2014 Economic Impact Awards Community Involvement Champion: Alisa Lawler

Alisa Lawler is a born communicator.

She fits right in as CU Community Credit Union’s go-to employee for spreading the word about the company and its community activities in the Springfield area.

“Being that little bit of laughter or little bit of help in someone’s life is very important to me. If I can do that from a companywide standpoint, as well as just an individual standpoint, it’s the reason I like to get up and get out of bed,” Lawler says. “I think it’s important that as a company, we’re involved in the community that we reside in and support our neighbors, in general. Caring and concerning for the people and businesses in our community is really going to benefit all of us in the end.”

Hired on as CU Community Credit Union’s vice president of business development in July 2013, Lawler is tasked with building the credit union’s business base. That involves maintaining and building relationships with roughly 10,500 credit union members – and taking an active interest in their community endeavors – as well as recruiting new clients.

For example, CU Community Credit Union supports one of its largest clients, CoxHealth, by donating to its foundation – nearly $5,000 per year – and working with Children’s Miracle Network. Lawler serves on the planning committee for an annual golf tournament, a collaborative event sponsored by Ozarks Area Credit Unions that raises some $20,000 per year for CMN of CoxHealth. And she has personally committed more than 100 hours planning this year’s event.

“It’s great to tap into those relationships within this community and be able to represent such a great company and work on building those relationships that they already had established,” she says.

For Lawler, a holiday gift drive for Boyd Elementary School is near and dear to her heart. It’s important, too, to her employer, which has been raising funds for clothes, toys, food and personal care items for second graders at the school for nearly a decade.

The former Springfield Business Journal account executive last winter coordinated a gift basket raffle at CU Community Credit Union’s four locations, which generated $1,200 for the annual fundraiser.

“I would say that for the money that we raise and the effort we provide in voluntary hours, we get paid back in spades,” says Lawler, who also has marketing and sales experience from working at Marlin and Noble & Associates. “We are a unique credit union, in the sense that we have not only community involvement like our name suggests, but we also have strong employee relationships.”

Representing the credit union, Lawler is the point-of-contact for myriad other community events for which the business is involved.

Part of her role is to organize and market the Halloween Hustle, an annual 5K fun run benefiting The Kitchen Inc.’s Family Nurturing Center. Helping to raise nearly $200,000 for the center in its 22 years of hosting the fun run, Lawler and other event planning team members changed the date in 2013 from a spring run to a fall-themed event.

Lawler was charged with recruiting help from CU Community Credit Union to develop marketing materials, news releases, blogs and post social media announcements. In its new fall time slot, the event raised some $16,000.[[In-content Ad]]