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From Fusion comes an infusion of community support

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This article was published 12/03/2024 (558 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before he joined Fusion Credit Union, Mike Csversko was an entrepreneur. He remembers the sleepless nights, the worries about whether his business would thrive. So it was very special to him to be able to stand on stage at the Provincial Exhibition building in Brandon in October and announce $30,000 worth of funding to five promising Manitoba entrepreneurs through his employer’s Community Infusion program.

“I’ve lived that, and I know those feelings,” says Csversko, Fusion’s business development and marketing manager and the lead of Community Infusion. “Seeing those people up on stage with the joy they have, it’s worth all the work we put in.”

The Community Infusion program is an annual business ideas competition for entrepreneurs that concludes with a night of live pitches from the top five contestants. The group of employees who dreamed it up drew some inspiration from CBC’s Dragon’s Den, but unlike the cut-throat television show, all the finalists walk away winners.

“That final night is a lot of fun – we award the winners right there on the spot, and it’s a really satisfying end to the long journey they go on,” he says.

At the pitch event in October, Csversko announced $20,000 for the winning contestant, the owner of a beauty studio and salon in southwestern Manitoba who wanted to use the funds to start a non-profit supporting women with postpartum depression. The runner-up received $4,000, and the other three finalists each received $2,000.

The competition, which has now run for three years and seen its applicant numbers steadily grow each year, emerged from Fusion’s commitment to community involvement, says Leanne DeVliegere, chief operations officer. The credit union’s reputation for investing in communities was what initially appealed to DeVliegere when she joined seven years ago.

Fusion already gives back around $250,000 annually to the 18 Manitoba communities it operates in through its charitable donations and makes roughly $1 million in member payouts each year. It also has a strong culture of volunteering, with employees clocking a collective 7,700 volunteer hours in 2023. But DeVliegere says the credit union wanted to contribute in a new way, and turned to a group of roughly 25 employees to brainstorm ideas.

“Our communities are our lifeblood. They’re where our employees live and work, they’re where we send our kids to school, so we really want to support them,” she says. “If we can help small business owners flourish in their communities it creates jobs and more money flows into local economies. It really just keeps building everybody up.”

The competition is a major undertaking and requires support from across the organization – and people have been more than happy to pitch in, Csversko says. Employees with experience in commercial business banking and lending evaluate applications and the detailed business plans of semi-finalists, and often serve as judges at the final event. Others help to plan and promote the event itself. On the night-of, many Fusion employees come out to watch. “It’s a feel-good moment for everybody involved,” he says.

DeVliegere says she sees Community Infusion as part of Fusion’s broader employee experience goals – providing its people with meaningful work, professional and personal development and support for their health and well-being. She notes that people who help to plan and execute the event are either sharpening their existing skills or building new ones.

“It’s a huge opportunity for employees to get involved, potentially learn new skills along the way and meet people they wouldn’t have otherwise,” she says. “It’s one of those aspects about Fusion that has driven pride in the organization.”