(sponsored content)
Duquesne Light Company (DLC) doesn’t just say it cares about the community; it lives it.
Approximately two million dollars to local organizations and four thousand hours of volunteer work per year are the highlights of how DLC carries out its mission to be community-oriented.
“DLC has been serving Southwestern Pennsylvania for more than 100 years, so we’ve been embedded in the region providing safe and reliable electric service,” said Angela Feldbauer, manager of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and corporate giving. “But our goal is to do more than keep the lights on. We continually invest in initiatives that enhance the quality of life for those we serve. As an essential service provider, one of DLC’s core values that guides us each and every day is community. We work where we live, with seventy percent of our employees also being our customers, so it’s personal to us; when our employees thrive, our customers thrive, and our communities thrive.”
DLC is one of the Pittsburgh region’s electric utility providers, with more than 1,700 employees serving over 600,000 customers in Allegheny and Beaver counties. DLC’s service territory spans 812 square miles and maintains more than 8,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. Ninety percent of its customer base is residential.
Thus, DLC is on the minds of hundreds of thousands of local residents every day. And as it turns out, the residents are on the minds of DLC’s corporate giving leaders every day, too. Feldbauer and Annie Shvach, associate of corporate giving, are customer-focused when thinking of ways that DLC can give back to the communities it serves.
For years, DLC has formed partnerships with local organizations and corporate entities to assist them through its charitable giving program.
DLC employees volunteering at South Side Park to help support reforestation efforts in the South Side Slopes with Community Impact Grant recipient, South Side Community Council of Pittsburgh, on behalf of Friends of South Side Park.
But in 2021, DLC unveiled its now-popular Community Impact Grants program, which focuses on smaller non-profit organizations with yearly operating budgets under $500,000. In the three years since its inception, DLC has awarded more than $600,000 in microgrants to nearly 100 local organizations. Shvach said that the year 2024 will be no different. DLC has opened the application process for the Community Impact Grants program on its website, (https://www.duquesnelight.com/company/about/community/charitable-giving/community-impact-grants) and it will remain open until August 5, 2024. Organizations that have been awarded Community Impact Grants in prior years are eligible to apply for the 2024 grants.
Once all the applications have been submitted, Shvach said they are reviewed by a committee of DLC employees, with final decisions being communicated within six weeks of the submission deadline to applicants who put forth a comprehensive project to help fill a gap in the community.
To be considered for a Community Impact Grant, organizations must meet DLC’s charitable giving program guidelines listed on its website, including serving residents in Allegheny and/or Beaver counties. Additionally, organizations must be a 501c3 non-profit or state equivalent, or partner with a registered 501c3 or state equivalent fiscal sponsor to apply.
Shvach said DLC has three primary focus areas for organizations to receive a Community Impact Grant—Social Equity, Education, and Environmental Justice. DLC wants to see organizations whose mission is, say, having more affordable housing in the region, giving residents access to food, providing refugee assistance, offering better access to a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education, building community gardens or creating climate resilience projects, for example.
“This is where a lot of our partnerships start with non-profit organizations,” Shvach said. “We’re able to grow meaningful relationships from the (Community Impact Grants) program.”
Some of the non-profits that have been awarded Community Impact Grants include Aliquippa Green Inc., Healing Hunger Beaver County, Larimer Consensus Group, Willissae’s Agency for Vision and Empowerment (WAVE), Repair The World Pittsburgh, Brookline Teen Outreach, and the Veterans Breakfast Club.
Todd DePastino, founding director of the Veterans Breakfast Club, publicly thanked DLC in a video posted to social media in 2023 for selecting his organization for a Community Impact Grant in 2022. DePastino said the microgrant allowed his organization to host more than 12 veterans’ storytelling events, “where veterans of all eras, ages and branches of service and backgrounds came together to share their stories of service.”
A group that sometimes can be overlooked and underappreciated, DePastino said in the video that the veterans were able to “connect, heal, educate and inspire” each other. The veterans also were able to “foster a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the military experience” for those who weren’t veterans.
Some veterans were able to connect with people who helped them get better jobs and even a new career, DePastino said.
“Thank you to DLC and its Community Impact Grant program for allowing the Veterans Breakfast Club to support the veteran community in the Pittsburgh region,” DePastino said.
In addition to the Community Impact Grants and general charitable giving programs, DLC’s employees don’t mess around when it comes to volunteerism. In 2023, its employees clocked more than 4,300 hours of community service, Feldbauer said. And over the years, you could find DLC employees rolling up their sleeves supporting the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s end-of-the-season garden cleanups in Moon Township, Pa., and Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood; planting rain gardens in Wilkinsburg, Pa., with the organization Grounded Strategies; and clearing vacant lots and planting flowers in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District neighborhood, among others.
DLC employees volunteering at the Sheridan Avenue Orchard and Garden with Community Impact Grant recipient Repair the World Pittsburgh.
“When I started at DLC about two years ago, I was shocked by how many employees reached out to me every day about volunteer events,” Shvach said. “We understand that oftentimes, there is a need for physical support more than fiscal support, and making an impact through community service is really just who our employees are.”
“What I have experienced at DLC is a strong sense of employee pride to work at an organization that serves our community, whether it’s through our essential service, our corporate giving program or otherwise,” added Feldbauer.
Whether it’s financial support, or boots on the ground, DLC has its ears glued to the community’s needs.
“We want to ensure our charitable dollars and the non-profit causes that we’re supporting are reflective of the communities that we serve, which directly ties back to DLC’s vision of delivering a larger than light, clean energy future for all,” Feldbauer said. “Supporting and serving as a trusted partner to all of our customers is truly embedded in who DLC is as an organization.”
(To learn more about DLC’s Community Impact Grants, visit their website, (https://www.duquesnelight.com/company/about/community/charitable-giving/community-impact-grants) or reach out to community@duqlight.com.)
About Post Author
