By Chuck Bies, Account Solution Manager

When you think of corporate volunteerism, you might think of building a house or packaging food or shopping for a needy family. Through the Aeritae Community Engagement (ACE) program, our employees were able to use their skills in business-continuity planning to support a major Minnesota charity this year.

Working with Catholic Charities, we’ve had the opportunity to consult on emergency preparedness and business-continuity planning for each of their 16 branches, finding gaps and making recommendations for the best ways to fill them. Using eight volunteers, Aeritae has reviewed items such as evacuation procedures, transportation, IT and communications infrastructure and temporary locations. A final report is scheduled for the end of November with a summary of how each branch can build a consistent emergency-preparedness plan.

The goal is for Catholic Charities to bring their emergency preparedness standards in line with the Council of Accreditation (COA), which certifies not-for-profits as “best in class.” Acknowledgement by the COA is a high mark for attracting donors and shows program funders that Catholic Charities meets or exceeds industry standards for excellence.

Aeritae has another connection to Catholic Charities because one of our former consultants is now their Director of IT. While with Aeritae, Theresa Sarff assisted the organization in developing their disaster recovery processes and IT infrastructure. We are proud to once again lend our skills to a worthy organization.

If you would like more information about the ACE Program or Aeritae’s business-continuity planning services, contact info@aeritae.com.

 

The Aeritae Community Engagement team (ACE) was formed as an outreach for Aeritae employees to contribute to the local community through volunteerism. The ACE team is engaged in the following activities:

Second Harvest: America’s Second Harvest, The Nation’s Food Bank Network, is the nation’s largest charitable hunger-relief organization. A network of more than 200 member food banks and food-rescue organizations, The America’s Second Harvest Network secures and distributes more than 2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually.  Click HERE for more info.

Sharing and Caring Hands: Sharing and Caring Hands was founded in 1985 by Mary Jo Copeland as a safety-net organization to help those who could not obtain help from the welfare system. This group provides meals, clothing, showers, shelter, transportation help, rent deposits, rent help, medical assistance, dental care, furniture, school expenses, funeral assistance, and other miscellaneous needs. They receive no government or United Way funding and rely solely on donations to do their work. http://www.sharingandcaringhands.org

HIRED: HIRED, founded in 1968, is a leading Twin Cities area provider of job-skills training and employment training. HIRED assists disadvantaged people and other job seekers to become qualified for and obtain employment. http://www.hired.org . HIRED provides the Aeritae Team with an opportunity for skills-based volunteering. The relationship with a non-profit organization allows Aeritae to contribute directly to their success by using our IT and business-process skills to support a community-based organization that provides jobs to thousands annually. Aeritae’s mentoring is helping their organization develop a new application and the related business processes that integrate business with IT.