Making Financial Services Accessible for the New York State Hispanic Community

CASE STUDY:
A Bilingual & Inclusive Communications Strategy for
NYS CDFI, Community Capital New York

"B Storytelling created Community Capital New York's new website. Despite challenges and delays, Julie and her team remained collaborative and patient with us. In the end, the team delivered a beautiful, state-of-the-art, bilingual, fully accessible website that showcases our organization, our programs, and our small business lending products."

– Kate Conlan, Community Capital New York Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Development

Introduction

Community Capital New York is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and nonprofit lender providing affordable capital to small businesses throughout the Hudson Valley and affordable housing developers across New York State. Their mission is to create pathways to social justice and wealth-building and build resilient neighborhoods, focusing on People of Color, women, veterans, people from rural areas, entrepreneurs with lower incomes, and affordable housing developers.

Our work as storytellers and brand builders has helped community banks, financial literacy organizations, CDFIs, and fintech companies shake up the finance industry- often seen as exclusive and mysterious- by making it more accessible and transparent. Our mission is to amplify the work of organizations committed to an equitable world. So, we knew collaborating with Community Capital New York was mission-aligned and that we had the team they needed to develop an inclusive Spanish/English brand strategy and custom-designed WordPress site.

The Opportunity for Community Capital New York

Community Capital New York knew they had a large Spanish-speaking customer base, but they weren't quite sure how to reach and retain this critical demographic. While bilingual staff members occasionally translated a flier or brochure here and there, the team knew they were missing out on numerous relationships and revenue by not proactively communicating with their customers in Spanish.

The organization knew it was time to invest in a unified Spanish brand strategy, a Spanish communications plans with original—i.e., not translated from English-- Spanish content, revamp their outdated website with fresh creative direction, and create a more customer-forward narrative.

Why Community Capital New York Chose B Storytelling

We're highly familiar with the financial inclusion space: for over a decade, we've had the pleasure of collaborating with financial nonprofits, CDFIs, and tech companies serving the consumers, neighborhoods, and communities cut out from wealth-building because of systemic racist banking practices like redlining.  

We root our work in social and economic justice, collaborating with our clients' internal and external stakeholders to build brands and communication strategies that center communities and actively shift culture. Additionally, we are incredibly comfortable with the internal compliance reviews required in the finance industry. We have developed systems to make the editing process as smooth, seamless, and efficient as possible for our clients.

And, we have talented, collaborative partners. Together with the hard work, strategic guidance and creative genius of fellow B Corps, Consciously, Mangrove, and Ahumada Agency, Adrienne Gil Consulting, and our talented Visual Design Lead, Mattia Olivotti, we created a compelling and complementary Spanish/English brand.

"For Community Capital New York, we developed a unique vocabulary that gave our client and their customers the sense of security that they were speaking the same language. It took the Hispanic Advisory Board, direct interviews with their customers, and a strong review process to get there. It was beautiful to see a brand with so many Spanish-speaking clients share their stories so openly. We're proud to have given Community Capital New York the tools to approach and retain a market they were missing."

 – Marcela Ahumada, CEO of Ahumada Agency & B Storytelling Spanish Brand Lead 

What We Accomplished

For us, equity is both a process and an outcome.

We're proud to have stewarded Community Capital New York through the following:

-   The creation and management of a paid Hispanic Advisory Board to ensure our bilingual communications aligned with the needs of a Spanish-speaking demographic from multiple countries with diverse financial demands

-   Spanish brand strategy process

-   Spanish/English product branding

-   Spanish SEO strategy

-   Unified Spanish language choices

-   Complete WordPress redesign in both English and Spanish

-   Discovery

-   Creative direction

-   Storytelling

-   Original Spanish website copywriting

-   Project management

-   CRM Solution

-   Lending platform recommendation & integration

-   Training videos

-   Creative team selection & management

-   Bilingual, SEO-driven organic content strategy

Additionally, we developed and executed several marketing campaigns to drive business growth, promoted new product suites, and built relationships through partner co-branding opportunities. We created and grew all five of their social media channels from scratch and a blog hub to share the stories wins, and learnings of their community and resources for customer success. We accomplished all of this on time with our project scope, even during a transition in executive management.

"B Storytelling created Community Capital New York's new website. Despite challenges and delays, Julie's team remained collaborative and patient with us. In the end, the team delivered a beautiful, state-of-the-art, bilingual, fully accessible website that showcases our organization, our programs, and our small business lending products."

– Kate Conlan, Community Capital New York Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Development

The Benefits

From a targeted, lead-generating new website to communication channels that enhance customer engagement and overall searchability, plus a Brand Guide with customizable creative assets, Community Capital New York now has a sophisticated, inclusive brand strategy to support the success of their business goals.

Your Turn

Ready to fuse your impact and culture goals with your business and bottom-line goals? We're here to make it happen.Get in touch – we can't wait to hear from you.

