Charitable giving has been an important part of our business since its inception in 1989. When my father, Mike Steinberg, founded the business, he made sure that his core values were reflected not just in how we interacted with our customers, but also in regularly giving back to our community. He instilled those same values in me.You can learn more about our history of giving back, the organizations we support, our Community Service Team and how our employees have stepped up with a voluntary charitable payroll deduction system on our community support page. Many team members have served on our Community Service Team over the years; the current team members are Joni van Gelder, Bobby Crowley, Cassie Duranceau, Amber Trudell, Kat Steinberg and myself. Our new initiatives Our team is currently looking at ways we can engage more with our local community. We conducted a survey of employees in February to gather some data on their charitable interests. We’re taking on new programs and organizing group volunteer events based on those results.The first of those events involved helping out during a Dover Clean Up day recently. Mike Chambers, Matt Zottos and I spent a wonderful day raking and working on flower beds at Henry Law Park.In June we’ll be doing a food drive to support the Barrington, NH branch of End 68 Hours of Hunger, which has an extended program into the summer months to support families year-round. Our very own Kim Gibson is a program coordinator there, and she initiated the connection.Another recently implemented new initiative includes an optional 8 hours of paid time off for each employee to use towards community service work each year. This supports their interests on a more individual level and has the added benefit of broadening our scope of giving. Building on the past to grow the future My ultimate goal is to take the efforts from the past and build on them. One of the major benefits of streamlining our business is that it enables us to maximize the funds we can allocate to charitable giving. We are in the process of creating a more structured system to make formal commitments and allocations, measure our impact and share our progress. Stay tuned as we roll out announcements around this in the coming months.Reach out to me at bsteinberg@relyco.com if you would like to chat about this or anything else!