Building Relationships
Community Work Gets Top Priority
By Jay Gonzales
In the broadest terms, “community” means the people around you, generally within a certain geographic location.
Vantage West Credit Union sees community as much more.
As a member-owned and locally headquartered credit union, Vantage West views its role as a community partner as an integral part of its business strategy.
It’s why, for the first time in its 70-year history, Vantage West created an executive-level position for its community efforts.
In 2018, Vantage West’s longtime impact as a community partner earned the credit union a special designation from the U.S. Treasury as a Community Development Financial Institution – or CDFI – which opened the door to government resources that would allow it to provide more loans to its membership base, particularly in low-income communities.
“Becoming a CDFI introduced a renewed outlook on growth opportunities and provided a valuable framework for aligning our efforts with the evolving needs of the community,” said Jon Bruflat, who was named VP of community impact for Vantage West in 2023. “We started looking at all of what we had been doing and said we should narrow our focus to what truly drives economic growth in our community.
“The culmination of those two factors highlighted that we should probably have someone dedicated to this. Not only did we have resources that we didn’t have before, we had a new sense of strategy and purpose,” he said. “At the same time, organizations we wanted to partner with were reaching out to us, and we had to find a way to bring all of that together and make it work.”
With Bruflat as VP and a narrowed focus on its community work, Vantage West began taking a look at specifically where and how it was placing its resources in the community, said Rosanna Ramirez, who was named PR and market development manager in 2024.
“We were already doing the work,” Ramirez said of the donations, sponsorships and volunteerism Vantage West was putting into the community. “We just wanted to refine it, and it was looking at how we could be more intentional with the resources that we were going to be serving our community with.”
“For us, it really is building relationships and connections between the people in our community, with nonprofit organizations and local businesses, along with other credit unions in the area.”
One of those ways Vantage West is building relationships is to pay its employees 16 hours annually to do work in the community. Ramirez said it can be used for anything from an employee reading to a child’s class to doing work for a local charity. In 2024, it led to over 4,200 hours of service.
“When we say community, we say we’re serving our neighbors,” Ramirez said. “We’re serving people who we know, our peers and even our own team members within Vantage West.”
Jaime Hinojos leads a program that combines community impact with good business by promoting financial wellness for credit union members and the community at large. The program started in January 2024.
Hinojos said the organization’s leadership saw a need to provide members with financial coaching from a live person at a credit union branch instead of visiting a big-bank website and hoping for the best.
“We decided to do something different where you can meet with someone one-on-one at a branch or remotely by appointment,” Hinojos said. “Then, once you meet with that person one-on-one, we’ll create that road map for you to be able to achieve whatever financial goal that might be.”
With branches in Tucson and surrounding communities including Marana, Vail, Oro Valley, Tombstone, Casa Grande, Davis-Monthan, as well as three branches in the Phoenix area, Vantage West is taking its financial wellness services to members where they’re needed.
“Our coaches are trained to know the resources in their own communities so they can refer our members to those resources,” Hinojos said. “That’s another way we differentiate our approach.”
In the end, Bruflat said, it’s about caring. He calls the Vantage West strategy a “layered approach.”
“We are in the community and we care about the community,” he said. “That’s a genuine feeling that all of our staff have. We really do care.”
“We want to be more than just a donation or sponsorship. We want to be a community partner. A lot of times that means just starting a conversation and seeing where it takes us. We want to meet our communities where they are, and we want to be there for a long-term partnership.”
Pictured above from left – Jon Bruflat, VP, Community Impact, Vantage West Credit Union; Jaime Hinojos, Program Manager, Financial Wellness Vantage West Credit Union. Photo by Brent G. Mathis
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