How We Won 3 Awards in 3 Months by Getting Involved with Our Community!

To say Apex was on fire in 2016 would be an understatement. We changed the lives of 2,000+ families in 2016 through sensible home financing, hit our 100^th employee milestone, had six of our loan originators rank among the best in the country, and were awarded five awards! Three of which, the last three, were presented to us in response to our involvement in the community! Those honors include Rockville Economic Development, Inc.’s Rockin in Rockville award, Large Business of the Year award presented by The Rockville Chamber of Commerce, and ranking in at number eight on the Washington Business Journal’s Corporate Philanthropy list.

So, how did we gain recognition for our involvement?

1. We built nonprofit partnerships with organizations that resonated with our company.

We not only started working with organizations that had similar themes of increasing homeownership in our communities, like the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, but we also invited our team members to suggest organizations and causes they felt deeply about. That’s how we got involved with Women Who Cares Ministries and started creating weekend snack packs for children in need.

2. We created a community involvement plan that worked for us!

We created our Apex in Action program to provide our team with the resources they needed to make an impact in causes they believe in. From the beginning, our plan was to extend our team members involvement in the community by finding out what they're already passionate about. We surveyed (and continue to survey) the team to see how we can help and encourage company-wide involvement.

3. We joined a corporate volunteerism organization and relied on their resources.

We learned a lot from our membership with the Corporate Volunteer Council of Montgomery County. They provided countless of resources (like the surveys we used to get our team involved) and actual volunteer opportunities.

4. Giving back became part of our culture.

We centered our plan around our people, and thus giving back became a part of our identity as a company. Outside of providing excellent service and sensible home financing advice, we pride ourselves on being known as the company that does it all in our community. A big thing that changed for us once we realized this was part of who we were, was we started to look and ultimately started to attract talented people who valued similar things.

5. We put in 2,350 hours of community service work in 2016!

How did we actually get recognized for the work? We did the work, and we tracked it! We had 69 team members contribute towards our goal, and because it became part of who we are as a company, our Apex in Action plan thrived and awareness of our engagement grew. In 2016, we realized we could make a greater impact in our community by getting our customers and business partners involved as well. We started sending out eblasts and creating engagement lines in our signatures to highlight ways other can get involved. This provided a huge spike in engagement of our campaigns and overall awareness for all we were doing in the community.

WEBINAR: How to Get Involved in Your Community, and Maybe Win Awards, Too

Are you interested in getting you or your company more involved in the community, and maybe earning an award or two of your own? Join us on February 8^th as we share even more of our secrets and provide some actionable items to get you started on your journey. Click below to register for the webinar!