Big Sandy Organics is looking for ways to give back to the community. The company has seen some significant growth over the last couple of years and now they are looking for ways to serve the town. Heather Dilworth explained that the idea behind the initiative came form her husband, who also coined the tagline: “We’re more than a company. We’re a community.” Heather explained that “he actually made a stamp out of it. And we stamp it on our envelopes and things…” She went on to explain that though she didn’t grow up in a small town, her husband did. “He grew up in a town, basically the size of Big Sandy. And he went back for his dad’s cousin’s funeral in Cary, Idaho a couple years ago. He ran into a bunch of his friends. The local grocery store had gone out of business. And there was only one gas station in town, and there’s no restaurants in town. He and his buddies from high school were talking about how no one wants to come back there anymore. Because everything’s out of business and there’s not really a lot going on.” The experience prompted the pair to take a hard look at ways they can invest in our town to keep it thriving.
With the goal of serving the community as a goal for their company, Heather and Thomas jumped at the opportunity created by a recent slowdown in the aftermath of a large order. “We’ve had some downtime while we’re waiting for our next order from Young Living that we should have in a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, we want to be able to help support other businesses however we can. About a week ago, Heather Pleninger came to me and said ‘Hey, can we sit down and talk? Is there any way you’d be able to help Big Sandy Activities? We really need some help in these different areas. Would you be able to maybe lend us some employees to help?’ We were like ‘Absolutely, we would love to because it is a slower time for us right now. And if we can help keep another business from going out of business or to help them thrive here, we will do whatever we can. I think that’s our main goal is we really want to see everybody win.” The solution Heather and Thomas came up with was a win-win for their employees and Big Sandy Activities. The organization has struggled to fill shifts and find new employees in recent years as a result of labor shortages. This has resulted in employees working additional shifts and management filling in as direct care staff most days. The Dillworths agreed to pay their own employees to work at the Activity Center during downtimes. “They can double dip. They can get paid at Big Sandy Activities, whatever they want to pay them, and then they’ll also be paid by us. So it’s a pretty sweet opportunity for our employees to make a little bit of extra money. And honestly, they can just feel good about helping.”
The initiative to help out other groups in the community hasn’t been limited to BSA. “A couple weeks ago, I went to a city town council meeting, and they were talking about some things that they’re trying to initiate around Big Sandy. They want to put effort into getting the town a little bit more cleaned up.” The discussion surrounded finding ways to rejuvenate properties and beautify different areas of the community. Heather explained that “One of our goals is to be able to pay our employees a couple of hours a month to go do community service. We’ll pay them to help, whether it be painting a fence or painting a house or helping landscape somebody’s yard. We want to be able to give back to the community and the city has honestly helped us get a lot of grants. They’ve done a lot of legwork for us to be able to keep going and keep doing what we’re doing. And so, we believe that this is how can we give back to our community for all that they’ve done to support us.”
Big Sandy Organics has also looked at ways to serve our local schools. “We’ve even approached Heather Wolery and Melanie Schwartzbach and some of the people at the school asking if there’s anything we can do at the high school or anything we can do at the grade school. Heather gave me a few things that maybe we could help with at the elementary and Melanie gave me one or two things we could probably help with at the high school.”
Heather summed up the rewards of service well: “I don’t know about you, but service feels good. We’ve always felt like when you serve someone else it makes you feel good. We hope that our employees will want to take that same approach. That service feels good and we want to help our community or whoever we can.”
The Dillworths and Big Sandy Organics are optimistic about the future of our community. “We’re just grateful for this community. There’s a lot of great people that live here. And there’s a lot of people that I feel like they want to help if they can. It has just been kind of exciting to see us all work together.”
