Operation HOPE continues to grow and expand as the nation’s first and only nonprofit financial services network for the poor, the underserved, the struggling class and the teetering middle class. A combined group ‘with too much month at the end of their money.’

We are targeting 130+ million Americans who are financially stressed.

A third of Americans who would have to sell their automobiles to raise $3,000 cash in case of emergency.

The 40M plus who are unbanked or underbanked in this country.

The 70% of Americans who live from paycheck to paycheck, of all races and socio-economic groups.  The same 70% who are driving the largest economy in the world, with sustained consumer spending.

The 500 credit score communities — be that black and brown urban, or white and rural — where financial predators are preying and targeting with payday lenders, rent to own stores, title lending stores, and liquor stores.

I want to target all of these groups, and all of these communities, and to use the free enterprise system to help to set them free.  My goal is simple: finish what President Abraham Lincoln started with the Freedman’s Bank of 1865, chartering a bank ‘to teach freed slaves about money,’ and to inspire new HOPE 700 Credit Score Communities clear across America.  I plan to do this with our HOPE Inside model, which is part of our larger Project 5117 vision, and to open 1,000 HOPE Inside locations clear across America by year 2020.

HOPE Inside First Tennessee Bank banner

I plan on doing precisely this — in partnership with prominent and best in class financial institutions and others like First Horizon and their bank subsidiary, First Tennessee Bank.

First Tennessee Bank is the largest bank in the state of Tennessee, and we have recently partnered with them to open 15 HOPE Inside locations across the state — both urban and rural.  I was honored to travel to Chattanooga, TN earlier this week as we announced our new HOPE Inside, Chattanooga, TN @ First Tennessee Bank.  It was a great day, in a great, historic (Chattanooga sits in Hamilton County, which was named after our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton), and deserving community — and I was honored to be asked to ‘show up.’

Whether it is with First Tennessee Bank, or with our new major partner SunTrust Banks, which just announced a major new commitment to our work expanding the HOPE Inside model with them just this week, or our other best in class partners, such as Whole Foods or Hyatt Hotels, Synovus Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank and others, I will continue to ‘show up’ in this and other communities across the country.

Watch out for future grand openings.  Hope to see you there!  This is the new Silver Rights Movement. This is our time.

Let’s go…

John Hope Bryant

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