When it comes to businesses and communities, it’s hard to think of a business more established in a community than a local natural gas utility. In the most direct ways, utilities give meaning to the word “nexus”—a connection to a particular place. By the very nature of their product and service, gas utilities connect one neighborhood to another, one city to the next, and cities to regions.
This integration is about more than trucks, pipelines and infrastructure. For the thousands of employees who work for America’s gas utilities, their workplace is their hometown, or very close by. They know the schools, playgrounds, parks, downtowns, highways, hospitals and libraries. They know the local challenges and successes, and like their neighbors, they want a great place to live and work today—and an even better one tomorrow.
For a utility’s team, on duty 24/7/365, “can-do” is part of the job description. But there’s more to it than that. Yes, the day’s work comes first, but then there’s the extra mile or two. Most of America’s gas utilities encourage and help their employees to team up, to form a huge volunteer corps ready to take action—mustering to fix parks, work with schoolkids, serve at food banks—providing muscle, elbow grease, know-how and resources to people and projects that need a little help. Along the way, their work helps to drive home the positive message that utilities are here to help support their communities, and not just in the delivery of natural gas.
Good work doesn’t just happen. Consider, for example, Dominion Energy, based in Richmond, Virginia, with operations in 19 states. The utility has a long history of serving its communities: In its archives, Dominion Energy holds records from 1918 documenting the company’s volunteer and community involvement efforts.
With that strong past as a foundation, today’s Dominion volunteers actively look for diverse opportunities to give back:
At Dominion Energy, project ideas are entirely employee-driven. “Our employees have their fingers on the pulse of what’s needed,” explained Tara Richardson, Dominion Energy’s senior community affairs representative. “Our basic concern is, ‘What are the needs in the various localities in which we operate?’ ”
To add structure to this process, Dominion Energy created a Corporate Volunteer Council in 2017, which holds a bimonthly call so council members can share project updates. The council also provides centralization for decisions about resources, project managers and partners. One reason for the new council is the company’s growth: Dominion Energy covers a lot of territory, and projects in Akron, for example, are a long way from Richmond.
Additionally, new employees don’t have the institutional knowledge that helps keep projects aligned with the utility’s traditional priorities and processes. Some projects are “grandfathered” in. For example, for years Dominion Energy volunteers have helped the Lost Colony Playhouse prepare for its annual season on Roanoke Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. A project like that doesn’t need more analysis, Richardson said. For new projects getting a closer look, however, Dominion Energy strives for alignment regarding scope, safety and scheduling, meaning the project’s timing is realistic and likely to be finished as planned.
Richardson said Dominion Energy looks for team projects that will best leverage knowledge and resources, as well as partnerships that will make an outcome greater than its separate parts. Support for military veterans, for example, is a company priority.
The company has also long provided extra benefits to make volunteering easier. Environmental projects with nonprofit partners can qualify for up to $2,500 in grants. And non-union employees get one paid day per year to work on volunteer projects that involve work time, such as helping children for an hour or so during the school day.
Another way the past is guiding the company’s future in giving back is through retirees, who are a valuable resource for the company. Retirees like this kind of “work,” Richardson said, and want to stay involved.
Atlanta-based Georgia Natural Gas was established 20 years ago as part of SouthStar Energy Services, owned by Southern Company Gas, and today is the largest gas marketer in Georgia. When it moved from a suburban Atlanta office to one in the inner city a year after it opened, the utility knew it wanted to make an immediate difference in the lives of its neighbors.
Maurice Baker, manager, Community Relations, heads up GNG’s corporate philanthropy and its volunteer program, called the True Blue Crew. The company has four focus areas: children and education, seniors, energy assistance and environment.
Projects take a number of approaches. Some are big-team efforts, such as working on cleanups along the Chattahoochee River, which runs through Atlanta. “We try to go beyond just cleanup-type projects, however,” Baker said.
GNG employees help provide talent and resources to maintain and sustain various institutions, such as local YMCAs, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta and the Atlanta Science Festival. This includes serving on the leadership boards for these organizations.
One project that gets particularly intense focus is GNG’s involvement with Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School. A nationwide network, the Cristo Rey schools combine academics and work requirements to help prepare at-risk students for success in college and in their future chosen profession. Students spend at least one day each week working for partner companies. GNG’s partnership started three years ago, initiated by GNG President and CEO Michael A. Braswell.
