The “Let’s Give Arizona a Hand Up Award” will be presented at the upcoming Champions of Change Awards through a partnership between AZ Big Media and Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona. Finalists for the award were determined based on how their company’s corporate giving and community volunteer activities are building a brighter future for Arizona nonprofits and making a direct and quantifiable impact on our communities. The Champions of Change Awards will be held Thursday, May 16, 2024. Each day leading up to the event, we will preview one finalist for the Let’s Give Arizona a Hand Up Award. Today, learn about the story of Avnet.
Sponsors of the Champions of Change Awards include BOK Financial (impact sponsor), Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona (spotlight sponsor), Stearns Bank (step-and-repeat sponsor), Maricopa Corporate College at Maricopa Community Colleges (photo booth sponsor), Lerner & Rowe Gives Back (name tag sponsor), REDW Advisors and CPAs (floral sponsor) and Center for the Future of Arizona (dessert sponsor).
To learn more about the Champions of Change Awards, click here.
Avnet
Five years. The world has been through a lot in the past five years and things are only now beginning to normalize again. This includes Avnet’s long-standing relationship with HandsOn Greater Phoenix.
Avnet has been supporting this organization since the nonprofit’s beginning more than 30 years ago. It’s part of our culture, our DNA and we’ve made a significant impact with them in the Phoenix community over these years.
Avnet is a leading global technology distributor and solutions provider and has served customers’ evolving needs for more than a century. Our global corporate headquarters is located in Phoenix, AZ, with a local workforce of 1,400. Avnet’s employee volunteer and charitable giving program is called Avnet Cares.
Typically, Avnet’s annual project with HandsOn Greater Phoenix supports their Serve A Thon in the springtime. Serve A Thon hosts volunteers participating in various projects across the Valley. Over the years, Avnet has completed 30 Serve A Thon projects, with over 3,000 employees participating and over $600,000 donated.
However, during COVID, Serve A Thon was postponed, but that didn’t stop Avnet employees. Working with HandsOn Greater Phoenix Chief Operating Officer, Rhonda Oliver and the group’s Salute to Service project, Avnet employees masked up – distanced themselves and painted a house for a veteran’s widow. That was in 2020, the next two years Avnet volunteers went back to doing Serve A Thon, participating in school beautification projects.
Then 2023 brought an extra special celebration for Phoenix-based Avnet employees as it was HandsOn’s 30th Anniversary.
Avnet’s 2023 project was with Falcon Hill Elementary School in Mesa. Avnet had more than 60 volunteers over two days help with a great number of projects around the school. The group constructed picnic benches, repainted a mural on the basketball court, painted benches throughout the school, renovated the garden, created a sensory game for autistic students, added math facts to the stairwells and completed a makeover of the teacher’s lounge. The principal and staff at the school were thrilled to see the transformation that took place over the weekend. The Serve a Thon event is an annual favorite of Avnet employees and is by far the most attended activity of the year.
“Avnet’s long-standing commitment to HandsOn Phoenix and Serve A Thon is a testament to their dedication to the local community. It is an incredibly unusual circumstance to have a corporation fund and participate with the same organization and project consistently for 30 years,” shared Rhonda Oliver, Chief Operating Officer with HandsOn Greater Phoenix.
Beyond supporting HandsOn Greater Phoenix in 2023, more than 1,000 Avnet employees participated in more than 100 group volunteer projects across the globe. In Arizona, there were over 50 volunteer group projects and close to $400,000 in charitable contributions distributed.
