Bank of the West 2007 Annual Report Download - page 19

“With us being in the community 32 years and Bank of the West being
a major player here, we feel like we make a good team with our bank”
Jack Donovan, President, Portland Winter Hawks
aimed at helping Oregon schools and parents better
connect to help children succeed in school. Bank of the
West also sponsors the Portland Winter Hawks and
through its affiliation with the Oregon Sports Authority
helps channel ice hockey tickets to families and civic
groups in the Portland area.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the bank provided
$250,000 in a matching grant to the Santa Clara YMCA
to subsidize lower-income youth attendance at environ-
mental camp, and $30,000 for the Chicana/Latina
Foundation, a community-based group that funds
college scholarships for Latinas. The bank also
participated in a new program with the San Francisco
Federal Reserve Bank, the City and County of San
Francisco and other banks to provide banking services
to the city’s “unbanked.”
Bank of the West presented a $136,000 check represent-
ing money raised from the 2007 Junior Achievement
Bowl-a-Thon in Southern California to support the organi-
zation’s financial literacy activities for school age children.
Natural disasters drew Bank of the West contributions
for relief and recovery efforts in several communities:
tornado-stricken Greensburg, Kansas, in May; In California,
South Lake Tahoe, which suffered a forest fire in June, and
San Diego, which endured massive wildfires in October;
and southeast Minnesota, which suffered flooding in
October. In addition to charitable contributions,
investments, public affairs programs and specialized
lending, Bank of the West supports community
celebrations and sporting events, as well as collegiate
athletics at UCLA and UC-Berkeley, San Jose State
University and the universities of Nebraska, New Mexico,
South Dakota, and Wyoming.
The bank sponsored the Bank of the West Classic
women’s professional tennis tournament at Stanford
University for the 16th year, and for the first time
joined with corporate parent and overall sponsor BNP
Paribas to host the 2007 Davis Cup Final in Portland,
Oregon, in November.
Bank of the West is primary sponsor of Wyoming’s
Cheyenne Frontier Days, the world’s largest outdoor
rodeo; Bank of the West Celebrates America, a pre-July
4th free community concert and fireworks display
in Omaha, and Yankee Doodle Pops, a free concert
in Des Moines.
Chinese New Year parades in San Francisco and San
Gabriel, California attracted Bank of the West floats to
welcome the Lunar New Year.
The bank also sponsors two of the nation’s largest
outdoor art festivals, in Cherry Creek, Colorado and
Sausalito, California.
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