MTrade made a donation of $8,600 to The United Way of Oxford-Lafayette County for the mortgage trading company’s first inaugural Week of Giving.

The mortgage software startup has steadily grown over five years after spinning off from FNC and can finally begin giving back to an area that has given them so much. MTrade held multiple events calling for employees to participate and give donations to their campaign.

“We had to get enough employees to get us off the ground to do something like this,” said Debra Sage, MTrade Senior Product Manager. “We’ve reached a point where we can actually start more outreach with the community.”

And they have decided to begin this journey with The United Way.

“United Way touches so many other organizations,” said Sage. “Doug and I are actually on the board of United Way and so we know the impact that the organization has throughout the community and I don’t think there’s a single one that can touch as many lives as United Way.”

According to MTrade Analyst Doug Odom, the company and its employees truly value the LOU community and the CEO Bill Rayburn was at the forefront of this movement to serve the community with initiatives and projects like MTrade Park, which is a primary sponsor for youth and adult sports.

“We’ve always had this really big desire to impact the community that we know and love so much here,” said Odom. “We are a tech company that could exist in San Francisco, could exist in Austin, Texas but our CEO chose for us to be here because we know how important this community is.”

The United Way Executive Director Kurt Brummett said it’s amazing that they are finally able to partner with MTrade and a team of employees who work hard to make things happen. He acknowledges Sage, Odom and MTrade Business Analyst Emily Rikard and the leadership team Rayburn and MTrade President Lois Lovelady for their extensive support.

“We were blessed to be able to partner with certain employees that made the transition over from FNC to MTrade and have the ability to touch so many lives like Debra said,” said Brummett. “To help improve health, to advance education, to promote financial stability and meet basic needs here in our community — it’s just a blessing to have that privilege to work with such great people. We’re so very appreciative and we can’t thank them enough.”

Odom said he is hoping to make the next Week of Giving even bigger and better in the future and the first year showed they were off to a solid start.

“We’re kind of making plans for next,” said Odom. “Things that we know we can do better for next year and things from this year that we certainly know we’ll want to repeat next.”