“In just a short time, Cristo Rey has become the cornerstone of our corporate volunteerism and community focus on education,” Braswell explained. “Our dedicated employees help to ensure that each student has a genuine and multifaceted introduction to the corporate world.”
Braswell said that he has “had the pleasure of interacting with all of them, and I’ve also met many of the parents. After three years with the program, we are excited that students that started with GNG as sophomores are heading off to college this fall. We wish each of them continued success.”
Baker likes to cite this academic work as particularly gratifying for the company’s volunteer efforts. He said there are young people now graduating from college who were among the first students the company worked with 15 years ago, when the company’s school-volunteer programs were initially established. GNG-supported students are completing work in a range of in-demand careers, in engineering, for example, and other STEM-based (science, technology, engineering and math) vocations.
“Fifteen years later,” Baker said, “we’re seeing kids succeeding because of our efforts, getting into good colleges. We can see and watch our impact.”
In the Midwest, Black Hills Energy’s volunteer program takes a decidedly forward-looking approach, thanks to a program designed to multiply the impact of its employee volunteers.
Its Ambassadors program was established in 2014, reconfigured from a program launched in 2008. The program is a priority from the top, directly reviewed and overseen by Black Hills Chairman and CEO Dave Emery. Each Ambassador helps coordinate initiatives at the local level for various nonprofits and other programs, participates in key community events and provides feedback to Black Hills’ Corporate and Community Affairs team. At the same time, they develop their own leadership skills, serve as positive representatives for the company and often give and receive feedback on Black Hills’ initiatives on a grassroots level.
The utility has a team of 200 Ambassadors who cover its eight-state territory. Each Ambassador is nominated, usually by a supervisor, then selected by state program managers to serve for two years.
Melissa Garcia is the Ambassador program manager for Nebraska. She said Black Hills looks for a number of attributes when selecting Ambassadors. Managers want a talent pool with diverse backgrounds and skills. They want accountants, engineers, equipment operators and mechanics.
This deliberate integration brings longer-term benefits, resulting in greater awareness and understanding of the benefits of natural gas across the diverse communities they serve.
When the two years are up, the former Ambassadors keep the volunteer ethos strong throughout the company, not just within a few departments, to help support their CEO’s goal of rooting volunteerism in Black Hills’ culture.
Garcia added that each Ambassador has a budget of $250. Importantly, though, money isn’t the core element of the Ambassadors’ work. Some projects don’t take much funding, if any. Fixing playground equipment at the beginning of summer, for example, takes commitment and tools, time and know-how.
Not everything is straightforward, of course. There are projects for which the Ambassador has to think big, develop a broad view, work the telephones, make connections and find partners whose mission, resources and expertise are most likely to deliver a solution. Really, the Ambassador has to be a lever, one that coordinates, facilitates and persists until a lot of separate parts start working together.
An example of this kind of teamwork emerged in a volunteer project organized a couple summers ago after a series of tornadoes hit Pilger, Nebraska. Damage was intense, totaling nearly $15 million, affecting homes, commercial buildings and a church, while destroying countless trees.
At the time, Bill Bazyn, a construction and maintenance operations technician at BHE, was part of the Ambassadors program. Bazyn lives in nearby Norfolk, and like many people in the region, he knew that Pilger faced a lot of rebuilding. His idea: Replace at least some of the trees lost to the tornadoes.
Bazyn and his team worked within BHE to use a valuable resource: the company’s partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, a national nonprofit conservation and education organization. BHE and Arbor Day have an ongoing program to plant trees, which helps homeowners conserve energy and reduce their bills, called “Energy Saving Trees.” Generally, new trees are distributed to anyone who asks, until the supply is exhausted.
Considering the damage in Pilger, Bazyn suggested priority outreach to Pilger homeowners, and ensuring that they would be at the front of the line for tree distribution.
As these were not seedlings but well-established, heavy young trees, about 5 to 6 feet tall, getting them set properly was important, and it could have been difficult for some homeowners. So, the volunteer committee went further—when the trees were delivered in Pilger, BHE crews were standing by to help with planting.
In addition, the BHE team included an energy savings piece: They helped homeowners use an arbor-energy savings app to calculate the best placement for the new trees, so that it wasn’t just guesswork about planting an investment that would provide shade and cover for the next 35 years.
“When we volunteer, we authentically care about the community, and in doing so, the well-being of each of our customers,” Garcia explained, adding that this work isn’t just charity. Rather, volunteering can start a virtuous cycle—when people and families succeed, when local economies prosper, those are strengths that help everyone, including utilities.