In the early part of 2023, PureTalk launched a campaign called “Round Up for Veterans.” It’s an option that allows PureTalk customers to donate to the America's Warrior Project (AWP) by rounding up their monthly bill to the nearest dollar. 

The idea came about after one visit to a grocery store by PureTalk’s chief strategy officer Will Curry. 

“It’s a value that we stand behind as a company and it’s important to our country and we’re patriotics,” Curry said. “I just had this thought one day — I think I might’ve gone to a store that asked me to round up — and I said, ‘You know what? We need to create a program where we round up and find a charity. I have a personal relationship with AWP. I can use them as my test charity.’” 

Three years ago, Curry met Jim Lorraine — AWP’s president and CEO. Curry’s dad, who was in the Air Force, was injured in service and was having difficulty receiving VA benefits.  Lorraine assisted Curry and his dad to get those benefits. 

That is why AWP is the charity of PureTalk’s campaign. 

“This was about three years ago. As the PureTalk brand was growing in parallel as that personal relationship of mine was growing, we started to get to a size where we wanted to identify ourselves,” Curry said. “‘Who are we to our customers? Who are we to the public?’ And AWP had always been in the  back of my mind. ‘How can I do something to help Veterans? How can the company do something?’” 

AWP is an organization that Curry said helps “link veterans to necessary services that may not be generally available.” 

At present, there have been approximately 60,000-65,000 individual donations since the campaign’s inception in January 2023. 

Curry emphasized how the nature of billing in the telecommunications industry has impacted the program’s success.

“The beautiful thing about our business is it’s a recurring business. When someone signs up, they have the option to say, ‘Yeah, you can round up my change this one time.’ Or, ‘Hey, every month, I round up every month so my bill is a flat dollar amount,’” Curry said. “Now, we’ve built this base of customers — and we build it every month — that say, ‘Sure, you can round up my bill for AWP every month.’ Our goal is to get it to a very meaningful number for AWP.” 

There are future plans for PureTalk to include other charities and organizations into this campaign, too, outside of AWP. 

In late September 2023, PureTalk announced another campaign to relieve $10 million in debt for military men and women. 

Curry believes PureTalk’s quality service as a mobile network provider in addition to its support of veterans separates them from similar companies in the same space. 

“We constantly manage to make sure we’re providing value to our customers but also we want customers that understand our values — family, country, being in freedom. The owners and management at PureTalk believe in those things and we think there’s a lot of customers out there that share those values and want to do business with a company that does,” Curry said. “Opposed to bigger companies who go wherever political winds push them to go. We don’t do that. We stay true to our values. 

“While we don’t necessarily don’t get political, we feel champion veterans’ cause is something everyone should get behind and it’s something that everyone can relate to. It shows what kind of company and people we are.”