A LITTLE SPARE CHANGE CAN CHANGE LIVES

If you think there’s a lot of spare change in your couch cushions, you should see how much change comes out of an end of life vehicle (ELV) we recycle at Pull-A-Part. It’s not uncommon for our production team – our employees who manage the recycling process at Pull-A-Part – to find handfuls of change each day.

What should we do with all this change we keep finding in vehicles? That was the question our team kept coming to us with in the past. For a time, we simply deposited that money into the bank like most people would do at home after sifting through those couch cushions we mentioned above.

Some of our team members had a better idea though. What if we collected all of that change and gave it to a charity in our area? Our leadership team loved the idea, and our “Change for Charity” program was born.

All 25 of our stores now pool all the change they find in vehicles – either during the vehicle recycling process or out on the yard or even lying on the ground in the parking lot – and once there’s enough in the account, the team at our store decides on a charity to donate the funds to.

As an example, our Pull-A-Part Canton location (Canton, Ohio) recently donated $700 worth of spare change to buy diapers for The Stark County Diaper Bank, a non-profit that makes sure families don’t have to choose between food or keeping their babies in clean, fresh diapers.

Other recent examples include Pull-A-Part Tucson supporting its local Ronald McDonald House, Pull-A-Part Akron making a donation to the One of a Kind Pet Shelter in their community, and Pull-A-Part Indianapolis’ support for Silent No More, a non-profit that helps victims of domestic violence.

While Pull-A-Part regularly supports people, causes, and projects making a difference in our communities outside of this program, “Change for Charity” gives our employees a way to turn their hard work into much-needed resources for additional charities in our neighborhoods – and the best part is they get to decide as a team which organization they want to lend a hand to.

This is a small, but powerful example of how our teams are part of the communities we operate, and an initiative that embraces our Building Communities mindset. The next time you find some loose change during your trip to the yard, consider giving it to one of our team members to add to our “Change for Charity” efforts supporting organizations in your community.