Yup, Emigrant did indeed make those $1000 gifts. Here's the
September 8th press release
It would be interesting to know how much they gave. I searched the FDIC and the September 30th financial statements. I'm not sure if these donations would have been recorded by then or under what category they would be placed. The only thing I could find was "Additional noninterest expense" of $732K. So this would be 732 members which sounds about right.
If it is $732K, it wouldn't be that large compared to their $1.38B in assets. So this may not have had much of an effect on their rate decisions.
Looks like Emigrant started a new trend for online banks: make a big rate increase, get the free advertising and then don't worry about raising rates for several months.
ING Direct and HSBC both did their big rate jumps although they set end-dates and ING only applied it to new money.
Now VB is giving it a try. It'll be interesting to see how long they'll keep the rate at 4.60%. I wouldn't be surprised if it stays that way through the year even as other banks reach 5%.