Securian Financial helps facilitate donations through unused parking garage fees

Longtime St. Paul company Securian Financial, its foundation and employees have decided to help out the community during these trying times.

Securian sent most of its 2,900 employees that work in downtown St. Paul home to work during the pandemic. When this happened, it left their parking decks empty but employees were still being charged for those valuable spots. This gave Securian Financial an idea.

"Beginning in May, we decided to suspend parking contract payments and what that means is anyone in our Securian family that had a contract we were going to suspend the payments and let them have that money and they could keep their contract, but we gave them an option, we allowed them to donate that parking fee to a nonprofit in St. Paul and the foundation would match it dollar for dollar. And the response was fantastic," said Securian Financial Community Relations Manager Nicole Hansen.

"The first month we saw nearly $150,000 donated to nonprofits at this time when nonprofits are really struggling. Uncertainty, demand is high, it was just such a fantastic gift to call a nonprofit and offer them a non-solicited gift. It was just fantastic. And that was just month one," Hansen continued.

Now that total is over $382,000. The money will help local nonprofits address social injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s death.