Northside Tellers Jesus Mora and Shayla Noltee enjoy the orchestra at the UPAF fundraising campaign kickoff at the branch on Monday afternoon.

The 2014 campaign to raise funds for the United Performing Arts Fund kicked off Monday at our Northside branch with a performance by the Racine Symphony Orchestra.

UPAF collects donations and distributes those monies to arts groups in southeastern Wisconsin so that the artists can focus on their work with fewer worries about funding. A large part of that work involves providing kids — including at-risk kids — with arts-education opportunities.

The Racine Symphony Orchestra plays at Northside.

Last year, North Shore Bank employees raised almost $5,000 to support the group. To pledge or donate this year, go to https://eg.upaf.org/eg/nsb2014 and enter the following information:

• Your username — your first name and last initial (example: joshw)
• Your password — same as your username

One of the many groups UPAF supports is Milwaukee’s In Tandem Theatre, who put together a very special send-off for our former Senior VP of Retail Banking Steve Steiner, who retired last month. You can see the poem In Tandem wrote and performed for Steve here.