Word & Brown Companies Adds Website Links to Red Cross

Orange, Calif.-based The Word & Brown Companies announced that it added Web site links directly to the American Red Cross on its corporate Web site and subsidiaries’ home pages to assist relief efforts for the Hurricane Katrina disaster, making it easier for customers and anyone in the general public to make donations, connect with the missing persons registry, get information about how to help and read the latest updates. The links to the Red Cross’s secure Web site, www.redcross.org, are posted on www.wordandbrowncompanies.com and on the home pages for: Word & Brown General Agency, www.wordandbrown.com; CHOICE Administrators, www.choiceadmin.com; CaliforniaChoice, www.calchoice.com; CaliforniaChoice 51+, www.calchoiceplus.com; and CONEXIS, www.conexis.org.

Word & Brown also donated more than $20,000 to the American Red Cross hurricane relief fund. Employees rallied together for cash contributions which were matched dollar for dollar by the co-founders of The Word & Brown Companies, John M. Word III and Edward J. “Rusty” Brown. Donations of money as well as massive amounts of clothing and other items were collected at the Orange, CA, corporate headquarters of The Word & Brown Companies, at the Dallas, Texas headquarters of CONEXIS, and at Word & Brown’s four regional offices throughout California.

The company’s Human Resources department encouraged employee participation by offering “casual day for a cause” to those employees who donated any amount to the fund. In addition, all employees were given helpful information on how to prepare for a disaster including building a kit and making a plan, and an outline of the stages of recovery from a natural disaster.

“We want to help make it easier to make the direct connection to assist with relief efforts and get information about this disaster,” said John M. Word III, co-founder, The Word & Brown Companies, “and we were overwhelmed with the generosity shown by Word & Brown employees. It is another good example of the supportive spirit we have in this company. Our employees donate in many ways to a large number of charitable organizations and special causes — giving of their time as well as cash contributions. Earlier this year they contributed $5,447 to the Red Cross fund for the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, which we matched to total almost $ll,000. Their response to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy was immediate and heartfelt, flooding our mailrooms with clothing and then staff jumped in from all departments to box and distribute it all. Rusty and I are very proud of them and bolster their efforts in any way we can.”