This industry is generous.
Examples of such efforts are on display with one of this month’s profiled contractors, Peterman Brothers in Indianapolis. The story highlights the company’s various customer-minded and charitable initiatives.
One program aims to ease the financial pain for homeowners who try to keep a heater or air conditioning unit operating only to be forced into investing in a new one when the fix doesn’t do the job. The program lets the customer deduct the cost of the recent repair from the cost of a new unit. Through another program, each month Peterman Brothers repairs a unit — air conditioning, water heater, etc. — or installs a new unit in the home of a family or person facing hardship.
In fact, it was a charitable program that put Peterman Brothers on my radar as a potential profile in the first place. I saw a release in which the company was promoting the voting for its annual Charity Showdown. Peterman Brothers has a maintenance program and a portion of each service call for those program members is donated to charity. The public is able to select the four charities that will receive the proceeds through the Charity Showdown voting each March. Since 2020, it has generated over $270,000 worth of donations.
Peterman Brothers isn’t alone in this. Pennsylvania’s Agentis Plumbing comes to mind as it was recently featured in sibling publication Plumber. Last year, owner Nate Agentis took a trip to Nicaragua with eight of his technicians to build houses. The mission was organized by a local church and the company donated $10,000 toward the construction of two houses. The company had plans to take another similar mission trip this year.
Another generous company that has been featured in Cleaner and Plumber is T ‘N G Plumbing in Minnesota. Since 2014, the company has had its Pay It Forward program in which it targets a person or family in need and provides them an array of home improvements, largely focused around bathroom plumbing work, although the projects have grown quite expansive over time. These days, totaling the material and labor donations, the projects often exceed six figures in value.
These are only a few examples. There are many in this industry who showcase their generosity in similar ways.
All of this is to simply say good job. I commend everyone in this industry who on occasion looks beyond the matters of revenue and expenses to give back for the sole purpose of giving back. It of course would be naive to think that there isn’t some business benefit to being charitable. It creates a good public image that potentially draws people to want to do business with a company. But that is incidental, not the driving force. This sort of thing can’t be faked. If a company is performing a charitable act, it is because they want to, plain and simple.
As Agentis said in the Plumber profile a few months ago, “There’s more purpose to life than getting a paycheck on Fridays.”
Enjoy this month’s issue.
