Every day, hundreds of millions of Americans rely on delivery of safe, clean, reliable drinking water to help keep their lives flowing. This is an important responsibility that water providers don’t take lightly — and American Water’s philanthropic work has shown that its role in serving communities doesn’t stop when the faucet is turned off.
American Water provides essential water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people in 24 states across the United States, from California to its headquarters in Camden, N.J. With this large presence comes an immense responsibility and opportunity to make a positive impact.
American Water has developed various initiatives that foster engagement in its communities. These have not only proven beneficial to the relationship between the company and its customers but also provided support to local organizations.
Community Support in Camden
Through corporate contributions and American Water Charitable Foundation grants, the company has invested in programs across the country to make an impact on the communities it serves.
For more than 125 years, American Water has been a part of Camden, providing water service to the Cramer Hill section before beginning to maintain the rest of the city’s water and sewer system in 2016, and establishing its headquarters in 2018. But the company’s presence is more than a building with a large sign: since 2012, American Water has invested more than $10.1 million into Camden, supporting local nonprofits and community programs.
Following are several ways that the company has fostered engagement in the City of Camden, through American Water, New Jersey American Water, and American Water Charitable Foundation activities.
Fresh Artists Partnership
American Water has partnered with award-winning local nonprofit, Fresh Artists, to bring student artwork to the walls of its headquarters. But the result is much more than a beautiful display of creativity. Through its programs, Fresh Artists empowers compassionate, creative, and capable young people to tackle the critical shortage of arts funding in public schools.
One component of this is installing children’s artwork in such highly visible locations as American Water: the partnership has resulted in one of Fresh Artists’ largest corporate art displays yet. In addition, the donation from American Water to Fresh Artists supports the organization’s many pursuits, including helping keep art programs alive at local schools in communities like Camden by funding the purchase of art supplies and art programing.
LUCY Outreach Partnership
For five years, Camden-based LUCY Outreach has been a valuable community partner of American Water. The nonprofit offers educational, social, and service-oriented programming to low-income Camden City youth, young adults, and their families. In 2021, American Water donated $250,000 to support the development of the organization’s new, state-of-the-art, 10,000-square-foot addition to their youth center, where the team was able to expand upon the incredible work they do for the community.
The donation supports not just an investment in a building but an investment in the youth of Camden and surrounding areas. LUCY Outreach serves over 500 youth from 47 schools annually — 100 percent of whom graduate high school (compared to just 66 percent for the city overall), and 90 percent go on to college.
Hopeworks Partnership
American Water and New Jersey American Water have a long-standing partnership with Hopeworks, a nonprofit that provides a positive, healing atmosphere that propels young people to build strong futures and break the cycle of violence and poverty in Camden. This highly successful partnership, which is now in its eighth year, has supported local youth workforce development, computer donations, mentoring, and monetary donations.
Since 2015, New Jersey American Water has invested more than $1 million directly into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) internships at Hopeworks, providing real-world work experience in one of the most in-demand fields, while benefiting customers by improving operational efficiency for utility field crews navigating digital information. The partnership has resulted in several Hopeworks youth securing permanent positions with American Water and New Jersey American Water after their internships, as well as creating a steady pipeline of jobs for Hopeworks graduates. The American Water Charitable Foundation and New Jersey American Water recently donated $35,000 to Hopeworks to support its in-house training program expansion — helping place more young adults in life-changing jobs.
Camden Community Partnership
The American Water Charitable Foundation’s Keep Communities Flowing Grant Program provides American Water and its subsidiaries an annual opportunity to sponsor and bring forth applicants for consideration. In 2021, the program donated $18,000 to the Camden Community Partnership to improve water quality and mitigate local flooding through their community-wide Adopt-A-Drain program.
Becoming a Better Community Partner
When it comes to being an engaged, supportive, helpful, and impactful community partner, there are always ways to do better. From these experiences, American Water has seen how utilities can truly enhance how they support the communities they serve, through several key steps.
- Ask (and listen to) your employees. American Water’s employees live in the communities they serve, and often the charities that are important to them also represent the needs of those communities.
- When in doubt, invest in tomorrow. Through various programs, American Water has found that some of the most impactful engagements have been those that support the educational and professional development of young adults and children. Although specific needs will differ from area to area, there is always something that companies can offer youth. It could be providing training programs, sharing information on environmental awareness, or showing diverse representation in STEM positions — just to name a few.
- Give back on all levels. Community engagement should never be reserved for just the highest levels of corporate or the workers in the field. By including all members of the organization in community efforts, the reach of an initiative becomes more expansive and offers the potential for a wider impact.
- Find partners that have deep roots. In its quest to become better community partners, American Water relies on local organizations to provide insight on the best ways forward. For the relationship to be more meaningful, find partners who are deeply entrenched in and have an established history with the community.
- Offer an even mix of support. While monetary donations help partners in many necessary ways, human capital is something employees can do to directly engage in their community. As a result, it can also boost positive feelings about who they work for. In the end, the combination of offering money, time, and energy benefits the partner, the community, the company, and its team.
- If possible, make it a long-term commitment. Not every partnership has to last forever, but don’t make it a habit to walk away after you write a check or after a volunteerism opportunity. Staying connected with organizations can allow your team to include themselves and offer support when it is needed. A long-term commitment also provides the opportunity for employees to witness firsthand the tangible results, over time, of their employer’s efforts in the community around them.
As a provider of safe and reliable water and wastewater services, American Water makes a daily commitment to put its customers and communities at the center of everything it does. By investing money, time, and energy into community-centered organizations and programs, utilities can go above and beyond in serving their communities. WW
About the Author: Joe Szafran has close to 20 years of experience in communications and public relations. He is currently the External Communications Manager for American Water, developing and implementing the external affairs strategy for the company, including community outreach.
Published in WaterWorld magazine, May 2022.
