A business doesn’t exist inside a bubble. It has deep, multifaceted connections to the ecosystem that nourishes it – and to the community that provides it with the workers and resources it needs to flourish.

Founded on the ideals of social integrity, humanitarian values and environmental responsibility, The Synergy Company has developed a number of programs that give back in ways that directly help to strengthen and support both our community and our environment.

Synergy is located in the small, rural town of Moab, Utah, where the unemployment rate is higher than the state average. Our company has grown tremendously since its founding and has become one of the largest full-time private employers in our small town of less than 6,000 people. And, while many business “experts” and financial advisors would tell us we would be even more successful and profitable if we moved our facilities to a larger city location that might be more economically favorable to conducting business, we would never consider such a thing. The reason is simple. We deeply care about our neighbors and our community, and we also know we owe much of our success to the dedication and hard work of our family of Moab employees. Unlike so many companies today, we feel a very real responsibility to our employees, and we both honor and reward their service to us with our continued commitment to them and our commitment to remaining in this locale as we grow.

In Moab, Synergy is known for offering excellent benefits to its employees. We provide full health and dental insurance and a generous monthly allocation of Synergy products to our employees.

Synergy employees are not the only Moab residents to benefit from our presence in the community. We support our local businesses by treating our employees to gift certificates, which benefit both our employees and the community as a whole. We donate ten percent of our local sales so that our community can create new parks and plant trees destroyed by ever-encroaching development.

The Synergy Company makes multiple annual donations to locally based organizations such as the Moab Multicultural Center, the Grand County School District mentoring program, the Moab Teen Center, the Youth Garden Project, the Moab Humane Society, the women’s shelter, the Moab Free Health Clinic, Grand County Search and Rescue, the Moab Recycling Center, the Moab Folk Festival and many other humanitarian local undertakings. Every year, the company makes a meaningful donation on behalf of employee to a local nonprofit of the employee’s choice. We also support several international humanitarian and cultural programs.

In our sustainability article, we discussed the many large and small ways our company supports eco-friendly business practices. While all of these types of initiatives may seem like the commonsense thing to do, in truth, they require significant financial support that adds up to quite a lot of money over time.

For the average company, the choice between a conventional method and an ecologically sustainable method is rarely even considered due to the additional costs involved. We face these same decisions, but we have made it a key priority from our very first day in business to put sustainability ahead of profits. The added costs for the wind and solar power, for building an organic and green manufacturing facility, for supporting 3,000 acres of organic agriculture, for providing 100% health and dental care for every employee at Synergy, and for all the other initiatives we support – these are all seen as primary to being in business, not secondary.

For all these reasons, we define “giving back” as both a responsibility and a privilege. For the past many years, our ability to give back has grown to be very meaningful – and now approaches nearly 3% of our entire revenue. That’s not 3% of our net profits (which is often just a financial sleight of hand that many companies use to claim that they are giving back), it’s 3% of our total revenue as a business. This percentage is comparable to the total profits that many companies are able to earn.

We hope that you’ll let us know what you think of our commitment to sustainability and our programs for giving back. We’re trying our best to be an innovative, responsible player in this highly interconnected world we now live in, but we know there’s always room for improvement. We warmly welcome your ideas and insights to help us improve and expand our sustainability programs.

Please let us know how we’re doing and send us your suggestions by clicking here.