This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

On Giving Tuesday, we’re sharing how we like to Give – we call it Fireclay Gives. From tile donations to good causes to volunteer work, we like to Give back to our community, both near and far. If you’re on a mission to design for good, we want to hear about it. Whether it’s a park, school, or support center in the face of a natural disaster, we’re open to all types of causes in our neighborhood and beyond, including yours.

 Financial Support:

In November 2018 we launched our 1% Brick Give Back to The National Parks Conservation Association(NPCA) for all our Glazed Thin Brick sales. The NCPA has worked to protect and preserve America’s favorite places for nearly 100 years and we couldn’t be more proud to partner with them.

Pledge1%

We joined the Pledge1% movement in 2015 when we pledged 1% of our Equity, i.e. ownership in Fireclay Tile, to non-profits. In November 2018, we began Pledging1% of our Product to non-profits and organizations in need. Thus, for every 1,000 square feet of tile we sell, we will donate 10 square feet of tile. In 2019, we anticipate this to equate to roughly 6,000 square feet or roughly enough tile for 600 backsplashes!

One standout project of 2019 was our partnership with Detroit Prep. Established in 2016, Detroit Prep’s mission is to, “provide a world-class, equitable education that will give all students a foundation of academic excellence and character development while fostering a love of learning and passion for exploring and fulfilling their extraordinary potential as learners, leaders, and world-changers.” Which is a mission we can definitely get behind.

With a little help from our Non-Slip Glazes and Foundations Collection, this incredible school will have durable, beautiful tile that its current and future students will enjoy for years to come.

You can learn more about this project and Detroit Prep here, but we’ll share a full reveal of this beautiful school in 2020!

We love it when design does good and we’re are happy to donate tile to a good cause. If you have a project in mind, please let us know!

Here are a few other donation projects we’ve worked on in recent years:

For the past 41 years, the San Francisco Decorators Showcase has raised over $16 Million to benefit the San Francisco University High School financial aid program. This even allows for hundreds of deserving Bay Area students access to a world-class college preparatory education.

Here’s the bathroom from the previous year at the SF Decorator’s Showcase:

This non-profit ice cream parlor, Alphabet Scoop, doubles as a job training program investing in NYC youth:

 

Give, You Get

In May of 2017, we kicked off an innovative new giving program called “Give, You Get.” Give, You Get is a program that gives part of your purchase to our team members—the ones making your beautiful tile—and in return, you get money back. The best part? All you have to do is pay with eCheck or Check. We’ll take care of the rest.

When you pay by eCheck, you’ll receive 0.5% back on your order (the Get) and another 0.5% will go towards our Khai Lam Fireclay Tile Family Fund (the Give). This is a sustainable model with no extra cost to anyone that enables a massive giving opportunity to both our clients and our team members and their families.

Volunteering

Fireclay Tile offers one paid Volunteer day per team member per year. Our team members have numerous interests, and this allows them a full day each year to dedicate time, paid by Fireclay, to organizations in need.

We’ve also recently “adopted” The Aromas School, our local public elementary and middle school, with both financial and volunteer support.

And we aren’t going to stop here. We have more initiatives we will soon be announcing, as we believe fully in our Core Value of “Always Be Improving” and that there is so much more Giving we can do!

Want to learn more about how Fireclay Gives? Get in touch here.

 

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

A few months after my divorce, I hit rock bottom. Curled into the fetal position on the bathroom floor, crying onto the tile, my stepmom gave me the best advice you can get, “Go do something for someone else.”

I’d always been a huge animal lover so getting involved in rescue was an obvious choice. I knew “fur therapy” would help me get out of my funk, but what I didn’t realize at the time, is that not only would supporting a nonprofit help my personal life, it would also help my career.

For years, I worked random jobs and spent my free time organizing animal rescue events, handling speaking engagements and television appearances, and creating content (website pages, newsletters, blogs) to support the animals. In fact, if there’s an animal pun to be made, I’ve probably made it.

