Page 28 - BusinessWest February 19, 2024

“Our philosophy is to give a little to
a lot of groups, and not a lot to a few groups. That’s because almost every nonprofit is worthwhile and doing”good work.
Matt Bannister, seen here at the PeoplesBank booth at Junior Achievement’s Teen Reality Fair last year in Chicopee, has become actively involved in the community.
a verbal exclamation mark. “You can say that he manages the pocketbook and he helps us disperse funds in the right ways, but when you see that expense report and you see that mileage — that’s not giving out money as much as it is participating and being part of the community.
“He goes well above and beyond what we ask him to do to represent PeoplesBank,” Senecal went on, adding that this involvement, this commitment to backing up the checks the bank writes with his work on boards and mowing lawns for Revitalize CDC, explains why he’s been chosen as a Difference Maker for 2024.
By All Accounts
Bannister loves to tell the story about his participation in career day at his then-9-year-old daughter’s elementary school. It conveys a little about what he was doing at the time — this was when he was with Arnold Worldwide working on ad programs to help curb smoking among young people — and a lot about why he has been chosen as a Difference Maker.
“Kids at that age don’t really have a strong sense for what their father does for a living,” he said, recalling that his daughter introduced him by saying simply, ‘this is my dad ... he saves lives for a living.’
“I thought that was really cool,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this description of what he did certainly helped inspire some of his next career steps. “I said, ‘I want more of that,’ and it helped me go from doing the anti-tobacco work at the agency to the American Heart Association.”
Tracing his work history, Bannister said he worked for the ad agency Hill Holiday in Boston and later with Arnold Worldwide, working on accounts ranging from Volkswagen to Puma to Ocean Spray. In the late ‘90s, he was promoted and told he’d be working on the Department of Public Health account.
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President Tom Senecal, who nominated Bannister as a Difference Maker, says he can quantify and qualify how much of an impact his colleague has made. For both, he turns to statistics the company keeps on just how many hours each employee devotes to volunteer work — with Bannister logging at least twice as many on bank-sponsored activities, in his estimate — and especially the expense reports Bannister turns in.
“I see the expense reports; they’re three pages long with his volunteer mileage — three pages per month,” he said, adding
“I initially said, ‘that doesn’t sound like a promotion,’” he went on, adding that this
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Difference Makers Do the Heavy Lifting
From his time with the American Heart Association through today as Head of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility for PeoplesBank, Matt Bannister has known what a difference nonprofit corporations can make in the lives of those who need help the most. He also knows that support often means going beyond the donation and volunteering to do some lifting yourself.
Congratulations, Matt and the entire 2024 Class of Difference Makers, and thank you all for making our community a better place to live.
1500 Main Street, 24th Fl. Springfield, MA 01115 gcaionline.com
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A8 2024
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