Collecting change for 25 years adds up to $7 million for Beaufort County charities

Each month, Palmetto Electric Cooperative customers open their electric bills to find the total amount rounded up to the nearest dollar.

That extra change usually costs a customer 50 cents or less a month, but over the 25 years of Operation Round Up's life, that change has added up to millions of dollars and helped some of the Lowcountry's neediest residents.

"That change is powerful money," Second Helpings executive director Maureen Korzik said. "It is impactful and touches the lives of thousands of people in the Lowcountry every day."

Korzik, whose agency provides meals to people in need from leftovers at area restaurants and grocery stores, was among those who thanked Palmetto Electric and its 50,000 customers Thursday during a ceremony to celebrate Operation Round Up's 25th anniversary.

Second Helpings was a fledgling organization with a handful of volunteers before Operation Round Up helped it purchase its first refrigerated truck in 1992, Korzik said. Today, it has six trucks delivering 2.6 million pounds of food each year.

"We couldn't do it without Palmetto Electric and its customers," she said.

The brainchild of former Palmetto Electric president and CEO Tom Upshaw, Operation Round Up has raised more than $7 million since it began in 1989. It has helped teachers perform classroom projects, given disabled people handicapped access to their homes and fixed leaky roofs, Upshaw said.

Helen Schuller, director of the food ministry at St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Ridgeland, told the crowd of about 50 people how Operation Round Up helped purchase a refrigerator and freezer. The new appliances allowed Schuller to keep the charity's fruits, vegetables and bread fresh.

"I cannot describe how I feel today, but I am truly blessed," she said.

During Thursday's ceremony at the Technical College of the Lowcountry's New River Campus it was also announced that Palmetto Electric and TCL were setting up an endowment in Upshaw's name. A $50,000 donation will start the G. Thomas Upshaw Endowment Fund to help veterans and their families attend the college, TCL president Richard Gough said.

"We're very thankful to be part of Tom's legacy moving forward," Gough said. "Veterans are just the kind of folks in this area employers want."

Over the years, electric cooperatives across the world have asked permission to use the Operation Round Up trademark, according to a Palmetto Electric news release. More than 300 cooperatives now do so and have raised more than $100 million in all.

"The amount of people this program has touched in the Lowcountry and across the country is unbelievable," Palmetto Electric president and CEO A. Berl Davis Jr. said. "I knew we had a great program, but seeing it firsthand is truly heartwarming."

Upshaw said he never expected the initiative to grow as it did.

"It's humbling," he said. "I just had no idea that 25 years later we'd still be doing it."

Follow reporter Matt McNab at twitter.com/IPBG_Matt.

Related content:

• Teachers in Beaufort, Jasper counties win classroom grants , Nov. 8, 2012

This story was originally published November 13, 2014 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Collecting change for 25 years adds up to $7 million for Beaufort County charities."