On Monday, May 16th friends and community members gathered to celebrate a goal achieved: A brand new playground in Peterson. The new playground, offering 19 different activities, was installed in early May and the AcenTek Foundation is proud to announce their support of this community project.
Last summer Peterson’s city maintenance man recommended getting rid of the old playground as it was no longer suitable for use. Many of the pieces making up the old playground were donated by area families who no longer had the need for them at their home. Parts were very worn and some of the wooden pieces were even rotting. Unfortunately the city council was unable to fund replacing the playground but that didn’t stop this small community. The Friends of Peterson began exploring ways to make a new playground possible. Last fall they were approved for a UCare grant through Fillmore County, however, they still needed to come up with about $20,000 in order to have enough to fund the entire project. That is when they reached out to the community, asking for contributions to help them with their objective. The response was phenomenal. The AcenTek Foundation is pleased to be listed among those who contributed to this community reaching that goal, along with Rushford Area Community Foundation, Friends of Peterson, Merchant’s Bank (Rushford), Marine Credit Union (Rushford), Rushford State Bank, Thrivent Financial, Rushford Peterson Valley Lion’s Club, Tri-County Electric, Peterson American Legion and the Peterson American Legion Auxiliary.
“Contributing to a project as meaningful as the Peterson playground project is just another example of how AcenTek cares,” CEO, Todd Roesler, remarked. “This playground is going to be the setting for lots of summer memories and it’s pretty gratifying to know that the AcenTek Foundation helped to make those memories happen.”
While the playground project in Peterson is the most recent project that the AcenTek Foundation has been involved with, it is not the only one this year. St. Mary’s Catholic School (Caledonia, MN) was able to purchase iPads for their students with some help from the Foundation; the Commonweal Theatre (Lanesboro, MN) received funding to allow free admittance to their productions to area residents who are unable to afford the ticket price; Ridgeway Community Schools were able to upgrade their network equipment and the Boy Scout Troop #53 (out of Elgin, IA) received some help with the cost of sending troop members to camp all courtesy of the Foundation. The AcenTek Foundation is both proud and excited to give back to the communities they serve by contributing to such beneficial projects.
Locally owned and fully committed to customer care, AcenTek has proudly served southeast Minnesota and northeast Iowa and for over 65 years providing Voice, Video and Internet solutions. The AcenTek Foundation was created five years ago and is funded by the unclaimed capital credits of its members. It is AcenTek’s duty to make multiple attempts to give our members every opportunity to receive their credits, but after all of those attempts have been made and the money is still unclaimed, by law the money becomes ‘unclaimed property.’ According to Minnesota state law, AcenTek can only donate that money to non-profit, tax-exempt organizations to be used for economic development or educational purposes. If the unclaimed credits are not used for these specific reasons, AcenTek has to turn over those funds to the state. The AcenTek Foundation Board, made up of officers from the Ace Telephone Association Board of Directors and AcenTek employees, takes requests for funds (submitted through a form found on our website) and then decides which of the applicants should be awarded the funds. Decisions on requests of these funds are made in January, May and September.