
February 3, 2025
WISCONSIN RAPIDS/MANAWA – With slightly more than 100 employees, Erin Glodowski – director of marketing and communications – said Solarus seeks to punch well above its weight when it comes to community support.
After all, Glodowski said Solarus has been a part of the North Central Wisconsin community since 1896, when it began as Wood County Telephone Company.
“Back then, there was a singular phone company that was creating a monopoly, so a group of local businessmen decided to create their own company with the goal of ensuring that the community stayed connected,” she said. “They definitely believed in the phone service, but they wanted to make sure that the community had the best quality of service, fair prices and also that they had the means to set the community up for long-term economic viability.”
From the very beginning, Glodowski said the company has been owned by and accountable to its stockholders.
“At the beginning, there were probably only about 17 stockholders and about 119 customers,” she said. “We’ve grown quite a bit since then.”
Today, following the 2016 acquisition of the Manawa Telephone Company, Glodowski said the company has 117 employees, more than 850 stockholders – all of whom are also customers – and proudly serves about 16,500 customers.
The company changed its name and rebranded to Solarus in 2005.
“With the introduction of TV and internet services, along with our expansion into new areas, Wood County Telephone Company no longer fully represented who we were or what we had to offer,” Glodowski said.
The tagline says it all
No matter its name, Glodowski said perhaps nothing explains the company’s commitment to giving back better than its tagline: “Locally Owned. Locally Invested.”
“From the very beginning, we’ve been owned by local shareholders invested in the long-term success,” she said. “The ‘Locally Invested’ (part) is our approach to supporting all the various causes throughout the community.”
Solarus has given more than $250,000 in community support, Glodowski said – and counting.
She said that total doesn’t include employees’ individual volunteer work they contribute to their community, either for some of the same organizations the company helps support, or at other places and causes they’re passionate about.

“Giving back was always part of the organizational mission,” she said. “We’ve always stayed true and committed to or partnered with some of the, what I would call, foundational pillars in the community.”
One of those pillars, Glodowski said, is United Way, to which Solarus dedicates an annual employee campaign every year, with donations matched by its board of directors and the organization, amounting to “a pretty hefty donation to the local United Way.”
Glodowski said other such pillars include the two healthcare systems in the area, the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Club, the local public library, the chamber of commerce, the Rafters, the River Kings and more.
“A lot of these are (organizations) that just kind of make Wisconsin Rapids and Central Wisconsin a really cool place to raise a family or set up shop to have your business,” she said. “We believe in helping those institutions because we’re stronger together.”
In addition to making cash donations, Glodowski said Solarus meets with the organizations annually to discuss their technological needs, committing to providing the necessary tech for the institutions to flourish.
Glodowski said the company’s giving is broken down into two segments: community sponsorships and lasting contributions.
“The community sponsorships are generally people or causes that need support and can range from a cancer benefit to a book drive or doing something for the humane society, the Lion’s Club, Kiwanis or those kinds of things,” she said. “The lasting contributions are big capital campaigns or major community projects that we are involved in (that aren’t necessarily about financial support). Sometimes people are looking to us for technical expertise or to get them gigabit service.”
One such example, Glodowski said, was the assistance Solarus provided in the Wisconsin Rapids Quadplex, an athletic complex adjacent to Lincoln High School.
“They actually have a school that’s kind of like an interstate school internet platform, so they didn’t necessarily need our internet, but we were able to help them by lending them our boring service and ability, which is giving them that ability to go underground and send pipe underground,” she said. “We lent them a lot of time and materials in that project to be able to get them connectivity to their new fields from their existing buildings.”
Glodowski said Solarus also extended Lincoln’s connectivity to the school’s concession stand, hockey rink, football field, press box and scoreboard and included a financial donation.
“How we assist someone (from a lasting contributions standpoint) takes shape depending on the project,” she said.
