Page 10 - BusinessWest November 10, 2021

Stewardship from a funding stand-
“If we say that this is the end of the pandemic — and that’s a stretch, certainly — I think what all this has done for us is provide reassurance about how just how good people are and that everyone wants to
be a part of something greater.”
Scully: “It was suddenly about putting on a dif- ferent pair of glasses and switching gears when
it comes to how you do things. It’s all about, as everyone has talked about, switching gears and saying ‘how do we adapt?’ much like we’ve all had to adapt to how we run our businesses remotely and attend meetings via Zoom.”
BusinessWest: What are the lessons we’ve learned from all this, from having to put a differ- ent pair of glasses, and how will this carry over into the future in terms of how we look at corpo- rate stewardship and giving back?
Scully: “If we say that this is the end of the pandemic — and that’s a stretch, certainly — I think what all this has done for us is provide reas- surance about how just how good people are
and that everyone wants to be a part of some- thing greater. We have a big building here, and for a while there, about four of us were here.
You weren’t connecting with people. But as soon as the opportunity came for people to come
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don’t think about — like going to a company or going to UMass on a field trip. We’re slowly getting back to whatever the new normal is. But last year, we had to have an open mindset and be really flexible about what we could do for the students and also about what we can learn from all these experiences and take those best practices.”
Johnson: “With the pivot in funding that hap- pened when a lot of companies started steering dollars toward COVID-related things, we also steered a lot of what we were doing toward COV- ID-related things; we were one of the few places that didn’t really close. When childcare was shut down for the Commonwealth essentially, and then an emergency first-responder-type childcare reopened for those working in retail or transpor- tation or hospitals, we pivoted; our centers closed for one week and then reopened as an emergency childcare facility. We did continue to operate dur- ing that time, and on the youth-development side, there were still a lot of great opportunities
point to continue to be involved with some of our corporate spon- sors that were chang- ing direction and focusing on COVID.”
Verducci: “We
essentially became
volunteers; we turned
our ballpark in Rhode
Island, where we were
still based until May, into a food-distribution net- work. Food insecurity became a huge issue in the region, so we were able to partner with Ocean State Job Lot, which would donate the food, and we would use McCoy Stadium as a vehicle to get that food to people who needed it. We also did coat drives, and we turned the park over to the state to become a testing facility. We tried to use our resources to help where it would do the most good. And once we transitioned to Worcester,
we again became volunteers, going to Worcester
PAUL SCULLY
JACK VERDUCCI
“We all came together and said, ‘how can we do the best thing for the community, and what do we have at our disposal to move quickly in this
challenging environment?’”
State University to do food drives and coat drives, and most of those partnerships were with our corporate partners that we’ve had long-time relationships with. We all came together and said, ‘how can we do the best thing for the com- munity, and what do we have at our disposal to move quickly in this chal- lenging environment?’”
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NOVEMBER 10, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest