Wachovia Bank and its impending successor, Wells Fargo & Co., handed out $1,000 grants to 44 charities and nonprofits in its northern Connecticut market.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth-largest bank with $1.3 trillion in assets distributed the funds earlier this week at the Community Partners breakfast in Trumbull. Wells Fargo-Wachovia branch managers chose their nonprofit recipients.
In 2009, the Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation invested approximately $495,000 in Connecticut to support education, community development, health and human services, arts & culture, environmental and civic projects. said Joe Kirk, Wachovia’s regional president for Connecticut.
The bank’s community contributions will continue beyond Wachovia’s conversion to Wells Fargo to formally take place in the first quarter of 2011.
Wachovia employs more than 1,500 in Connecticut, and has 76 community bank branches and 103 ATMs. The bank says its Connecticut employees also committed 6,319 in volunteer hours in 2009 assisting local groups and project.
Among central Connecticut groups receiving $1,000 grants: Bread for Life – Plantsville; Child Guidance Clinic for Central CT – Meriden; East Hartford ChildPlan; Friends of Dinosaur State Park & Arboretum – Rocky Hill; Hartford Public Library; Kuhn Employment Opportunities – Meriden; Meriden YMCA; Northern Middlesex YMCA – Middletown; Our Piece of the Pie – Bloomfield; and the Wallingford YMCA.
