Jennie Levy, Hypertherm Social Responsibility

Sure. We design and manufacture machines that cut metal using plasma and laser technology. We sell those systems and consumables worldwide to a variety of applications from farmers and artists to shipbuilders and large manufacturers. And in fact, this is an example right here of one, a very small version of a plasma cutter. That's right. This is our PowerMax 45; it's one of our handheld plasmas, but it also can be used in a mechanized application, and it uses air in its plasma technology.

Yes, in the Upper Valley, we have about 1,100 associates. We have 11 buildings in the Upper Valley. We're building our 12th building, which is targeted to be a LEED Silver building, which is very exciting for us—our first time doing that.

Sure. Corporate social responsibility at Hypertherm includes our philanthropy giving through the Hope Foundation. It includes our community engagement through our community service time, and it also includes our environmental stewardship initiatives that are company-wide.

Yep, it's a company foundation that we started in 2010. It's its own 501(c)(3), so it's its own nonprofit organization. It's funded by Hypertherm, and we have a group of associates from across our entire organization that sit on a volunteer basis on the Hope Committee. They basically allocate funds to people who have applied from our region for grants. So it's an application process? Yes, we get grant applications from our online portal that people put information into, and then we review those grants. The associates on the group review those grants, and our focus areas are around health and wellness, arts and education, the environment, and housing. So those are our four main areas of focus, but we also reward grants in other areas. That's awesome. Really, it's a practice Hypertherm has been doing for years. The Hope Foundation, as I said, was founded in 2010, but we've had a group of associates for almost a decade allocating awards to the community.

That's right. So this year, actually, we upped our community service time to three paid days a year to every associate, so that's 24 hours. Last year was 16 hours, and last year we accomplished a major milestone for us: we had 78% of all of our associates who participated in community service time, and we donated as a group over 9,000 hours into the community, which was our highest year yet. The year before, we had been at 62% and 7,000 hours, so we had a huge leap up to 78% and 9,000 hours. It was really quite an accomplishment and a major commitment from across the organization, from all of our associates and our leaders to really make that possible.

I mean, the ideal partner for Hypertherm is somebody that we can combine both our time in the community through our community service time and then our grant giving through the Hope Foundation, and combine both of those together as a partnership. So we have some strategic partners in our community that we have really strong relationships on both sides of that equation. One would be The Haven, who I believe you're speaking with. We have given to their ongoing operating expenses as well as groceries for their food kitchen, as well as donating to their capital campaign for their recent addition of an adult shelter. And then we have hundreds, almost a thousand hours almost of associates volunteering time in the food pantry and in the clothing pantry, and that happens a lot, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Haven is a very good example of that combination. Another is COVER in White River Junction, and they do home repairs. They do home repairs exactly for low-income families and homeowners, really not just families. And we have also given on an ongoing basis to them, especially to their weatherization program, and that combines housing and environment for us. And then we also have a dedicated Hypertherm community service project day with them once a month, where it's entirely populated by Hypertherm associates who will go out to a COVER home and work on home repair with COVER. So that combination is really strong for us and is really our ideal type of partnership.