Chime Spotlight: Chime In for Changemakers
At Chime, we strive to live our mission of unlocking financial progress for everyday people. While the products and services we’re building are helping to break down barriers and change the financial services industry for the better, there are still many systemic barriers to financial empowerment our customers and their communities face. That’s why we’re going beyond our products and services by further investing in the communities and people making a difference in people’s financial lives.
We say it all the time: when our members do better, we do better. And while that statement sure feels good, it’s actually at the core of the success of Chime: our business relies on our members working toward financial progress. By seeing their financial health improve, we’ll see Chime succeed.
This is why our community impact work is centered around empowering community leaders to facilitate positive change in their communities. “It’s by investing in community partners that we can reach more people and make a bigger impact,” explains Kira Traore, Senior Social Impact Manager at Chime. “We are here to be a resource and ally to help innovative organizations expand and amplify their work to be as impactful as possible.”
With this approach, we created the Chime In for Changemakers program. In building the program, we find community leaders and organizations working to transform the financial health of their communities through education and access, and we partner with them to help them reach their goals faster and with fewer roadblocks.
An important distinction about Chime In for Changemakers is that it’s not an accelerator program: “We don’t know everything — our communities and Changemakers know their challenges best,” says Kira. As a result, the program’s goals are to help break down barriers to growth and build up a community of support. So far, we’re providing structural growth with mentorship, funding, and guidance on marketing and reaching customers.
We sat down with Kira to learn more about the Chime In for Changemakers program, including its origin story, operational model, and how it’s showing up in the community this year. Read on to learn more!
The beginnings of Chime In for Changemakers
In early 2020, Chime sought opportunities to help local leaders support their communities as they weathered the immediate negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. So we launched the earliest version of Chime In for Changemakers, a campaign whereby people could nominate local changemakers who were eligible for grant funding and opportunities to highlight their work.
When Kira joined Chime in 2022, she began to familiarize herself with Chime’s social impact work. “When I came across Chime In for Changemakers, it just struck me as a really ‘Chime’ program — its focus was on amplifying and expanding community leaders’ work, rather than pushing top down,” she says. “It’s community members who know what their communities need best, and this program is about listening to their voices and removing roadblocks where we can.”
So she decided to work with her team and, of course, Chime community members, to bring the program back to life.
Going beyond our products with an investment in the community
At Chime, our mission and members are always top of mind. By going beyond our products, we’re doubling down on investing in our members’ financial progress — and making a meaningful investment in their communities. Chime In for Changemakers is one way we’re doing that, and it allows us to focus on entrepreneurship and education as critical pathways to financial empowerment. Through the Changemakers program, we hope to help accelerate their work and help them reach even more people for deeper change.
When it comes to finding Changemakers, we look to partner with organizations with the networks, the knowledge, and the local connections to find community-embedded, innovative Changemakers to support. We invite those partners, as well as Chime employees and past Changemakers, to nominate organizations to be selected for the program. Organizations are then asked to complete applications where they outline their goals, challenges, and how their work aligns with our mission at Chime. We evaluate the applications against transparent criteria and, from there, select our Changemakers.
When measuring the program’s success, the team will look to whether we’ve helped the organizations achieve their goals. Chime In for Changemakers is a bespoke program in that there isn’t one overarching goal for each Changemaker to reach — every Changemaker has specific challenges, and our measure of success is whether we help unblock challenges and accelerate goals. We are successful if our Changemakers feel that they have been able to accomplish more, faster, by being part of the program.
Meet our 2023 Changemakers
This year, we selected eight Changemakers focusing on small businesses, entrepreneurship, and education. We’ve renewed our community purpose to embolden and enable people to pursue their financial ambitions, and our 2023 Changemakers are opening pathways to financial growth and achievement for our members’ communities.
The Changemakers work with Chime and each other to support, share resources, and make connections to further their work. They also receive mentorship from Chime employees on topics such as building teams, reducing marketing spend, or running performance reviews. Chime is here to be of service to our Changemakers, so we are proud to see the many ways in which they’re leveraging Chimers’ individual expertise to further their businesses.
To celebrate this year’s Changemakers, we recently hosted an event in partnership with 2023 Changemaker, My Block My Hood My City, in Chicago that focused on bringing mentorship and lessons on and off the court through basketball and financial education. The Changemakers participated, with each Changemaker sharing their advice around topics like investment basics, monetizing your creativity, and tech upskilling.
They were also invited to Chime’s office for a fireside chat with Jason Mayden, previously the Senior Global Design Director for Jordan at Nike, and workshops on strengths and challenges their businesses face. “We really spent time to identify where they can help each other and where Chimers might be able to offer some support, too,” says Kira.
The importance of listening
As Chime has grown, we’ve discovered new ways to impact the communities where our members are — and we’ve expanded our programs to do just that. “The way I see it, we’re growing and iterating to build something impactful and unique in the white space where community organizations aren’t getting what they need from other corporate partners,” Kira explains. “When we first sat down with our Changemakers, we learned that the standard webinars and talks weren’t moving the needle for them. These Changemakers are leaders who don’t need corporations to talk at them — they need us to collaborate with them.”
So we’re doubling down on the areas we can make an impact and staying nimble as things change. At Chime, we focus on impact — if a program isn’t creating change, we put our resources towards something else.
“So far, we’ve received great feedback from our Changemakers,” Kira says. “As we continue to grow the Chime In for Changemakers program, it’s critical that we remember that it’s our Changemakers who are the experts in what they need, not us — we’re just here as a resource and to amplify their voices, and that’s what we plan to do.”
