 4 million clients through offerings including credit and money management coaching, mortgage application assistance, entrepreneur and small business training, financial disaster preparation and recovery, and youth financial literacy programs. HOPE Inside has worked to increase social mobility and intergenerational wealth by assisting clients on their path to homeownership through helping them to secure more than $2 billion in mortgages. HOPE Inside has also helped clients increase credit scores by an average of 46 points, reduce debt by an average of $2,600 per client, and increase savings by an average of $300 per client in one year. In addition, HOPE Inside has assisted entrepreneurs and small business owners of color to secure significant funding for their enterprises.
Inspired by the model of the Freedman’s Bank, the post-Civil War savings bank created to support the financial futures of the formerly enslaved, HOPE Inside continues to address the financial needs of low-income communities and communities of color. Today, HOPE Inside operates in nearly all of the same states where the Freedman’s Bank operated in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, and it has accelerated its growth in the post-COVID and racial reckoning period spanning the last two years.
About Operation HOPE, Inc.
Since 1992, Operation HOPE has been moving America from civil rights to “silver rights” with the mission of making free enterprise and capitalism work for everyone—disrupting poverty for millions of low and moderate-income youth and adults across the nation. Through its community uplift model, HOPE Inside, which received the 2016 Innovator of the Year recognition by American Banker magazine, Operation HOPE has served more than 4 million individuals and directed more than $3.2 billion in economic activity into disenfranchised communities—turning check-cashing customers into banking customers, renters into homeowners, small business dreamers into small business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage consumers, and uncertain disaster victims into financially empowered disaster survivors. Operation HOPE recently received its eighth consecutive 4-star charity rating for fiscal management and commitment to transparency and accountability from the prestigious non-profit evaluator, Charity Navigator. For more information: OperationHOPE.org. Join the conversation on social media at @operationHOPE.
