Community
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Community Engagement
While Essential operates in several states across America, our impact is felt locally because we are an integral part of each community we serve.
We primarily source water and gas nearby our customers, we do business with many local suppliers and our employees often live in the communities they serve. We have team members in our treatment plants, offices and facilities all across our footprint working to provide reliable, essential services to their families and neighbors. Our water, wastewater and gas utility services make houses into homes, protect public health, support commerce and enable communities to flourish.
We understand that we thrive when our communities thrive. Our culture of giving back is felt at every level of the organization, whether through donations from our Essential Foundation and employee giving campaign or volunteer time put in by our dedicated team members. As a utility, we make a long-term investment in the wellbeing of the areas we serve, and we partner with other organizations that do the same.
We believe it is critical to transparently engage with our community stakeholders through constructive dialogue. Each state where we operate sets regulations that govern public participation hearings. This is an opportunity for Essential’s customers and neighbors to learn about and provide input regarding company plans and projects that will affect their community or utility service. With official recordkeeping and facilitation of these events, we consider such public hearings a core element of our stakeholder engagement activities. Feedback from this dialogue is reported to senior management and the board of directors.
We encourage our customers and community to visit the website of their state’s public utility commission, or equivalent regulatory body, to learn more about the specific processes, procedures, and regulations that govern this engagement.
Charitable Giving and Essential Foundation
Charitable Giving and Essential Foundation
Our philanthropic efforts are led by the Essential Foundation, which seeks to enhance the quality of life for our customers by engaging in collaborations that result in measurable success for the communities we serve and support the mission, vision and values of Essential Utilities.
In 2024, Essential’s charitable giving to 501(c)(3) organizations totaled $4.6 million, supporting the missions of more than 450 nonprofits.
Like us, our community partners work to provide essential resources for life. Our primary areas of giving include environmental initiatives, direct human services, emergency services, community economic growth and education.
In addition to making donations, Essential also works with partners on collection drives, fundraisers, service projects and other opportunities to engage our employees, who receive eight hours of volunteer PTO, matching gifts of up to $500 per year, and up to a full day of vacation time for participating in our annual United Way campaign. In addition, we help match our company leaders with nonprofit board opportunities so they may share their talents. This culture of service is core to who we are as a company and as a team of more than 3,000 dedicated community members.
Spotlight
Perhaps the longest-standing tradition at Essential is our culture of giving, and we are proud of our team members for always going above and beyond for their communities. To support their commitment to giving back, Essential invites all its employees to take advantage of a gift-matching program. Essential matches 100%, up to a maximum of $500 per calendar year per employee, for personal contributions made by an employee or their spouse or domestic partner to qualifying nonprofit organizations.
In addition, Essential hosts an annual giving campaign through the United Way that is also matched dollar for dollar through the Essential Foundation. For more than two decades, Essential’s partnership with the United Way has provided vital funds for the communities we serve while offering team members a simple process for donating. Through its annual workplace giving campaigns, Essential builds collective impact while inspiring employees to donate in a way that is meaningful to them. Each year, Essential team members give to a variety of initiatives, including health and human services, education, housing and hunger relief, the environment and animal welfare.
During Essential’s 2024–-2025 campaign, more than 2,000 employees pledged $386,490 to support more than 550 community organizations across the company’s footprint. Since 2020, Essential and its employees have raised more than $3.9 million through these campaigns and the company’s match.
Spotlight
Supporting Local Fire Departments
As a water and gas utility company, our relationship with local fire departments is critical to keep our facilities and communities safe. We often find ourselves working alongside these brave individuals to respond to emergency situations, and they work closely with us in our drinking water service areas, where we service the hydrants required to fight fires. In addition, many Essential employees are firefighters themselves! To show our appreciation and support for the tireless work that volunteer fire departments do to keep our communities safe, we established a program at the Essential Foundation to help fund these essential services. In 2024, our Essential Foundation provided more than $130,000 to 67 fire departments.
Employee Volunteerism
Employee Volunteerism
We recognize that volunteer service can be as meaningful to our employees as it is to the community organizations we serve. Essential’s paid volunteer time supports food banks, environmental projects, youth mentoring programs, honoring veterans, health-based initiatives and critical resource provision for low-income families. In addition, our operations staff lend their technical expertise to humanitarian projects on service trips. Employees report volunteer hours for tracking purposes throughout the organization.
Our major service opportunities take place during our Essential Earth Day and Fall for Food Banks initiatives to protect the environment and fight food insecurity, respectively. We encourage volunteer participation across our nine-state footprint to raise awareness of these issues.
In 2024, hundreds of Essential employees across corporate, water, wastewater and gas operations tracked almost 4,500 hours of paid volunteer time.
Our employees came together to volunteer their time on a number of projects impacting their local communities. We packed 1,500 backpacks with school supplies for children in need, outfitted low-income individuals with warm clothes for winter, fed 15,000 families by supporting local food banks, packed 50 bags with comfort items to surprise people receiving cancer treatment, marked veterans’ graves with flags for Memorial Day, hosted collection drives to provide essential items for low-income families, mentored dozens of students through our partnerships with schools and nonprofits, built infrastructure in other countries through humanitarian programs and much more!
Spotlight
Essential Earth Day
To carry out Essential’s mission of providing natural resources for life, it is vital that we protect those resources as well. Each year, throughout the month of April, Essential team members celebrate our commitment to environmental protection during our Essential Earth Day initiative by participating at dozens of volunteer events across our footprint. In partnership with local environmental organizations, the activities include cleaning up litter from streams, planting trees and gardens, supporting environmental education programs and enhancing outdoor recreation sites.
In 2025, Essential Earth Day empowered 450 volunteers to clean up more than 180 bags of litter and plant more than 11,000 native plants in our communities. In addition to volunteering, hundreds of team members attended educational presentations to learn about environmental topics and how to live more sustainably. Additionally, the Essential Foundation announced more than $1.2 million in nonprofit grants for environmental causes.
Essential Earth Day is part of the company’s comprehensive commitment to the environment and the communities it serves. Since the initiative launched in 2022, Essential has donated $2.9 million and more than 1,820 employees have participated in 150 events, logging more than 6,500 hours to support environmental causes, including litter cleanups, reforestation projects and other conservation efforts. The company remains dedicated to providing high-quality water, reliable natural gas service, and fostering a sustainable future for generations to come.
Spotlight
Fall for Food Banks
In line with our mission to provide essential resources for life, one of our largest charitable initiatives focuses on food insecurity. In addition to making related grants throughout the year, each November, hundreds of employees participate in our company-wide Fall for Food Banks campaign by volunteering with local hunger relief organizations and raising awareness of this key issue.
Service activities include stocking pantry shelves, preparing meals, packing food boxes, and hosting food drives. In 2024, our volunteerism directly served 15,000 people at more than 50 pantries. Since the program’s launch, 650+ employees have volunteered more than 2,100 hours, and our Essential Foundation has donated over $800,000 to address food insecurity in the communities we serve.