GAME CHANGERS
Tee Brown
GMFS MORTGAGE
GMFS GIVES BACK WITH GREAT IMPACT With the mortgage industry doing well despite the COVID-19 pandemic, GMFS Mortgage is more committed than ever to its philanthropy work and making a positive impact on the local communities it serves. “We see a need, we see an opportunity, and we want to try to make a difference,” says GMFS Mortgage CEO Tee Brown. The residential mortgage lender was established in Baton Rouge in 1999. Today, GMFS is licensed in 12 states, including Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. The company began its philanthropy in a small and quiet way, allowing employees who paid $10 the opportunity to wear jeans to work on Fridays. The money collected was given to a family in need at Christmas. The company
now raises between $25,000 and $30,000 a year through that program, and employees can nominate families who need help during the holidays. Over the last 22 years, GMFS has continued to grow its philanthropy. The company’s first corporate partnership was with Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, after Brown witnessed for himself the devastating way cancer was affecting his employees. GMFS donates to Mary Bird Perkins for every loan they close in Louisiana, through event sponsorship, employee volunteerism, and GMFS employees benefit from the partnership through free onsite cancer screenings. GMFS customers receive a letter acknowledging their donation. At the start of the pandemic, Brown says he and his staff
7389 Florida Blvd., Baton Rouge, LA 70806
discussed how they should respond, to serve those who were hardest hit by the virus and by the stay-at-home orders enacted by the state of Louisiana. One result was a partnership with restauranteurs Stephen Hightower and Patrick Valluzzo, where GMFS paid local restaurants to provide lunch and dinner for the homeless at St. Vincent de Paul for two weeks. The arrangement provided much-needed business for the restaurants and took some of the stress away from the nonprofit to feed its homeless clients. Additionally, GMFS has teamed up with Christ’s Community Church in Denham Springs to respond to the natural disasters that have impacted our state, including the historic flooding of August 2016 and the more recent hurricanes that impacted southwest Louisiana. |
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Other partnerships include teaming up with Guaranty Foundation for the Banking on BR initiative, which benefitted the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank. The two organizations offered to match the community’s donations, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000 each, for a total match of up to $50,000. While they hoped to raise $100,000 for the Food Bank, the initiative actually raised $125,000, Brown says. Brown says he hopes to bring awareness to other business leaders that these types of opportunities are available. “We are not trying to gain media hype,” Brown says. “For us, it’s bigger than that. We need our community healthy. When there’s a problem, we feel like it’s our responsibility to participate in finding the solution.”
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