Glodowski said Solarus has helped facilitate lasting contributions, with:
- The McMillan Library
- The Port Edwards Mural
- The Food and Farm Exploration Center in Plover
- The Nekoosa Athletic Complex
- The South Wood County YMCA
Solarus has likewise, Glodowski said, made possible a great deal of community sponsorships.
Citing a handful of examples, she said Solarus has:
- Supported three local fire departments in their efforts to assemble Christmas dinner meal baskets
- Helped raise funds for the Wisconsin Gift of Life program
- Made an $8,000 donation to the Aspirus Riverview Foundation
- Donated more than $400 in school supplies to the United Way of South Wood and Adams counties for the Stuff the Bus event
- Annually supported each of the school districts in its service area with a cash donation and the popcorn bags used at their extracurricular events
- Participated in food drives for local food pantries
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Glodowski said one of Solarus’s initiatives reached the company’s entire customer base and beyond.
“As horrible as COVID was, it enabled our fiber network to shine,” she said. “People, for the very first time in mass quantities, were remotely working and learning and doing everything from home, and they all needed that fast upload and download speed. When we realized that, we did a complimentary speed upgrade to every single one of our customers.”
Glodowski said Solarus was proud to step in and help the communities it serves.
“Just knowing that everyone was trying to do that much more, we didn’t want people to have to make the decision to upgrade or suffer through it because they thought it would cost them more at a time when they may not have been able to afford it, or didn’t necessarily have job security,” she said.

On the tail end of the complimentary upgrade, Glodowski said Solarus leaders discussed how they could pivot their traditional marketing messaging, and the way they communicated and built relationships with customers.
One initial possibility, she said, was a bill credit, but the company opted for something longer lasting, which would reach further and impact more than just their immediate customers.
“We decided to repurpose some of our marketing resources and, through conversations, decided that the most meaningful way to do that would be to gift all of our customers with a $50 gift card,” Glodowski said. “In doing so, we encouraged them to use it to support local businesses. And if someone wanted to donate it somewhere or to someone, they could do that, too.”
Called the “Making Spirits Bright” campaign, she said the gift cards were mailed out as Christmas cards in a foiled envelope during the 2020 holiday season.
As more and more people were posting on social media what they were doing with their cards, Glodowski said the initiative created even more of a buzz and traction in the community.
“Some people bought things they needed, while others bought things local nonprofits needed and they donated those items to them,” she said. “The stories people shared were very heartwarming.”
Glodowski said Solarus got a lot of feedback from local businesses where people were using those cards to shop.
“The original intent was to just bring a little light to a really dark time,” she said, “but we also leaned on those foundational pillars and our mission, which is to help keep the community that we serve connected and help support them.”
Customers and local businesses weren’t the only ones to notice the campaign’s impact, Glodowski said, as it also led to Solarus being awarded the economic development award from the local chamber of commerce in 2021.
The equal importance of individual and team efforts
Glodowski said Solarus’s community support efforts sometimes entail team-based events, yet other times are based on individual causes and participation.
“The impact is felt more when our employees can kind of realize or feel like they’re part of the bigger story,” she said. “A lot of times, some of the asks we get come from our employees. And because we are proud of the fact and tout that we are locally owned, locally invested, requests that come from employees are almost always approved.”
Even when Solarus is not directly associated with a given cause, Glodowski said the company supports individuals’ involvement to benefit the wider community.
She said such involvement only adds to Solarus’s efforts to earn the trust of both their residential and business customers.
Though the company’s top priority is to deliver reliable, high-speed, quality service, Glodowski said the mission extends beyond.
“The beauty of doing business with a local company is that the money can then stay local, and it helps to grow and strengthen the local economy,” she said. “Bigger companies will try to win you with their gimmicks and promos, but we try to provide a noticeably better experience. We don’t have big, fancy corporate headquarters, but ultimately, our success depends on our customers’ satisfaction. Because we’re local, we can create a personalized experience for our customers and, in turn, can help support the organizations and institutions that make our community (so special and) what it is.”