Let's say good morning to Aaron McCullum. He's community lead. That's, you know, there
were two words in radio. I can't say community and Saturday. Now, I could say I'm slowly,
but I've had to say him as a sentence. I can't say it. And everybody thinks, I don't
write to you. I could say anything. My entire career and radio. I can't say community
and Saturday in a sentence. And unfortunately, you've got one of those words in your title,
community lead for marine credit union. Thanks for coming in Aaron. I appreciate it.
Good morning, Don. Good thing we're not having this conversation on a Saturday, this community
conversation on a Saturday or to be in trouble, but it comes at community, community and
Saturday, Saturday. It can't. And just towards I can't say, I can say I'm slowly, just can't
say I'm fast. And I try to tend to speak fast. Anyway, so I got your community lead. If
I say it slowly, it's good. And community lead is what now? I always like to tell people
my job as a community lead is to serve, support and engage within our communities. That's
our members, our community at large, our internal communities, our teammates. I help serve,
support and engage and promote financial empowerment throughout our communities that we serve.
And you've got the temperament for you sound like, you know, friendly, nice, but you
sound friendly. Well, thank you so much. I like to be friendly. Yes. I come across as you
get over here. I got some to say to get over here now. That would be me. And I would
fail at that job in about nine seconds. I'd be replaced. Well, that's good. You have
a temperament for you. Like dealing with a community one on one. I love it. It's funny
because before I stepped into this role, I was doing community lead work, if you will,
for fun, with throughout my church, my wife and I lead a group that we call local world
impact and promoting community outreach, serving and getting out and engaging within the
community. So funny how that comes. That was in 2020. And now 2024 came along. We created
the community engagement department. And I'm one of three community leads in my role.
I like the job. I love it. Yeah. I've been with Marine Credit Union since I was an intern
in 2017. Well, good for you. It was good to have a job you like. Absolutely. And it's funny
because throughout my internship, I got a chance to, at the end, I was throughout the whole
summer, I was doing credit coaching and understanding what it takes to build credit and help people
do debt consolidations or buy vehicles or get a boat. There are all these fun things. But
at the very end, I had to give a presentation to our leadership team. If you were the boss,
what would you do or bring to the organization? And I talked about then having community
ambassadors, people to every community that we serve, getting out there and understanding
the needs, the unique needs, the pulse of the community, and then ultimately serving
and supporting in various ways. And so long story short, eight years later, we created
the role. So they said, this is a job. You deal with the community, but you're not touching
any of the money. Keep that in mind. Hands off the money, but you can work with the community.
Something like that. Yeah, I don't do cash transactions at community events, guys. I'm
here to support and power you. Not to handle your money. We have to have the money.
Yeah. So we have an awesome team that's there to help you chart your course wherever
you're at. We're getting less and less into money. Even the parking meters, the mayor's
coming in. I think tomorrow, the mayor is going to be in. No, Thursday is going to be
in here. I got to talk about this thing. My wife told me all the parking meters are going
to go on. Now, this is just what she heard. You have to go on the app to park. Now, they
do that at Festival Hall. You have to be on an app to park the car with a credit card
and everything. And everybody's getting rid of cash. No more pennies. I mean, you give
somebody a dollar bill. They look at you like you gave him a piece of monopoly money.
What is this? We'll be dealing 20s and 50s here. Anyway, it's getting like that. All right.
Talk about the 31 days of giving. And I was smart enough to know this takes place in
May because April only has 30 days. June only has 30 days, but May's got 31. Yes. Yes.
31 days of giving is one of my favorite community initiatives that we do throughout
the year. This is our fourth annual May outreach of promoting food insecurity and helping
combat that through a non perishable food drive. So every financial empowerment center,
every office that we're at, we have 17 offices throughout the state of Wisconsin and Iowa.
We're collecting non perishable foods and collaborating with local nonprofits. And not
only raising awareness of their initiatives and helping combat food insecurity, but
also serving and helping be boots on the ground. You know, that, you know, people who
have food in their refrigerators can't imagine ever being hungry because you were hungry.
Would you consider hungry at night? Oh, what can I eat in the fridge now? You're not hungry.
You're just want to snack. There's a difference of being hungry and snacking. And there
are people. These families are hungry. Yeah. I mean, they don't have any, they don't
have any food for dinner. They make, you know, whatever they can just, you know, survive.
Absolutely. You and I probably don't know what it's like to be hungry. Well, I do. I,
this is why this is my, one of my favorite initiatives that we do. I grew up, one of my
earliest memories was going to a food pantry, a Saturday morning. Absolutely. That's
probably four or five years old. My mom would say, Hey, this is our grocery shopping,
right? And this was at a place that you would just go pick up a bag, right? You didn't
get a chance to have that experience and actually pick out what you want. You got almost
like a mystery bag of canned goods or maybe some snacks and stuff. And she would always
say, Hey, if we're going to take from this food pantry, we're going to give and we're
going to get out. We don't have money to give, but we are going to serve, we're going
to serve meals. We're going to get out and volunteer. And that's what we did. So that's
why community service, community outreach has always been ingrained into me is because
I lived it as a foster parent. You know, I've heard stories of, you know, starvation and
having to remind myself, always growing up, it was, Hey, are you hungry? Are you starving?
You're not, you're hungry. You're not starving. You know, there's a difference. And, you
know, that's why we do it in May is because a lot of studies show that kids, a lot of kids
get their resources, their food at school. And when school is out for the summer, they
may not have access to food. So how do, how do people donate other than being, you know,
is there a list of places to bring food by? Absolutely. You can come by any of our financial
empowerment centers, but I would also encourage you the listener to just do a quick Google
search, research, local food pantries in your community. You know, for instance, Salvation
Army, Halo Hospitality Center, Shalom Center, all here in the Racine Kenosha area, then
there's so many more. And see what they need. I know veterans outreach here in Racine
as well. They have a wonderful food pantry that will serve any veteran or spouse of a
veteran, no matter income, you know. And so find ways that you can not only support if
you can give some non-perishable foods, but also volunteer at such a rewarding feeling
to be able to shop with these, these guests who are coming to get food. And it's an experience.
You're making, you're breaking the stigma. You're having authentic conversations. It's
just so rewarding. And that's something that you can do with your kids. I do that with
my kids, with my local world impact group. We get out and we make sandwiches or making
meals and serving at the food pantries. It's so great. And you're right. There's a difference
between being hungry and starving. Absolutely. Hungry is, it's 10 o'clock. What's in the fridge?
That's maybe a little hungry. Starving is when I've got to have food or I'm going to pass out.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Now in the column, Community Lead for Marine Credit Union,
spending the hour with us, the half hour with us here this morning. Let's talk about another
event coming up charting the course for a bright summer. What's that all about?
Yeah. So summer is here and it's coming faster than we realize. And we're partnering with local
minor league baseball team, the Kenosha Kingfish, which we found out the previous name was Kenosha
Croakers. The Croakers. Yes. You could forget. You thought it was some, the Kenosha frogs. You were
close, close, close. And, and yes, so we have a variety of different partnerships coming up with
them. I'm super excited to share about one is called the Community Connections. And this is,
it's near and dear to my heart because every home game we're spotlighting a different non-profit.
And it's more or less like a 50-50 raffle to have fun engagement with the fans.
The winner, one winner will get half of the proceeds and the other winner, the other half will
go straight to the non-profit. So each home game, 36 home games will be highlighting a different
local non-profit. And then coming up on June 1st, it's a Monday morning. We're having a financial
literacy fun day here at the at the ballpark. All ages are welcome. We do have a number of schools
from K through 12 come in maybe some college students as well. And we're just promoting financial
empowerment and engaging activities throughout the game. Bring your grandkids, bring your kids,
have some fun. It's a fun way to start the week here. That is Monday, June 1st. And then also
throughout the summer, every home game, every time the kingfish steal a base, $20 will go into a
little pot. At the end of the season, we will be giving half of that pot to a local non-profit
and half of the other pot to the Marine Credit Union Foundation. And so super excited for this
partnership and collaboration with the kingfish. It's going to be a great summer. And if you want
to come catch a game, another little perk that we have to free to utilize, member or not, is
you can get a discounted ticket Sunday through Thursday games by going on their website and using
the promo code MCU26. So if you want to take the family for a fun night out, catch a game,
have a great time, make some fun summer memories, visit their website, check out their schedule,
they have a lot of fun promotions as well outside of the financial literacy day. And yeah, use
a promo code MCU26. They're right there in Sheridan Road. Yes. That's a nice ballpark. Historic
Simmons field. Yes. Nice, nice place. Youth financial education. Let's talk about the kids. They
got to learn how to, you know, I always said they have all these courses in school. But when I went
to school, there was never a course on how to handle money. Yeah. Thanks to act 60, which is a recent
act that promotes and makes it actually a requirement in high schools before students graduate,
they have to take a semester of financial literacy or personal finance classes. And that's been a
huge benefit, but even planting the seeds before that, I always like to tell everyone that it's
never too early to get your kids involved in understanding money and, you know, being financially
savvy. And so we partner with a lot of different awesome nonprofits, such as junior achievement,
who's going to be at the financial literacy day on June 1st, they work with schools and we are in
the schools promoting different hands-on learning and fun experiential learning. They have different
activities, little competitions in the high schools that get students thinking about stock market.
There's a stock market challenge. A J.A. Titan event is more or less the entrepreneurial mindset,
getting people, getting the students to think like business owners and they're competing against
each other to maximize profits. And all sorts of other fun activities, like a career day where they
hear from all sorts of different career speakers are going to Biz Town, which is in their Milwaukee
headquarters. It's a fun experiential learning atmosphere where two schools who've never met
each other come together and they have fun. There's like a dozen businesses and these students are
CEOs, all sorts of different positions and they do a town simulation. I always say it's the greatest
field trip any student can have. And so getting out in the schools is a big passion of ours as well
supporting one-on-one coaching with secure futures. They have an awesome nonprofit that promotes
financial savviness. A lot of these students get one-on-one coaching as well as group lessons
where juniors and seniors about to graduate start to think about life after high school,
whether that's joining the trades going to school. Playing records on the radio for a living.
Exactly. They get to identify different career paths, ask engaging questions. It's such a rewarding
experience that it's 11 weeks of a program that we support these students meeting their needs
and helping answer any questions they may have. One of the comedians we use on the air said,
he went to career day and he sat at the table with a surgeon, a doctor, a surgeon. It was almost
like they wanted to tell the kids, here's the difference, we're learning to read and not.
All right, let's talk about some upcoming opportunities. Yeah, just planting the seeds here.
If you want to mark your calendars last week, we had an awesome library workshop
talking about generation. Maybe a lot of work with the Racine Public Library. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Love our library, especially the Racine Public Library. And so planting the seeds in
June, we have a workshop on June 4th, understanding credit and building your financial foundation.
And so this is good for all ages. And then June 25th, how to set financial goals and achieve
them. So no matter where you're at in life, setting financial goals, how that relates to all areas of
wellness and then practical steps to achieve them. Both of those workshops are at from 4 pm to
6 pm. And we'll love to have you there. Free food, free resources, great conversation,
in a fun, safe, and judge-free environment. Which rock the block? Rock the block. Oh my goodness,
it's so fun. It's a lot of rock and it's in partnership actually with the Youth Volunteer Center
and the Volunteer Center of Racine. They put on, I believe this is their second
rendition of this. And it's a community restoration project. Essentially for one week,
students 11 through 18 are going out in the community, restoring the community, doing yardwork,
landscaping, painting, it's out in collaboration by the cop house on Mead Street in Racine. And so
we're proud supporters of that as well as a lot of other awesome organizations, but we'll be there
supporting and I'd just like to give them a little shout out in case you're listening and you
want to support your community. Reach out to the Volunteer Center of Racine. Maybe you know a youth,
maybe you personally want to give back to your community. And so reach out to them, see how you can
get involved either with rock the block or any of the other amazing initiatives that they do.
When can people find all this stuff? You can go to marinescu.com. We have a community impact page.
You could stay connected. You also, if you visit that website and community impact page,
you'll be able to see my face unfortunately. But you do have, you can reach out to me, reach out,
via email, give me a call, love to talk community. If you have any questions and ideas,
anything I can do to support, please reach out. You really like your job. I really do. Yeah,
you like it. Absolutely. If you are on Facebook, I do have a community lead Facebook. You can
type in marine credit union and Aaron McCullum. And I will be there. You can give me a follow-stay
connected, stay engaged, love to see you out in the community. Good for you. You're a nice,
cheerful person. Oh, thank you. And it's not even eight o'clock. And I had no coffee yet. So,
it's good. Yeah, I love what I do. In other words, it gets better later in the day. It does get
better. It only gets better. Thanks for coming in. I'll see you may June 4th, June 2nd.
June 2nd. Yes. Okay. Aaron McCullum, community lead from marine credit union.
