From October 4-8, 2021, Nextep hosted its semi-annual volunteer event, Nextep Gives Back Week. This year looked slightly different from last year’s Nextep Gives Back Days with a week’s worth of in-person, virtual, and donation-based volunteer opportunities. Nexteppers created donation kits for their favorite nonprofits, packed meals for Meals on Wheels, cleaned and painted apartments for Bridges, and more!
“Since the pandemic, our people have been looking for creative ways to give back and serve the community,” said Brian Fayak, Nextep founder and CEO. “Our people have been anxiously awaiting the day they could get back to seeing some of our favorite nonprofit partners in person. So this year, we rallied together for a whole week to serve our community with donations and in-person volunteering!”
The past two years have changed the way we volunteer, and it’s been difficult to help in person. Even when we couldn’t serve nonprofits with our time, we made sure to support them through drives and donations — we gave $30,000 to The Virtue Center, $10,000 to Grand Gentlemen, and sponsored a child through Make-A-Wish, to name a few.
Earlier this year, we offered a fully Virtual Volunteer Week with opportunities that could be done individually, with families, or in small groups at the office. We focused on picking up trash in our local parks, packing donation kits, and practicing random acts of kindness throughout our community.
While Virtual Volunteer Week was a huge success, we knew we wanted to do more with our fall Nextep Gives Back Week. Nonprofits started opening their doors, and our people became more comfortable, which allowed us to host a hybrid volunteer week where there was something for everyone’s comfort level and interests. We took feedback from our spring event to make our Fall Nextep Gives Back Week even better!
We had small group volunteer opportunities available every day of the week, a blood drive, and a corporate-wide donation drive running to give everyone a chance to give back. Some of the nonprofits we partnered with during Nextep Gives Back week:
- Bridges
- Loveworks
- Meals on Wheels
- Dress for Success
- The Center for Employment Opportunities
- The Education and Employment Ministry
- Center for Children and Families, Inc.
- Oklahoma Blood Institute
In total, Nextep donated 263 hours for 14 organizations! For more information about the Nextep Charitable Foundation, visit nextep.com/about/foundation.
