The Riverside Casino and Golf Resort is being recognized for the second year in a row by Volunteer Iowa.

They were announced as the large category honorable mention for the Give Back Iowa Challenge, a campaign in which businesses encourage employees to volunteer and log their hours as part of an eight-week challenge. The Riverside Casino was the winner of their category last year and has participated in all three years of this campaign, but their volunteer work isn’t limited to the Give Back Iowa Challenge , as General Manager Dan Franz explains, “We have an employee volunteer program, and we’ve named it ‘Winning Hands’. So it’s been in place for five or six years now. And that program really, I think, drives our employee volunteerism, and we track hours. We have a process and a program in place to be able to track all of this on a regular basis, not just during Give Back Iowa which is a couple of months time frame, but all throughout the year.”

Franz says the company’s goal for the past three years is to get 10,000 volunteer hours logged per year. The company sponsors volunteer events with organizations such as Take Away Hunger and the American Diabetes Association, but they also encourage employees to volunteer for their own interests in their free time. Franz says this effort supports the casino’s mission statement of contributing to the community through service and development.