The Lansing, Mich.-based LAFCU has launched the StableCommunities Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at strengthening neighborhoods, supporting families and helping small businesses thrive, LAFCU announced last week.
In its first full year in 2025, the Foundation awarded $267,000 in grants to local organizations and entrepreneurs as a way of demonstrating its commitment to driving stability and opportunity where it is needed most. Its initiatives – from food security and emergency loans to financial literacy and microgrants for small businesses – allow the Foundation's work to center on removing barriers, fueling opportunity and building lasting resiliency in the community, LAFCU said.
Not all neighborhoods have had the same access to opportunity, according to Patrick Spyke, LAFCU's president/CEO, said. Some areas, particularly those historically marginalized or redlined, continue to face higher rates of poverty and fewer resources, he said, and the Foundation was designed to help close those gaps.
"This is about more than programs or grants, it's about people helping people," Spyke said. "We've seen the challenges families and small businesses face every day. The StableCommunities Foundation is a promise to stand with them, to invest directly in their potential and to help turn struggle into strength."
StableCommunities Foundation CEO Kelli Ellsworth Etchison, who also serves as LAFCU's chief marketing officer and chief diversity officer, said her vision for the foundation is to bring back hope.
"I want the StableCommunities Foundation to plant hope where it has been lost," Ellsworth Etchison said. "Without hope, people can feel stuck. We want to help them find their way forward, and to build a movement where resiliency thrives, where small businesses can grow roots and where families know they don't have to face struggles alone."
The foundation will accept grant applications on a rolling basis, with a flexible approach that allows it to address urgent needs promptly while also supporting long-term community stability.
Founded in 1936, LAFCU is open to all who live, work, worship or attend school in Michigan, and to Michigan businesses. LAFCU serves more than 74,000 members and has more $1 billion in assets.
Joyce Moed can be reached at joyce.moed@arc-network.com.
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