CRC Foundation community outreach fund
Cooperative Response Center · 2024 · Community
CRC created the CRC Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched January 1, 2024, whose general fund supports community needs through employee payroll donations, outside gifts, and CRC contributions.
A cooperative's own charity
On January 1, 2024, the Cooperative Response Center (CRC) launched the CRC Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation created the year before, in 2023. The foundation's purpose is straightforward, in its own words, "helping those in need through financial gift giving programs", and its reach is defined by CRC's own world: the company's employees and the communities where CRC operates.
CRC is a member-owned cooperative that provides contact-center and monitoring services, and the foundation gives that cooperative a formal, tax-exempt vehicle for organised giving rather than ad hoc collections.
How it is funded
The foundation is built to draw from several streams at once, so that giving is continuous rather than event-driven:
- Employee payroll deductions, contributed biweekly.
- External donations from outside donors.
- CRC matching funds.
- Fundraising efforts.
That blend, employee dollars matched by the company and topped up by outside gifts, is the mechanism behind the general fund and is designed to multiply the impact of individual staff contributions.
Two programs
The foundation runs two primary programs.
- General Fund: accepts donations from employees and external donors to support community needs approved by the board.
- M.E.L. Hardship Grant: provides emergency financial assistance to CRC employees facing unexpected hardship. The grants are administered by peer reviewers, treated as non-taxable gifts, and do not require repayment.
The hardship grant carries a personal history. M.E.L. honours Michelle E. LaVelle, a 28-year CRC employee who died in November 2022, so that, as the foundation puts it, "her legacy of kindness will continue to uplift and support her colleagues."
Governance
The CRC Foundation is run by a seven-member board of directors: Michelle Rodriguez (President), Randie Waltz (Vice-President), Julie Schramek (Secretary/Treasurer), and directors Kellee McAnally, Kristy Mueske, Shawna Johnson and Paul Thompson. Board approval governs which community needs the general fund supports, and peer reviewers, rather than management alone, decide hardship grants, a structure that keeps the giving employee-driven.
Why it matters
The CRC Foundation is a small, internally focused model of corporate social responsibility, and its significance lies in that focus. Rather than writing cheques to distant causes, the cooperative built a standing charity that turns steady payroll giving and company matching into two things: support for the communities CRC works in, and a safety net for its own people in a crisis.
For the contact-center and outsourcing industry, where workforces are large and often financially stretched, the M.E.L. Hardship Grant is a notable feature: peer-reviewed, repayment-free emergency help funded partly by colleagues. It reflects a cooperative's instinct, that mutual aid belongs inside the organisation as well as outside it, and offers a replicable template for employers that want their CSR to reach their own workforce, not only external beneficiaries.