Small change leads to a BIG milestone
CEO’s Corner/Ryan Hentges
Two hundred million pennies. That’s how much MVEC’s Operation Round Up (ORU) Trust Fund has given back to local community organizations since 1995.
If you participate in this program, you know that your monthly electric bill is rounded up to the next dollar amount. One month, it might be just one penny. The next month, 99 pennies. Usually, it’s somewhere in between. The average round-up amount is $6 a year.
There’s not much you can do with $6 a year. But add your $6 to the $6 that are rounded up from the electric bills of 24,000 of your fellow participating MVEC members, and the pot becomes $144,000 a year. What can you do with $144,000 a year? Plenty.
Operation Round Up grants have helped:
• Fire, police, and sheriff departments with life-saving equipment.
• Agencies that serve the handicapped and families in need.
• School and youth groups experiencing cutbacks.
• Food shelves and backpack programs (a big pandemic focus).
It took MVEC 17 years to hit the $1 million mark in 2012. Thanks to increased participation, the next million took 10 years. When will we hit the next million? The more pennies, the quicker we will get there, so please consider participating. Just over half of our members do. MVEC employees have the option to donate on their paychecks, and I am one of them.
I want to thank the Operation Round Up Trust Board and coordinator Chris Schwingler for their dedicated work each quarter in studying the grant requests, calling applicants for additional information, and making the important decisions of approving requests.
Most of all, I’d like to thank YOU for helping MVEC live the cooperative principle of Commitment to Community. We are a community in this together.
