NATIONAL REPORT -- Giving back through community service efforts and charity donations is a positive force that keeps many retailers and suppliers of this industry moving ahead. On a regular basis, Convenience Store News highlights these philanthropic efforts in this special section. Here are the latest company spotlights:

Chevron Corp.

Chevron Corp. has donated $350,000 to three Bakersfield, Calif.-area schools — Bakersfield College, Taft College and Cal State Bakersfield’s Small Business Development Center — as part of an initiative aimed at expanding local educational and economic opportunities.

The donations allow Chevron to invest in what may become its future workforce as well as the community in which it has worked for more than 100 years.

CITGO

The eighth edition of the CITGO-Venezuela Heating Oil Program recently launched for the 2012-2013 season at the Night of Peace Shelter in Windsor Mill, Md.

The charitable program, which has benefitted more than 1.7 million people since its inception, is run with the assistance of Citizens Energy Corp., a national non-profit energy company.

The Coca-Cola Co.

The Coca-Cola Foundation and Keep America Beautiful (KAB) put out a call for applications for the 2013 Coca-Cola/KAB Recycling Bin Grant Program, a program designed to expand and support recycling in communities across America.

The Coca-Cola/KAB Recycling Bin Grant Program is funded through a $300,000 grant from The Coca-Cola Foundation, the philanthropic arm of The Coca-Cola Co.

Since 2010, more than 29,000 recycling bins have been distributed through the Coca-Cola/KAB Recycling Bin Grant Program. Three-hundred organizations have received bin grants and 4.3 million people have been reached through this program.

Fas Mart

GPM Investments LLC, which operates the Fas Mart convenience store chain, has donated $20,000 to The Make A Wish Foundation through BP’s Fueling Communities grant program. The donations will be used to enrich the lives of children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Hess Corporation

Hess Corp. recently gave the University of Wyoming $4.4M for energy research.

With the donation, Hess Corp. will support UW's Center for Advanced Oil and Gas Technologies Nano Resolution Imaging Laboratory to study rock and core samples at nano-resolution. Hess' investment will support the acquisition of highly-advanced equipment required for the Nano Resolution Imaging Laboratory.

Construction of the 81,000-square-foot facility could begin fall of 2014 and be completed by spring 2016.

Lykins Oil Companies

Through the BP Fueling Communities Program, Lykins Oil Companies donated $12,500 to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati. The organization serves 10,000 children between the ages of 6 and 18 yearly through after-school and summer programming.

Fueling Communities provides grants to local organizations that are nominated by BP Branded Marketers to support the communities in which they do business. The program allows local marketers to support organizations that focus on health, education, youth, food and housing to spread charity and goodwill, among neighborhoods in need.

Natural American Spirit

Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. (SFNTC) launched "From Field to Table –- Sustaining Farms and Families’"-- a pioneering program that uses the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to help farmers while feeding the hungry and preserving the planet.

This is how the program works: each week throughout the year, SFNTC purchases 70 shares worth of locally grown produce from Beneficial Farms, a CSA cooperative that supports about 40 small farms in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Each share costs the company $25, which provides a guaranteed, consistent source of income for the farms, regardless of how good or bad the growing season happens to be.

The food the company purchases is delivered directly to The Food Depot, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based non-profit organization that partners with more than 135 agencies across nine counties in northern New Mexico to provide more than 400,000 meals each month to feed the hungry.