Living Jackson Magazine

Jackson EMC
Operation Roundup is Electric

By Priscilla Daves

Headquartered right here in Jackson County in the town of Jefferson is Jackson Electric Membership Corporation, the largest electric cooperative in Georgia and the second largest in the United States in number of customers.

Jackson EMC serves 197,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in 10 metro Atlanta and northeast Georgia counties including Jackson, Barrow, Banks, Madison, Oglethorpe, Lumpkin, Clarke, Franklin, Hall and Gwinnett.

The customer mix is 92 percent residential and 8 percent commercial and industrial.

As a not-for-profit, Jackson EMC returns a portion of all “profits” or margins to customers annually. At the end of 2000, it had returned more than $38.5 million to customers since the cooperative’s founding in 1939.

Serving the community has been a major concern to the company since it was started to enable electricity to be affordable to farmers and others in the then rural counties. Like many EMCs, Jackson EMC provides scholarships, sponsors community events, contributes to community organizations and is generally a good neighbor.

Employees have been encouraged from the beginning to aid the counties in its service area, and untold numbers of hours of free services from those volunteers have been given to those communities. The employees themselves have their own fund from which to contribute to various charities or community needs.

A relatively new program, Operation Roundup, is just a little different. In October, Jackson EMC marked the first anniversary of its new program in which the cooperative rounds up the bills of 164,437 customers from a penny to 99 cents.

The Jackson EMC Foundation has awarded $810,600 to 75 organizations and 20 individuals since October 2005.

The Jackson EMC Foundation, an 11-member board, is totally separate from Jackson EMC’s board or employees. One board member serves from each of the service counties to ensure that there is local knowledge of the community.

The only employee of Operation Roundup is Lore Worley, the administrator who reviews all grants before they are submitted to the board for its decisions. Worley is paid by the EMC and not from Operation Roundup funds.

Jackson EMC is one of 42 EMCs in the state, and of those, 24 participate in Operation Roundup. The program was started by Palmetto EMC in South Carolina, an area with great poverty. The program in South Carolina has been impressive in its ability to help those in need, and that attracted the attention of the other EMCs.

Starting in March of 2005, Jackson EMC asked its customers to make a decision whether to opt out of the program. If they did not opt out, they became members.

“We started a blitz of media to let our members know that they could opt out of the program,” said Bonnie Jones, director of Public Relations and Communications. Relatively few did opt out—in fact, 90 percent of the clients are in the program and are giving an average total of $80,000 a month in the roundup to the next full dollar.

This is a program the EMC is very proud to have, Jones said.

To apply for a grant, the applicant must be from or operating in one of the service area counties served by Jackson EMC. Causes covered include human need, education and development, family enrichment, literacy, health education, awareness and advocacy, and medical or disaster-related emergencies. Awards are limited to $3,500 for individuals and $15,000 for organizations per year.

For information, visit www.jacksonemc.com.