Community Matters
This content originally published in the Winter 2024 print edition of NAPA Quarterly. Subscribe here.
Community Involvement winners show consistent engagement is key.
NAPA’s Community Involvement Award recognizes NAPA member companies that have become neighborhood names when it comes to local support in good times and bad. And that support isn’t seen only at the corporate level: Employee participation plays a major role in determining the winners.
Get recognized for your community involvement.
Visit AsphaltPavement.org/Awards to prepare for the next awards application season, which will open June through October 2025.
The following profiles celebrate the award-winning companies and the ways their employees have become integral parts of their communities:
Caring Leads the Way for Callanan
Callanan Industries notches third straight Operational Excellence Award.
Callanan Industries Inc., A CRH Company, shows it cares regularly through a wide spectrum of programs across different needs, from clearing invasive species to serving meals.
In 2023, the company’s community-focused initiative, Callanan Cares, encompassed 75 total events and programs. More than half of the workforce participated in those events, and their combined hours amounted to more than three weeks of volunteer work.
While the Callanan Cares approach, “building better communities by improving the quality of life where we work and live,” is year-round, one of the linchpins in the company’s efforts to give back is its annual Make a Difference Week.
Workers are encouraged to volunteer their time at different locales each weekday. Activities range from gardening and yard work to hosting a blood drive. The week kicks off with a day of service at the Ronald McDonald House, and in 2023 concluded with landscaping as part of a new Love Your Block community garden project in Albany.
That wasn’t the only garden Callanan workers built, though. Callanan’s summer interns complete annual projects with the leadership team, which included the initial construction of a pollinator garden. Those same interns cleared invasive species from a section of land near the company’s Pattersonville Quarry.
This marks the third year in a row that Callanan has received the Community Involvement Award. Leadership points to involving its workers in everything from the selection of causes to the selection of local events they participate in.
“Callanan is well-known and respected in its local operating areas, not just for its quality products, but for its involvement in the community. Community engagement is embedded in our company culture,” the application reads. “Callanan’s president, Don Fane, has a passion for giving back and he encourages his employees to as well. All employees have the freedom to come up with community involvement ideas and pursue them, regardless of their job title.
“We do our best to contribute to causes, both big and small. We pride ourselves on our grassroots efforts to impact local communities, which our employees are a part of. Because of this mindset, our employees have a personal connection to the causes and are even more inclined to get involved and speak up if they have something they would like us to support as a company.”
Serving Memphis
A decade of service illustrates meaningful engagement with community.
Nine in ten Memphis Stone & Gravel employees volunteer as part of the Lehman-Roberts company’s community engagement events throughout the year.
Employees live out the company’s mission statement, “helping communities where we live and work to thrive,” through participation in 20 programs during the year.
“Our team has always been eager about extending support throughout the community,” the company wrote in its application. “We’ve had the pleasure of witnessing our team become more and more plugged into our service projects with each passing year.”
Each January, for the past ten years, employees have actively participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, fanning out across the community with numerous projects in different regions. Workers at one Mississippi asphalt plant led a service team to repair a local nonprofit in Batesville.
According to Lehman-Roberts, allowing employees to bring their own ideas about service projects is the key to participation.
“One goal of our community engagement program is to create the means for employees to approach us with recommendations and serve direct neighbors and organizations in their individual communities. We are seeing more and more team members experience this call to serve,” the application reads.
That type of approach leads to a wide variety of community service events. Workers served meals to more than 40 firefighters as part of a larger Volunteer Memphis effort, and Memphis Stone & Gravel continues to sponsor a corporate team for the St. Jude Marathon.
Memphis Stone & Gravel won the award for the second year in a row, which is a testament to its annual commitment to serving the communities where its workers live.
The company’s goal for its community engagement program is to enhance the capacity of nonprofits working to make its neighborhoods better.
“When these incredible organizations succeed in their mission, we all succeed as a community.”
