A pair of area nonprofits are the beneficiaries of a combined $20,000 in local donations from the Cullman Electric Cooperative, which this week delivered on pledges made in August to lend a financial boost to local outreach programs.

Teaming with national farm credit network partner CoBank, Cullman Electric Cooperative awarded the Cullman County Imagination Library $12,000 to support funding for the local chapter of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. The nonprofit provides free books monthly to local children ages 5 and younger. In the past year, the program has provided 2,921 local children with more than 83,000 books.

Separately, Cullman Electric Cooperative and CoBank shared in an $8,000 donation to Cullman’s Good Samaritan Clinic, supporting the clinic’s mission to provide cost-free basic health and wellness care to uninsured individuals in our community.

Funds set aside for the pair of recent donations come from revenue that the Cullman Electric Cooperative earns through its billing services and not through the sale of electricity, the Cooperative noted in a statement.

Each year, the cooperative’s elected leaders budget funds to donate to local non-profit organizations and apply for a matching grant from the CoBank Sharing Success Program. Since the the Sharing Success program started in 2012, Cullman Electric has remained an active local participant, helping area nonprofit agencies through a combined $175,000 in donations.