South Plains Electric Cooperative’s Operation Round Up donates $60,000 to volunteer fire departments - KCBD

Operation Round Up has been running since 1993. The program works simply: participating co-op members have their monthly bills rounded up to the nearest dollar, which typically costs them about $6 a year. That spare change adds up fast when you pool it across thousands of households, and the money goes back out to the communities those members live in.

Volunteer fire departments are the first line of defense in rural areas where there is no paid municipal department down the street. A $1,500 check will not buy a new truck, but it covers gear, training costs, fuel, or equipment repairs that cash-strapped volunteer departments often struggle to fund on their own. With dry conditions and wind making wildfire risk a real concern right now, the timing of this round of donations carries extra weight for the departments protecting farms, ranches, and small towns outside Lubbock.

South Plains Electric framed the program from the start around giving people "a hand up, not a hand out," and after more than three decades it has quietly become one of the steadier sources of community funding in the area.