Month of Caring: How WEXers Gave Back to Our Communities

As part of our “Month of Caring” each May, employees at our offices around the globe are encouraged to go out into their communities, roll up their sleeves and give back with open hearts.  

From Edina, Minnesota, to Nashville, Tennessee, to our headquarters in Portland, Maine, and even as far as Melbourne, Australia, some 350 WEXers participated last month, logging more than 1,800 volunteer hours across dozens of activities. These ranged from hard manual labor like trash pickup and landscaping to mentoring youth and hand-making blankets for nonprofits that are preparing in advance for the cold winter months to come. 

“We set aside the month of May and encourage our offices to participate in community engagement activities—it could be one activity or many, whatever they decide,” says Melissa Dudley, WEX’s corporate philanthropy manager. “It’s really about getting our employees out in their communities so that they’re active and engaged and pursuing their passion either as an individual or a group.” 

What giving back looked like in 2019

Here are just a few examples of the breadth of volunteer work WEXers took on during our Month of Caring:

• In Edina, 18 WEXers assembled meals for distribution to third-world countries through the Feed My Starving Children nonprofit. Two-dozen more WEXers created blankets for organizations in need.  
• In Nashville, 15 WEXers volunteered with the Second Harvest Food Bank to organize and sort dry storage and help with packaging. Other Nashville-based WEXers additionally volunteered with Nashville Rescue Mission, the Nashville Zoo and the Nashville Food Project. 
• In Ogden, WEXers dug into a range of tasks, from cleaning up pine needles and trash from around the headstones at the Ogden City Cemetery to cleaning and organizing the old T.O. Smith Elementary School building and prepping it for the new school year. 
• And much more! We’re still collecting data on all that was done by our generous employees. 

How our Month of Caring came to be 

May has historically been a productive month for WEX, philanthropically speaking. For many years, we have we participated in the United Way of Greater Portland’s Day of Caring (now called #DayofAction). This year it was held on May 16, mobilizing 1,250 volunteers from 52 local companies, including 150 WEX employees. 

But our Month of Caring initiative really sprang from our acquisition of Electronic Funds Source (EFS) back in 2016. The company had an annual “Week of Caring,” during which they spearheaded various volunteer efforts across their offices. EFS’ Week of Caring was a tradition that WEX felt was core to our values as a company, and important to both preserve and expand into a full month, giving each physical location 30 days to organize and execute their volunteerism. 

“We log the number of volunteer hours and the number of participants so we can measure our collective impact,” says Dudley. “And even though it’s only our second year of earmarking May for giving back, it’s already made it our most impactful philanthropic month of the year.”

Learn more about WEX’s work in our local communities.