Goodness all around: NJ companies give back to health care workers, others

Businesses throughout New Jersey continue to donate money, personal protective equipment and food to health care workers, organizations and the New Jersey community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elmwood Park-based Spencer Savings Bank donated $50,000 each to Hackensack University Medical Center in Bergen County and Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Union County as they fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The hospital workers – doctors, nurses, entire medical teams and their support divisions – are all on the frontlines of this pandemic. They are our heroes,” said Spencer President and Chief Executive Officer Jose Guerrero in a statement. “We join communities all over the state of New Jersey in clapping for them! Thank you for the countless sacrifices you continue to make – risking your own lives to save ours.”

Benjamin Moore, headquartered in Montvale, donated $100,000 to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey and Frontline Foods, providing nearly 230,000 meals to residents and health care workers throughout New Jersey. Benjamin Moore’s Newark facility, where it’s been making paint since the 1920s, has been manufacturing hand sanitizer that it delivered to the State Police for distribution to hospitals and health care facilities throughout the state.

Parsippany-based real estate company Planned Cos. donated PPE to The New Jersey Veterans Home at Paramus and Atrium Post-Acute Care of Park Ridge, both skilled nursing facilities.

“It’s great to see so many businesses in our community, like Planned Cos. and its employees, finding ways to support North Jersey and the most vulnerable among us. It’s vital that we all work to ensure our long-term care facilities, veterans’ homes, and nursing homes have the resources and equipment they need to fight these outbreaks,” said Congressman Josh Gottheimer,  D- 5th District. “Right now is the time for our entire community to come together to find new ways to support one another.”

Planned Companies’ donation allows for the safe care of The New Jersey Veterans Home’s 336 residents, the Atrium facility’s 155 assisted living patients, and patients in the Atrium’s 210 post-acute care beds.

Indian fast casual chain Curry Up Now, with a location in Hoboken, launched a meal-matching program called Roll It Forward where customers can add a $12 donation meal to their orders to be delivered to those in need. For every donation meal purchased, the company is matching meal-for-meal; and on May 6, or Nurses Appreciation Day, Curry Up Now will deliver meals to Christ Hospital in Jersey City and Hoboken University Medical Center.

All donations thereafter will go to those in need in the Hoboken community, including furloughed or unemployed hospitality workers and folks in homeless shelters.

Rao’s Homemade, a sauce company based in Montclair, donated $40,000 to nonprofit Jersey Cares COVID-19 relief efforts. Additionally, its partnering with celebrity chefs, including Top Chef All Stars’ Gail Simmons and Cake Boss’ Buddy Valastro, for an Instagram food show series with a Make One, Give One component: For every fan who makes something featured on Rao’s Homemade’s “Sauce for a Cause” Instagram cooking series, Rao’s Homemade will donate a meal for a family in need via Jersey Cares.

Summit-based bedsheet and mattress company Boll & Branch donated 1,300 mattresses to homeless shelters in Pennsylvania, 1,000 mattresses and 5,000 pillows to emergency medical operations in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their mattresses are hospital-grade and made with a nylon stain-resistant cover, which allows them to be easily and efficiently disinfected, according to Vice President of Brand Communications Caitlyn Durcan.

“When we received Governor Cuomo’s email in mid-March alerting residents of New York State that they would be building a pop-up hospital in the Javits Center on Manhattan’s West side for an anticipated influx of COVID-19 patients, we looked to our U.S. supply chain and found that our mattress and pillow suppliers met the tangible needs of the state and could produce within a short time frame. With this approach, we were also able to keep our partner’s facilities running and staff employed,” Durcan told NJBIZ via email.

Boll & Branch has since been in touch with “a dozen or so states with high numbers of COVID cases,” but as the curve has flattened, the need for outfitting field hospitals has lessened. To continue its efforts, Durcan said the company opened up the conversation to see where and how they could be of help, which spurred the donation to Pennsylvania to be used in veterans’ homeless shelters.

“Due to the pandemic, the homeless shelter situation across the state is bulging at the seams as they try to add new capacity to keep folks off of the streets while maintaining proper distances between them,” Durcan said. “The hospital grade mattresses we donate will also allow them to disinfect much more precisely and therefore keep a healthier environment for their residents. In choosing to broaden our efforts from medical operations to emergency operations more generally we asked ourselves the question that guides us internally: Does this benefit the common good? The answer was a resounding yes, and we were happy to make that shift.”

Boll & Branch is also offering 10 percent off sitewide with the code GOODNESS, where 10 percent of those purchase proceeds will help fund the company’s donation efforts.