It’s a given that human services organizations such as the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army will be among the first on the scene when disasters strike. But a number of Greater Des Moines companies are also quick to use their resources to assist communities in which homes and businesses have been damaged and destroyed.

“Many companies have a bigger footprint than Greater Des Moines, so their business is impacted when these types of things happen,” said Leslie Schaffer, regional executive director for the American Red Cross in Des Moines. “So there tends to be a group of companies that are more interested.”

Schaffer works closely with representatives from a number of Greater Des Moines’ major employers, many of which have the expertise and equipment to quickly provide supplies, she said. “A lot of these companies have my personal cellphone and email, and when something happens, they’re right on it,” she said.

For instance, following the tornado on May 22 in Joplin, Mo., both Casey’s General Stores Inc. and Hy-Vee Inc. delivered semitrailer loads of bottled water to the disaster scene. “It was almost 24 hours before a warehouse could be located where the trailers could be offloaded,” Schaffer said. “What’s great about Casey’s and Hy-Vee is that they can leave the trailer there to use to offload the water.”

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. couples humanitarian relief efforts with its claims services, said Monica Friedman, the company’s vice president of human resources. “We’re often the first people to arrive in a town after a disaster, so while our claims people are seeking out our policyholders, we also have humanitarian aid stations with bottled water, diapers, granola bars, ice and other things that people will need,” she said.

For a large disaster like Joplin, the company brings in a mobile claims base housed in a large trailer, which it parks in a visible location such as a grocery store or church parking lot.

Employees from Nationwide’s Des Moines office, along with others from throughout the company’s Midwest region, have volunteered to work at the scene. “We always have plenty of people who want to help,” Friedman said. “Sales managers from the region go out; that’s part of the job. But you’ll also have people from every department raising their hands and saying, ‘I want to go.’”

Though Nationwide employees who are representing the company as volunteers are paid, in some instances “people just decide to show up and help, and we may not even know about it,” she said.

Organizations such as Nationwide have been generous with monetary donations as well. This year, the Nationwide Insurance Foundation has donated $1.5 million to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which included $450,000 for tornado disaster relief efforts across the United States.

Another Greater Des Moines-based company, Kum & Go LC, provided direct aid to Joplin shortly after the disaster by trucking two semitrailers full of bottled iced tea to the Red Cross shelter. The company also organized a fund-raising campaign in which it asked customers at its more than 400 stores to consider donating a dollar to the relief effort. Through that campaign, which recently ended, Kum & Go raised $115,000 for the American Red Cross relief effort.

The amount raised for Joplin was among the biggest responses the company has seen to a fund-raising appeal, said Catherine Huggins, a Kum & Go spokeswoman. The convenience store chain has provided similar assistance on a number of occasions, she noted. In August 2008, more than 200 Kum & Go stores in Iowa raised $30,000 to help Iowans affected by flooding and tornadoes. Kum & Go also contributed $100,000 to that effort. In April, the company contributed $10,000 to the Red Cross that was earmarked to help Arkansas residents following the tornadoes that tore through that state.

“Charitable giving is a strong part of our corporate culture,” Huggins said. “In fact, Kum & Go gives back 10 percent of our company’s annual profits to charitable and educational causes each year.”

For some employees of Mercy Medical Center – Des Moines, the Joplin disaster provided an opportunity to assist former co-workers at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, which until a few years ago was owned by Mercy’s parent company, Catholic Health Initiatives Inc. (CHI). After hearing that St. John’s was severely damage by the tornado, Sandy Schuck and other members of CHI’s information technology department in Des Moines organized an initiative to fill a semitrailer full of supplies for Joplin.

Mercy put the word out to its more than 6,000 employees in Greater Des Moines through its newsletter, and also invited the public to contribute items such as cleaning supplies and storage totes, small portable appliances and sports drinks, which were hauled in a semitrailer provided by Jacobson Cos., which donated the cost of the driver. The employees also solicited $6,000 in donations from vendors CHI works with.

“I think we’re seeing really good support,” said Schuck, whose staff volunteered to man the trailer in two-hour shifts during a two-day collection effort earlier this week. “A lot of the people had been down to the hospital, so just seeing the pictures of the devastation struck a chord with them,” she said. “And being in health care, you understand the impact this has on the employees and the patients they are caring for.”

Schaffer from the Red Cross said that it’s important that individuals and companies coordinate with relief organizations like hers rather than responding on their own.

The Des Moines Red Cross chapter recently coordinated a seminar for individuals interested in volunteering to help in Joplin. “We actually got the word out through our corporate sponsors, to put it out to their employee base very quickly,” she said.

Though the Red Cross has not launched any corporate teams from Greater Des Moines, “it is certainly something we’re interested in doing,” she said.