Inclusive Communications: Making Financial Services Transparent & Accessible

How More Inclusive Communications Builds Customer Buy-In, Reaches Untapped Markets, & Creates Positive Impact Across Your Community

For over a decade, we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with financial-inclusion focused organizations including community banks, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and fintech companies who are serving the consumers, neighborhoods and communities that need it most. 

For example, Spanish-speakers in the United States make up the fifth largest economy in the world on their own: so we support our clients through truly inclusive communications: original Spanish brand strategy, messaging, and copywriting. 

Why?

We treat social justice as a process and an outcome, rather than a theory or idea. Our human-centered approach to storytelling focuses on the communities most impacted by telling their stories, sharing their experiences, and communicating in their language preferences first. We have an inherently diverse, women-led team that includes people who are actually from the neighborhoods our clients are serving and speak the languages that their customers do, so that we’re never talking down to but rather being in conversation with. And while we love the convenience and ease of new technologies, we don’t use AI to write any of our content because: it generates a LOT of factually incorrect articles; it’s completely unregulated; and it’s inherently exclusionary.

Take a look at how we’ve helped these organizations shake up the financial industry—a space that’s often seen as exclusive and mysterious—by making it more accessible and transparent:

Spring Bank

Spring Bank is truly special: they’re the first bank to headquarter in the South Bronx in 25 years and were the first B Corp Bank in New York State. Spring Bank has been pursuing a double bottom line long before it was trendy by offering transparent, affordable banking products and services in NYC neighborhoods where the use of high-cost fringe financial products like check cashing and money transmitters is more the norm than the exception. 

We manage their top-to-bottom organic content strategy with a heavy production schedule: monthly storytelling blog posts inclusive of client and staff storytelling,  SEO “micro-blogs,” organic social, email, product branding and campaign development for new products like their unique E-Bike Loan NYC, plus support with any and all emergent communication needs (as we do for all clients). We also manage multi-location branded photo shoots of their staff and clients to support their storytelling and keep their community at the forefront of all their channels. 

Ariva

“Ariva is one of the best-kept secrets in NYC that everyone needs to know about. Whether you need help getting your finances in order, understanding how the U.S. financial system works, or need someone who is safe, trustworthy, empathetic, and really has your best interests in mind, Ariva is there for you. When you walk in their doors, you join their community.” – Julie Fahnestock, B Storytelling Founder & Creative Director

Ariva provides free tax preparation and financial counseling to help residents of New York City build financially-empowered and prosperous lives. We’ve helped them build and retain their community through inclusive communications in both English and Spanish across social media, text message, email, campaign planning and blogs. Not only that, but we completed a full website redesign in 2020, alongside a major campaign for the 2020 Census. Then we did it again (this time in Spanish) in 2022, while simultaneously making a huge push for both staff and volunteer recruitment during a moment of big expansion for them. 

We also developed a top-to-bottom digital volunteer training program for Ariva so that they could easily pivot from exclusively in-person tax prep services to remote and hybrid offerings at the height of the pandemic—which has since become their standard practice. 

Community Capital New York

“We developed an entirely unique vocabulary that gave both our client and our client’s customers the sense of security that they were literally speaking the same language. It took the Hispanic Advisory Board, direct interviews with their customers, and a strong review process to get there. It was beautiful to see a brand with so many Spanish-speaking clients actually share quality content for them to succeed. We’re proud to have given CCNY the tools to approach and retain a market they were missing.” – Marcela Ahumada, our partner for Spanish content creation

Community Capital New York is a nonprofit lender providing capital to small businesses throughout the Hudson Valley and affordable housing developers across New York State, creating pathways to social justice, wealth-building, and resilient neighborhoods, with a special focus on Black and Hispanic-owned businesses, women, veterans, people from rural areas, entrepreneurs with lower incomes, and nonprofit affordable housing developers.

We’re proud to have stewarded them through a complete English and Spanish rebrand, product branding, website redesign in both English and Spanish, inclusive of discovery, creative direction, project management, and CRM solution support and integration, as well as the creation and management of an Hispanic Advisory Board to ensure our bilingual communications aligned with the needs of a Spanish-speaking demographic from multiple countries with diverse financial demands. 

We additionally developed and executed on a bilingual, SEO-driven organic content strategy to drive business growth, as well as promoted new product suites and built relationships through partner co-branding opportunities. 

Qualitas of Life Foundation

We’re thrilled to announce our latest partnership in the finance space with Qualitas of Life Foundation! Qualitas of Life Foundation is a nonprofit that provides financial education to Hispanic families and entrepreneurs to improve financial security and standard of living. 

We’re looking forward to creating core brand Spanish and English messaging and key story anchors which drive toward and achieve their unique business and mission goals. This relationship is extra special because Qualitas of Life Foundation marks their 15th anniversary this year. 

Happy Mango

Happy Mango provides an online platform for banks, credit unions, & nonprofit organizations to help them serve the financial needs of individuals and small businesses who need it most—so that we all have a shot at a better financial future. Their front-to-back digitalization is a plug-and-play solution for a huge range of banking products and services, and they provide unique offerings like alternative credit reporting, employer and community partnerships, and financial coaching tips and tools. 

