M&F Bank partners with Fiserv to award $10,000 grant to local small business

Representatives from Mechanics and Farmers (M&F) Bank and Fiserv, made a stop in Winston-Salem to present Dr. Linda McRae, founder of HOPE Counseling and Consulting Services, with a $10,000 check earlier this week.. HOPE, which is an acronym for Healing Our People and Environment, is the second small business in North Carolina to receive funding from the Empowering Growth Small Business Grant. The grant will provide a total of $50,000 to support small businesses in Durham, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh. James Sills, CEO of M&F Bank, said they wanted to embrace small businesses across the state and help them grow into multimillion dollar businesses. “We want to wrap our arms around the small business winners,” Sills continued. “We just want to create five multimillion dollar businesses a year for the next five years.”According to Sills, Fiserv, which is a global technology and payments company for banking and commerce, approached them with an idea to award $10,000 grants and they jumped at the opportunity. “We said we want to be a part of this program and want to bring it to North Carolina,” Sills said. Nicole Valentin-Smith, vice president of client engagement at Fiserv, said making investments in small businesses,...