Kellogg Federal Credit Union expanded into La Vista when its headquarters was built at 96th Street and Brentwood Drive in 2020. Since then, it’s been a force for good within the community and an ardent supporter of the La Vista Community Foundation. In 2024, the foundation’s 25th year of operation, Kellogg FCU was a top supporter of the organization.
“As soon as we became part of the community, we knew it was important for us to become involved with the foundation so that La Vista would know how much being a part of their community means to us,” said Jessica Weible, member support administrator at Kellogg FCU.
Weible attributes a great deal of the philanthropic culture at the credit union to Jennifer Warnsing, who has been in the CEO role for nearly a decade. “I grew up on a farm outside of DeWitt, Nebraska, with small-town values; family, community, and giving back are engrained in me,” Warnsing said. She added that watching her parents demonstrate enthusiastic community involvement as she grew up had a big impact on her and made her want to get involved.
Weible said that Warnsing’s leadership helped cultivate a team that “genuinely cares.” The Kellogg FCU team has hosted a variety of community events over the years, including back-to-school drives, sock drives, coat drives, natural disaster collections, and toy drives to support the community. They also host shred days for the community and offer scholarships to graduating high school seniors. “Our team has also been known to personally make contributions to members going through hardships and send them anonymous gifts to assist,” Warnsing said.
The giving culture at Kellogg FCU doesn’t end with the employees—members get involved in the efforts, too. It’s no surprise that members have started to feel like family to the Kellogg FCU team when they all work together to serve the La Vista community. As a result, the team gets to know the members better, and vice versa.
The community efforts of the Kellogg FCU team and members created a community within a community—one where people know each other’s names and all share a common goal: to serve La Vista.
Warnsing explained that the team’s choice to support the La Vista Community Foundation was easy. They researched various nonprofit organizations and felt that the foundation had “similar values to what our credit union embodied and we wanted to be a part of that community,” she said. Those values, Warnsing enthusiastically noted, are “giving back, supporting one another, and having fun while doing it!”
Warnsing’s advice to other local financial institutions is to research potential partners to support, and to find an organization that has similar values and “just reach out. There are so many deserving organizations who would be grateful for any, and all, partnerships,” she said.
“Our goal is to be present within the community to show we are here for them,” she added. That one goal has led to a powerful partnership that has certainly benefitted the La Vista community.
To learn more, visit kellogg-fcu.org.
This article originally appeared in the February/March 2025 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