We supported Happy Mango’s entry into marketing with a light-touch brand assessment to determine their brand voice, personality, and primary call to action. Next, we developed an organic content strategy and campaign to repurpose all of their fantastic press coverage and help them build—and sustain—an online community across four major social media channels. We also created and maintained their editorial calendar and content management system so that they’d have a full library of images and messages to pull from and execute on.

Because we’re so familiar with the finance space, we’re extremely comfortable with the necessary internal compliance reviews required, and have developed systems to make the editing process as smooth, seamless, and efficient as possible for our clients. (We know you have enough to do building a more equitable world for all of us!)

But we’re most proud of how we work to develop and maintain brands that walk their talk. We root all of our work in social and economic justice, collaborating with our clients’ internal and external stakeholders to build brands and communication strategies that actively shift culture. 

B Storytelling is registered as one of Florida’s first Benefit Corporations so that our ethics and principles are literally built into the fabric and foundation of our organization.

We get it. And we’re willing to bet that if you’re here, you do, too. 

If you’re ready to fuse your impact and culture goals with your business and bottom-line goals, we’re here to make it happen. Get in touch – we can’t wait to hear from you.

Be Seen. Be Heard. Be You: Meridian Academy

“When I started asking around for creative agencies, I got a referral from a friend who said that B Storytelling was not only great, but they were creatives on a mission. It was clear from the start that they weren’t just going to do a great job because they’re good at this. Even from my first phone call with Julie, it was always, ‘We’re going to turn out the best product we can because we believe in your mission.’”

– Nathan Sokol-Margolis, Former Head of Middle School at Meridian Academy

Can you imagine liking middle school? ​​😱 Yeah, we couldn’t either – until we met the team at Meridian Academy. 

Meridian Academy is an independent private school for sixth through twelfth graders located just outside of Boston, an area well-known for its prestigious academic institutions. So while they’re in good company, they’ve also got some stiff competition for students. 

Unlike some of those other longer-standing institutions, we couldn’t help but fall in love with their mission and values – not to mention the incredible community, from faculty and staff to students and parents. Meridian is so unique because not only are they committed to a rigorous curriculum, they also care about equity and inclusion, creative learning and problem-solving, and fostering independence and accountability. We jumped at the chance to collaborate. 

Here’s what we did:

2021 Recruitment Campaign

We handled a top-to-bottom recruitment campaign for incoming sixth graders built around belonging called “Be Seen, Be Heard, Be You” with the call-to-action to “Become an involved citizen at Meridian Academy.” The first part included discovery, strategy, and concepting, during which we hosted stakeholder interviews across every part of their community (yup, students too) as well as two visioning workshops. Hearing from the community was essential to the creative process, and the photo shoot we produced was a tremendous experience for everyone involved. 

Phase two was all about execution: we developed key messages for both print and digital design to be distributed across their website and social channels, plus Boston subways, buses, and billboards. We’re still so hyped even just talking about it! There’s really nothing like seeing your work up in the sky larger-than-life, and we loved hearing that seeing our work out in the wild added an extra layer of school pride and satisfaction for both students and faculty alike. 

But…did they meet their recruitment goals? Yup, we knocked it out of the park. 🧢⚾

“Julie and her team got us. Boston is flooded with independent schools and their ads all look the same. B Storytelling created a way more dynamic campaign. It felt alive, real, and true to Meridian’s mission of being a lively community that works together.” – Nathan Sokol-Margolis

2022 Recruitment Campaign

Turns out, the Meridian community loved what we did so much that they wanted us to come back for more. This past year, we worked together to up the ante for both their print and digital assets – check it out:

Print: we created a brand new double billboard for a high-traffic area of Boston, plus 150 subway ads, 150 bus interior ads, and 150 bus exterior ads that were featured on major commuter lines throughout the city, alongside a QR code for all printed ads to support and track email and info session sign-ups. 

We also developed a banner to bolster their in-person efforts at farmers markets and other community events. 

Digital: Here’s where it gets extra juicy. That QR code goes right to a campaign-branded landing page for students and parents to sign up for information sessions and Meridian’s newsletter list. We also designed 10 digital cross-channel ads, as well as a sparkly new email template, since it’s one of Meridian’s most important and active channels. 

Did we handle the copywriting, imagery selection and key messaging for all of the above? Yes, yes we did. *brushes shoulder off*

“Educational institutions are realizing that if they want to stay around for the next 100+ years, they actually need to rethink their messaging and the way they present themselves. They don’t want to be all-white, all-wealthy institutions because, turns out, those institutions are not great.” – Nathan Sokol-Margolis

It brought us so much joy to bring Meridian Academy’s story to life—and to invite new people into their community. Our goal is to make your communications a strategic, creative, and fun process. 

Looking to build your brand in 2023? We’re here to tell the world how great you are. Get in touch!