now happening at c spire

C Spire Makes The American Heart Association the Official Partner of PERCS with a Purpose Charitable Giving Program

2013-10-15

PERCS members can share reward points to help raise funds and boost donations for The American Heart Association to help support heart research and save lives

Ridgeland, Miss. (Oct. 15, 2013) – C Spire announced today that it has named The American Heart Association (AHA) as an official charity partner of its popular PERCS with a Purpose program.

PERCS members are able to support the AHA by sharing PERCS reward program points to benefit the organization and its ‘My Heart. My Life’ campaign, which is helping individuals all over the country embrace a healthier lifestyle and improve their cardiovascular health.

Over the next several weeks, PERCS with a Purpose will allow PERCS reward program members to share accumulated PERCS reward points to help raise funds for the AHA. To date, 16,104 points have been shared for AHA. Overall, nearly 750,000 points have been shared by PERCS reward program members since the inception of the PERCS with a Purpose program in 2012.

C Spire’s goal was to raise $25,000 for the AHA, which the company already has exceeded with its collective fundraising efforts to date. “As part of our corporate giving and wellness initiative, we are supporting the American Heart Association this year in a variety of ways, including our PERCS with a Purpose program and other fun events and activities throughout the year,” said Jim Richmond, vice president of Corporate Communications for C Spire. “Collectively, we sought to raise $25,000 for the AHA, but more importantly, hundreds of C Spire employees and customers are now taking steps towards a heart healthy lifestyle.”

As part of C Spire’s corporate giving and wellness initiative and its continued investment in the communities it serves, the company is supporting the AHA over the next several months in a number of ways, including voluntary payroll deduction, Heart Walk events this fall, such as the Metro Jackson Heart Walk at the Mississippi State Capitol on November 2, and more. The company is also using the partnership with the AHA to educate employees and customers about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle and encouraging them to support the research and educational efforts of AHA in fighting heart disease.

“Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of adults and the No. 2 killer of children in the U.S. and the American Heart Association is making great strides to change the statistics by educating people about the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle,” said Jennifer Wellhausen, regional vice president of the AHA. “However, without generous giving programs and charitable donations from initiatives like C Spire’s PERCS with a Purpose, our jobs would be much harder to do. We want to extend our thanks and appreciation to C Spire and its more than 1,300 employees and the thousands of C Spire customers that support our organization and our mission.”

C Spire customers and followers are passionate about supporting charitable causes and are among the most generous in the nation. Charitable donation levels in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee households all averaged above 7 percent of total annual income – the highest in the nation last year, according to a comprehensive survey and study on giving by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

“C Spire has always made charitable giving a priority and we continue to look for ways to turn our current services and programs into vehicles for giving back to the people and communities we serve,” Richmond said. “PERCS with a Purpose engages our program members and encourages them to get involved in an easy and fun way by sharing their earned PERCS reward points to help all of these programs.”

C Spire kicked off its PERCS with a Purpose program in October 2012 with a successful, month-long campaign where reward program members shared nearly 600,000 reward points, resulting in a $20,000 charitable contribution to the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer initiative. The campaign was so successful that C Spire decided to expand to other charities and make it a permanent part of the PERCS rewards program.

The PERCS program is the nation’s only loyalty program in the wireless industry that rewards customers for their loyalty and for interacting with the brand and sharing their views on the company’s community social forum. Customers also earn Status PERCS for their tenure.

Since its inception, C Spire customers have taken full advantage of PERCS’ benefits, with over 463,626 members, including 118,000 non-customers, earning 297 million PERCS reward points. To date, customers have redeemed their Status PERCS for over 580,000 rewards.

For more information on the C Spire PERCS rewards program, go to www.cspire.com/rewards. For more information about the PERCS with a Purpose program, go to www.cspire.com/purpose. For more information about the Metro Jackson Heart Walk, visit www.metrojacksonheartwalk.org.

About C Spire

C Spire is a diversified telecommunications and technology services company that provides world-class customer service and a superior comprehensive suite of customer-inspired wireless communications, high-speed Internet access and a range of other telecommunications products and services to consumers and businesses with a personal focus. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news. For more information about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter at www.twitter.com/cspire.