Raising the roof and the bar on giving back

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn how this industry organization takes connecting and serving the community to another level.  

Recently, The Coffee Shops™ had the chance to host Mikell Bollinger, vice president of community engagement at SRS Distribution and the executive director of their charitable arm, SRS Raise the Roof Foundation, to discuss his involvement with Raise the Roof. The foundation is a charitable organization that, while affiliated with SRS Distribution, is a separate legal entity.  

Raise the Roof was founded by Dan Tinker (the CEO and president of SRS Distribution), John Davis (a retired chief legal officer at SRS), Gary Swan (the retired chief financial officer) and Ron Ross (now retired founder of SRS) after the four of them saw a common goal they wanted to achieve, but through a formal channel.  Mikell shared, “When SRS was first established as a company, it was already involved in community support and charity. And so, in 2012, when the four of them decided to get together and create Raise the Roof, it really just formalized how we handled our charitable giving and activities.” 

Overall, SRS Raise the Roof’s mission statement establishes three main areas of focus: 

1 - Military support 

Veterans and their families are a topic that is close to the heart for many employees of SRS Distribution. Mikell’s own father served in both the Navy and the Army, similarly to Raise the Roof founders, Dan and Ron, whose fathers served. Mikell shared, “It’s a topic that’s really important to us, throughout SRS, we have a lot of employees who are either active guard or reserve members and or were members of the military and now have veteran status that we've recruited as key employees throughout the company. So that's a very important mission area for us.” 

2 - Disaster relief 

As a company that distributes roofing and building materials, SRS is deeply familiar with the damage that can be caused by natural disasters. In response, they have made disaster relief one of the pillars of their Raise the Roof mission. Mikell emphasized, “We just want to give back to the communities that are impacted by catastrophic natural disasters.” 

3 – Staying local 

And their third pillar is really focused on connecting with communities local to SRS branches. This tends to focus on helping children and families in crisis. As Mikell put it, “We address issues like food insecurity, homelessness, trauma and abuse for children and families. We also work with service dogs to help individuals with disabilities, both children and adults, and through our Heritage space we connect people in need with things like lawn care and swimming lessons.” 

Learn more about the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation in their Coffee Shops directory or at www.srsraisetherooffoundation.org.