For over 12 years, the staff at Crews Subaru of Charleston, South Carolina, has fulfilled the Subaru Love Promise pledge by applying a can-do attitude to projects in the greater Charleston community.
“We pick not one pet project, but we choose to choose them all,” says service manager Jason Parish. “We do each project as a company, opening each other’s eyes to the need that can be met not just by money but by time, effort and energy.”
The past two years have called for extra devotion from the Crews team. Throughout the pandemic, team members have participated in blood drives for the American Red Cross, raised funds for the Lowcountry Food Bank and helped care for the yard of the local Ronald McDonald House, a free hotel for families of children being treated at nearby hospitals.
Parish chalks up the charitable spirit to the culture that owner Robert Crews, general manager H. R. Hicks, and marketing and events manager Ken French, along with Subaru of America, Inc. (SOA), have created. The retailer’s 65 employees are so eager to volunteer that there is often a wait list to participate.
Since the beginning of COVID-19, French has organized one of the Crews Subaru team’s biggest projects: 29 blood drives for the American Red Cross (ARC) – and counting. Nearly twice a month, the retailer clears the showroom of vehicles during business hours in order to set up stations where employees and community members can donate blood.
“The buses that the ARC used for blood drives didn’t allow for social distancing, so they reached out to us and said there’s a big need for blood,” Parish says. Twenty percent of Crews employees give blood at each drive, which Parish credits to French leading by example. “Ken opens your eyes to doing the right thing,” he says.
Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2020, Crews was recognized by ARC as having reached the No. 1 donation spot in the entire country for Automotive Blood Drive Location.
The team at Crews also knew that there were critical food shortages in their community, so they worked with Subaru to raise donations for Feeding America®, a nonprofit organization that runs a network of food banks across the United States.
SOA and its retailers donated 50 million meals to Feeding America in 2020, which helped supply meals through Feeding America’s 199 partner food banks, including Charleston’s Lowcountry Food Bank.
Crews Subaru also donated more than $86,000 directly to Lowcountry this year. Through the efforts of Crews and SOA, the Lowcountry Food Bank received funding to help provide more than 1 million meals to people affected by the pandemic.
In July, with Charleston feeling like a steam bath at 95 degrees Fahrenheit, a team of 38 volunteers from Crews Subaru and Seacoast Church arrived at the Ronald McDonald House of Charleston at 7 a.m. For the next eight hours, they filled over 100 bags of yard waste, trimmed 10 palm trees, removed a city block’s worth of hedges and brush, and backed in truckloads of mulch.
It was the first time in many months that the yard had received volunteer care due to the coronavirus protocols, and a staff member who was present became teary-eyed, Parish says. The Crews team committed to coming back every month to tend to the shrubs, palm trees and flower beds.
“Everything last year was so precarious for everyone,” says Kathy “KP” Papadimitriou, CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Charleston. To create some level of normalcy for families staying at the house, cleaning up the yard was crucial, she says. “People commonly will go and sit out in the yard on their cellphone and update their family members on the latest report from the doctors. Crews’ work was like a million dollars to me.”
Parish believes that every Subaru retailer can create a charitable, neighborly culture by seeing the need and simply helping out.
“We, as Americans, get busy in our everyday lives, and we assume someone else is going to do the work,” he says. “We are proud to share the Subaru Love Promise. For the Crews Subaru team, it’s in our DNA.”
The Subaru Love Promise Retailer of the Year Award
Each month, Subaru of America, Inc. (SOA) celebrates a retailer who is devoted to the Subaru Love Promise, a community-minded pledge to help people, animals and the environment.
From those honorees, SOA selects the Retailer of the Year, shining a much-deserved spotlight on a retailer team that has gone above and beyond.
Congratulations this year to Crews Subaru – as well as to every Subaru retailer who works hard to give back.
