The Art of Giving Back

An old expression reminds us that “Charity begins at home.” However, when it comes to charity, Consumer Cellular employees know that home is more than just their own four walls and a roof. It’s an entire community, including strangers as well as family and friends, and extends well beyond the borders of one’s own neighborhood.

And it’s not just our employees and their families who donate, either. Consumer Cellular matches individual employee donations through a matching program that can provide an annual matching opportunity of up to $234,000.

So, how’d we do last year? Here’s a summary of our local charitable activities for 2013:

• Food Banks – We participated in 15 separate food bank events and donated more than 673 hours repackaging bulk food for local food pantries in the Portland, Phoenix and Redmond areas.

• Blood Drives – 246 donors participated in six on-site Red Cross blood drives, donating 210 pints of blood and impacting 630 lives in our local communities.

• Race for the Cure/Heaven Can Wait – An amazing 373 team members raised $18,615 in donations in Portland, Phoenix and Redmond combined.

• School Supply Drive – Employees donated $4,142 in school supplies and, with our Consumer Cellular match program, our total donation to kids in need was $8,284.

• Food Drive – We donated 36,875 pounds of food, supplying 28,365 meals (35 meals per employee) in the three communities where we work.

• Holiday Giving Tree – In support of Albertina Kerr (Portland), Save The Family (Phoenix) and Boys & Girls Club (Redmond), we adopted several families in need over the holiday season and provided wonderful gifts to insure they too had a Merry Christmas.

On a broader scale, our employees and customers continued to help make the world a better place with these contributions:

• One Million Thank You’s – Early in 2013, we acquired our one-millionth customer. What better way to celebrate, we thought, than to give $1 million back to the people who made it happen. So we did. Consumer Cellular donated $500,000 to our amazing employees and $500,000 to charities on behalf of our wonderful customers.

• Green Initiatives – 95% of our shipping by-products are recycled and 88% of our customers use electronic billing. Our carbon footprint-reduction efforts landed Consumer Cellular on the 100 Best Green Companies List for the 3rd year in a row!

• Phone Recycling Program – In excess of 33,000 phones were recycled and proceeds from that effort came to more than $7,000, all of which was donated to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

• National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) – We donated $150,000 to the NPCA in 2013 on behalf of our customers who switched to email billing.

Charity may begin at home but at Consumer Cellular it never ends. That’s why I’m so proud of the generosity our employees displayed and look forward to the many ways, both as individuals and as a company, we can make a difference in 2014. In my humble opinion, giving back is the best investment one can ever make.