Save The Bay has earned a reputation as one of the most well-respected environmental organizations in Rhode Island, thanks in large measure to a small army of volunteers drawn from more than a dozen companies and corporations in the Ocean State.
Every year, often without being asked, businesses such as APC by Schneider Electric in South Kingstown and DiSanto Priest & Co., an accounting firm in Warwick, encourage their employees to help Save The Bay by, for instance, cleaning up beaches or tagging storm drains with warnings about polluting Narragansett Bay.
In 2010, more than 2,100 individuals from local companies volunteered a total of more than 12,000 hours to Save The Bay, said Executive Director Jonathan Stone.
The corporate program comprises the “core effort” of the organization’s volunteer work, Stone said, and beach cleanups are a major part of that effort. Volunteers last year “cleaned up several hundred miles of coastline along the bay and picked up more than 11 tons of beach trash,” he said. “In many places, we cleaned the same beaches several times. It is a major challenge to keep the waters and the bay clean.”
Save The Bay’s annual swim, a major fundraising event set for July 23 this year, benefited from the work of APC employees last year, Stone said. They manned the “pit stops,” refreshment centers for the 100 or so other volunteers who staffed the event; the APC company provided the snacks and beverages, while APC workers at the “pit stops” served the fare to hot, sweaty volunteers in charge of the swimmers.
And APC is ready to do the same again this year.
‘We’ll be happy to,” said Kathleen McPhee, director of corporate human resources at the South Kingstown plant and chair of the company’s Community ImpACT Program. APC by Schneider Electric is the former American Power Conversion company that provides power-protection products to businesses around the world.
McPhee said Save The Bay is one of APC’s partners in its Community ImpACT Program. In the past, McPhee said, APC would donate to about 56 organizations, but in 2006 decided to tighten its volunteer focus to eight selected partners. The company gives in three ways, she said: through financial grants, product donations and employee volunteerism.
In May, she said, about 40 APC volunteers will tag storm drains, which means they will affix labels to storm drains warning that whatever goes down the drain – such as garbage and pollutants like road salt – ends up in Narragansett Bay.
“Our employees see this as a great opportunity to give back to the community in which they live and work,” McPhee said. “They know they have the time and the ability because the company pays them to do it. It is a way for them and the company to give back to the community by supporting preservation of the environment.”
DiSanto Priest & Company, an accounting firm in Warwick, about six years ago created the Bentley Foundation as its charity arm and now, according to principal Lori Conaty, “we do tons of charity work” for Save The Bay, Sojourner House, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, the MS Society of Rhode Island and other groups.
Last summer, about 50 of the firm’s employees, all dressed in bright blue T-shirts bearing the company logo, cleaned up a shorefront area in Narragansett for Save The Bay. The cleanup was held in lieu of a company summer outing, Conaty said. “What was so impressive to me,” she added, “is when I looked over, all that I could see was this huge sea of bright blue shirts cleaning the beach.”
The camaraderie that can develop among volunteers helps explain why DiSanto Priest, although a highly professional firm with about 80 employees, enjoys a relaxed and friendly workplace atmosphere, Conaty said.
“At a company like this, you have different levels of experience and you could have a Step One employee standing next to a partner, pulling tires out of the rocks, chatting and laughing,” she said. “It is a great opportunity for people to get to know each other and I think it’s one reason why we’re all on a first-name basis.” •
