By J Christe

Have you ever wanted to make a difference in someone’s life and have fun at the same time?

I had that opportunity last weekend while serving dinner at Grace Centers of Hope in Pontiac, Michigan along with team members from Rock Financial/Quicken Loans & Title Source. I also brought along my daughter Christina and my friend Mr. Love. It happens to be our favorite place to volunteer.

By C Linder

This past weekend I had the pleasure of volunteering my time with my fellow Quicken Loans/Rock Financial/Title Source team members at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The event was the Maple Fest which was a two-day kids event put on by the center, and is run primarily by volunteers. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the demands of everyday life and it feels great to volunteer your time to help others in need to bring you back down to earth. This is what I was seeking through this opportunity- and it also helped that I am a complete science nerd.

I was somewhat disappointed that it happened to be yet another freezing, windy, snowy day in Michigan because some of the kids were going to go outside to participate in activities- and I unfortunately was missing gloves and a hat. This prevented me from being able to volunteer outside, which was my original plan. I thought it was inspiring, however, that they still took groups of kids outside to learn about making maple syrup and tapping it from the trees.

By M. Dunklee

Quicken Loans/Rock Financial, the Detroit Pistons and the Detroit Shock pulled into the final stop of our “Know Your Black History” tour on February 25. For the second year in a row, we ended the tour in Flint, Mich., inviting several area high schools to come, be educated, be entertained, support their respective classmates, and, for one lucky student, win a $1,000 scholarship, courtesy of Quicken Loans/Rock Financial.

The goal of the tour is to educate the students about the tragic story of slavery, the quest for freedom and equality, and the perseverance and amazing contributions of great African Americans throughout their tumultuous journey through history. But those of us who participated in the tour as competition judges received a valuable education as well.

Let me come clean with the facts: I’m a white male, raised in a middle class, mostly white suburb by white parents raised in middle class, almost entirely white suburbs.

Have you ever had one of those projects that was so challenging you just slipped it to the back burner?

Well, that is how it was for me trying to schedule a volunteer event for our Arizona team all the way from Michigan! Until one day I said "ENOUGH"! My day was committed to scheduling a Community DIFF volunteer opportunity in Arizona and by the end of the week I had two volunteer dates on the books and I am determined to get more!