When I was laid off from my job, it occurred to me that maybe it was time to start my own business.  The skills that I’d learned while volunteering became my products and services. Having found my voice speaking up for homeless animals, I became a professional speaker and writer. Now, I have the honor of helping businesses and nonprofits tell their stories and stand out from the competition.  Even better, I get to help spread the message of how you can actually improve your business by supporting nonprofits.

When I started my business, Sheryl Green Speaks, continuing to support Hearts Alive Village animal rescue was a no-brainer.  A percentage of my speaking engagements, my book sales, and my writing projects go to support the animals and I continue to donate my time to be a voice for these fuzzbutts. I also share my platform with rescues, bringing adoptable dogs on stage when I speak to give them more chances of being adopted.

Hannah is one of the pups I’ve been able to help. She’s a 9-year old shepherd mix who lost both of her parents last year. Their daughter tried to help find her a home, but with a life and family of her own, she couldn’t keep Hannah and this poor pup ended up at the shelter.

Due to her age and the arthritis in her hips, Hannah wasn’t going to make it out of the shelter alive. With just a day left, Hearts Alive Village swooped in to give this girl another chance at life. She became the greeter at their Oldies But Goodies Senior Adoption Center and entertained visitors with her lovely singing voice. I know it’s beautiful, because I howled on live television right alongside her. Hannah is now in a foster home but she’s still looking for her furever family. Visit http://www.heartsalivevillage.org  for more information.

While I love what I do helping businesses, supporting animal rescue has brought new meaning to my life. Whether you’re a new entrepreneur or have been in business for years, supporting a nonprofit may be the best decision you ever make. (And please adopt, don’t shop!)

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Slalom is a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. Slalom does what is right by their clients, and strives to do the same in their local communities. They’ve just joined Pledge 1% a few months prior, and have a group within Slalom called Slalom.org that focuses on giving back to the local community and the non-profits that serve it.

Slalom San Francisco

At Slalom San Francisco’s annual conference earlier this year, Slalom.org, sought to take advantage of the large gathering of local clients, partners, and employees. With the goal of creating a unique, San Francisco-themed piece of art, Slalom.org crowdsourced words that captured “What does community mean to you?”. As submissions poured in, Christo Oropeza, a local artist hired by Slalom, hand-painted a large-scale mural live, while utilizing the words given to him by the attendees. 

The finished mural is a map of San Francisco, with descriptions like “resilience,” “support,” and others in multiple languages representing the diversity of the city. As the city has always been a hub for creativity, culture, and inclusion, Slalom.org felt that the piece of art should be shared with a local non-profit that also celebrates and provides support to this diverse community. That was found in The Women’s Building, a women-led community space that advocates self-determination, gender equality and social justice. To celebrate the unveiling of the mural and The Women’s Building’s tremendous impact to the local community, Slalom.org hosted a bar fundraiser, donating proceeds to organization.

Slalom Silicon Valley

This year Slalom Silicon Valley hosted a food drive that raised $8,761, exceeding their goal. This was only made possible by the generosity, enthusiasm, and sense of community demonstrated by all of the members of their office. The entire SV community contributed in kind, cash, dancing, bartending, and marathon walks.

Their Food Drive this year had some truly memorable moments for everyone involved. They organized a Salsa and Cocktails evening fundraiser that was met with great enthusiasm. SV employees taught Salsa basics to their peers, and had skilled bartenders handpicked from their leadership teams to make sure that all participants were served top-quality, hand-crafted cocktails.

The money raised in the drive funded 3304 hot meals to those in need in the Bay Area. Also, through their volunteer work with Loaves and Fishes they celebrated the spirit of teamwork and community by preparing 547 lunch brown bags in a record time of 40 minutes!

 

These are just a couple of the many ways Slalom.org gives its employees opportunities to give back to their local community. Slalom looks forward to continuing to lend their skills and time and leverage future events to give back to the community and Pledge 1%!

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

By Twilio.

Empower Others. Those words are not just a catchphrase at Twilio. Instead, they have been the foundation of our core values and products since the very beginning.

Twilions know that unleashing human potential — both within our company and throughout our communities — is key not just to our success, but to the greater good we wish to see in the world.

As we’ve grown as a company and our culture evolved, so has our desire to do our part in creating a better, more just world. We saw this with Twilio’s commitment as a company to Pledge 1% of our time, equity and funds to doing good.

And we see it in the personal passions of Twilions. Like Kathryn Shirley in Atlanta, who donates her time to the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Georgia, providing Wishes for children with life-threatening, critical illnesses to enrich their human experience. Or Alex Alleyne in London, who gives money to organizations like the Hackney Learning Trust, educating and empowering students from low-income neighborhoods. Both wanting to scale their impact beyond their individual contributions.

But let’s face it, there are real barriers in people’s lives that can get in the way of making the positive impact they’d like. Some of us have more time, some less. Some can give more money, some less. On top of that, our lives, hearts, families, and communities are all touched by an array of issues. With all this in mind, determining how to make a positive impact isn’t always easy, and the scale of the issues we want to take on can feel daunting.

Introducing Twilio’s WePledge Program

That’s why we created WePledge. WePledge is our new employee impact program empowering Twilions to take action as individuals, leading to a meaningful global impact as a whole. Like Pledge 1%, WePledge provides a framework for giving in ways that fit the lives and schedules of individuals and enables people to create impact in meaningful ways important to them.

Through WePledge, Twilions make a commitment to contribute 1% of their individual time, money, or both to the causes they personally care about. In turn, Twilio provides an employee engagement platform, matching funds, coordinated volunteer opportunities, and the ongoing support of being a part of something bigger than ourselves.

Making an impact with WePledge is easy:

Volunteer time. Twilions are encouraged to donate 1%, or 20 hours, of our work time throughout the year to causes individuals care about at organizations that could benefit from our energy and expertise. Everyone has 20 hours of paid volunteer time off (VTO) to make this possible.

Donate equity or income. Twilions are encouraged to donate 1% of their equity or income to charity(s) that are meaningful to them. Donating equity often means charitable organizations receive more financial support than they would through a standard donation, and our internal equity systems are set up to help Twilions do this with the click of a button.

Get matched. Twilio amplifies the employee contributions through matching gifts for personal volunteer time, equity, and monetary donations up to a $500 annually per employee.

Global Weeks of Service. Twilio coordinates a week of global volunteering events twice per year which give employees diversity in volunteer opportunities to increase our social impact and connect more deeply with organizations in our communities — and other Twilions in the process. This makes finding ways to use VTO is easier than ever.

Twilions are already out in the world doing good however they can, and with the support of WePledge, Twilio will help magnify the impact of Twilions like Kathryn and Alex.

WePledge is one more way for Twilions to Empower Others. It’s how we empower the organizations working on social issues we care about, it’s how we empower the communities we serve, and it’s how we empower each other to realize the full potential of what we can achieve together.

When we pledge our time and money as individuals, our collective efforts have the potential to make a meaningful impact on a global scale. And this is just the beginning.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

This Giving Tuesday, SurveyMonkey is partnering with Pledge 1% share a few stories from our long legacy of giving back. What began as a “good idea” has grown to $14.7M program supporting nonprofits across the globe. This article is part of a series highlighting the impact some of those donations have made. 

 SurveyMonkey for Good, a social impact and diversity, equity and inclusion program, is on a mission to use People Powered Data to improve our world and give everyone a voice. One of the ways we do this is through a program called SurveyMonkey Contribute.

When people sign up for Contribute, they become part of a survey panel. Companies can send you surveys about new products, their branding, or other market research topics. For every survey you take, SurveyMonkey donates $0.50 to the charity of your choice. With over 65 charities on the platform, survey-takers can raise money for their favorite causes including Doctors Without Borders, Boys & Girls Club of America, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Special Olympics and even small local organizations like Larkin Street Youth

Since 2014, GLIDE has received $155,500 through SurveyMonkey Contribute. That equates to 38,682 people receiving three meals per day—a total of 116,046 meals served. (Our employees also served some of those meals during our 2019 Week of Service.)

 

There are more refugees and displaced people worldwide than any time on record. Contribute supports International Rescue Committee, an organization that supplies asylum-seekers from Syria to South Sudan and beyond with clean water, healthcare, education, economic empowerment, and protection programming. It operates in 40 countries, including supporting resettled refugees, survivors of trafficking, and other vulnerable populations in the United States.

Since 2012, SurveyMonkey has donated more than $3.6M in general support to Humane Society of the United States. That support has translated into a wide variety of efforts from rescuing thousands of displaced animals after natural disasters to saving animals in crisis.

Clean Water Fund has been fighting climate change effects with the support of SurveyMonkey Contribute since 2011, raising over $842,000. Climate change impacts the most vulnerable, and Clean Water is working to ensure that communities of color and low-income areas have equitable access to water. As protections for water and health become more dire, Clean Water Fund will continue its fight for climate solutions and to provide clean, healthy water for all.

All SurveyMonkey Contribute grant funds are unrestricted. This means that our partners can use the money they receive from SurveyMonkey to work on the most pressing and urgent needs in their communities without artificial limits. SurveyMonkey looks forward to continued partnership and an expanding social impact, as we continue to support organizations doing the best work—both here in the United States and across the world—one survey at a time.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

This post was co-authored by Slack and their partners at The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA.

At Slack, we are committed to increasing the number of underrepresented individuals in the technology industry. Three years ago, as part of this effort, we began exploring how we could help bring formerly incarcerated individuals into the workforce through high-skilled engineering roles. We immediately sought out partners—people and organizations actively working toward this mission—and together with The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA, we co-created and piloted the Next Chapter, a yearlong apprenticeship program to train and mentor formerly incarcerated individuals.

This post shares a bit of our journey together; best practices as well as lessons learned. We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned so far, and the feedback and impact to date. We’re eager to continue these efforts and it is our hope that others will join us.

Opportunity for change 

While talent is equally distributed in America, opportunity is not. About 2.5 million people are currently imprisoned in the U.S. Once released, the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated individuals is nearly five times higher than that of the general population.

In 2016, Slack employees, including CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield, visited San Quentin State Prison, and engaged with The Last Mile, a nonprofit that prepares incarcerated people for successful re-entry into the community through rigorous business and technology training. During this visit, several incarcerated individuals shared that their primary need post-incarceration was to find employment in the technology sector. We realized there was a unique opportunity to help. With the tech industry likely to see an estimated 1 million U.S. engineering roles go unfilled by 2020, the private sector and companies like ours have an important responsibility to help create more pathways to high-skilled engineering opportunities for formerly incarcerated people.

From The Last Mile to Next Chapter 

We knew that for Next Chapter to be successful, we’d need to collaborate closely with our partners and lean on their expertise. These partnerships are essential—we could not have created or run Next Chapter without the help and guidance of The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA, each of which contributed specific knowledge and guidance.

We began with The Last Mile, an organization that aims to remove the wider cultural stigma around incarceration. Their work shows how, with equal opportunity, formerly incarcerated individuals can make a positive, lasting impact on their families, communities and the economy. With The Last Mile’s deep expertise, we were able to navigate the criminal justice system, educate employees and find the right partners to support the Next Chapter apprentices. They recommended three standout candidates who became the inaugural members of Next Chapter class and embarked on a year-long program at Slack. The Last Mile helped change the narrative and eliminate the stigma associated with the incarcerated by providing opportunities for Slack employees to engage with their programs, and helped us navigate housing, parole, and travel for Next Chapter apprentices.

In conjunction with The Last Mile, we also began to collaborate with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, an organization committed to racial equity, systems change, and to create conditions for all children to grow and thrive. An essential element for healthy children, families, and communities is quality employment and financial stability. Given the overlap between the families and communities served by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and people impacted by over-incarceration, the foundation recognized an opportunity to further its mission. With Next Chapter, WKKF funded job opportunities in a high-wage, high-growth industry, and seeded momentum in the sector to provide more opportunities for justice-impacted individuals. They also worked with us to address how we could not only support the apprentices, but work internally to make Slack a welcoming environment.

We also collaborated with FREEAMERICA, a campaign founded by John Legend dedicated to amplifying the voices of individuals impacted by the criminal justice system and those who are working to change it. By challenging stereotypes, breaking down barriers and uplifting solutions, they are helping to end mass incarceration and invest in just, equitable and thriving communities across the U.S. FREEAMERICA saw Next Chapter as a way to offer deeper education around these issues. From FREEAMERICA, we gained valuable insights into how best to educate our employees and the broader public on the issues surrounding criminal justice reform. Through an hourlong session with FREEAMERICA, Slack employees’ understanding and empathy for formerly incarcerated populations grew. FREEAMERICA also worked with us on the video we’re sharing today to help change perceptions and perspectives at scale.

Looking ahead 

After eight months of rigorous training, one-on-one coaching/mentoring and successfully completing the Next Chapter program, the three apprentices in the first cohort are now full-time Slack employees. They are valuable members of the Slack team and their unique experiences have contributed to helping build a robust product and an even more inclusive culture.

Given the scope of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the projected growth of the technology sector as a significant source of employment, these efforts are just the beginning. While Next Chapter is still in its pilot phase, we are committed to further developing and scaling this program to serve more justice impacted people and help the sector seize the opportunity that this moment presents to provide more career pathways for this population. It’s complicated and challenging—there are no fast fixes or easy answers. However, recognizing and developing the talent in this population is critical and worth the time, energy and investment. We’re in it for the long haul, and we’re sharing our proposed blueprint so other companies can learn from our experiences and success.

Download: Next Chapter Blueprint for Action

We hope you’ll join us in this Next Chapter. For more information on Next Chapter, please reach out to Slack for Good at slackforgood@slack.com.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

At Optimizely, we love seeing customers being bold in driving impactful business results with their experiments. To celebrate these inspiring and creative ideas, we are thrilled to announce the finalists and winners of the 2019 Outperform Awards.

MOST DRAMATIC BUSINESS IMPACT

Summary: HP has been a strategic customer with Optimizely since 2015. In mid-2017, they developed aggressive goals for increasing experimentation velocity by expanding their program globally and set out to double their revenue benefits within two years. By defining a differentiated service offering for digital stakeholders across the company, there are now eight full-time members in the team supporting multiple functional groups across the Americas, EMEA & Asia Pacific markets.

After exceeding the two-year targets within the first 12 months, year to date HP has successfully executed over 1000 experiments marking year on year growth of over 65% in experimentation volume and are on track to deliver directly attributable revenue growth of over 30% for 2019.

Finalist:  Credit Union Australia, Chris Russell, Senior Manager Digital Optimization

MOST CUSTOMER-OBSESSED COMPANY CULTURE

Summary:  IBM has been undergoing a methodical digital transformation, injecting technology into business practices, in an effort to provide users the best experiences.

Championed by IBM Global Marketing, and led in large part by Ari & Suman’s efforts, experimentation began building momentum and grew from ‘none-to-ton’, with current adoption across 20+ BUs, 6,000+ marketers. Despite the rapid rate of adoption in a relatively short period of time, the internal cultural shift was perhaps the greatest challenge. IBM has always strived to be customer-centric, but an increasingly digital user journey required an otherwise traditional GTM model to adopt a deeper audience-driven methodology. This inevitably paved the way for a comprehensive experimentation program, powered by Optimizely’s technology in conjunction with IBM’s existing tech stack. There is still more to be done, but through Ari, Suman and team, IBM is evolving to meet market demand.

Finalist:  The Wall Street Journal, Peter Gray, VP of Product Optimization

MOST TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION

Summary:  StubHub uses Optimizely Full Stack to experiment deep in their product. By testing multiple iterations of their search engine algorithms, they were able to improve the conversion rate by 20% and increase revenue. StubHub also used Full Stack to test different versions of a new auto-pricing option for sellers. These improvements doubled the rate of sellers using the new auto pricing option which drove a significant lift in sell-through rate. Optimizely impacts StubHub’s whole business, and Marilyn and Todd are the heroes behind this innovation.

Finalist:  Hudson’s Bay Co., Ivy Lee, Director of Product & Insights

MOST INSPIRING SOCIAL IMPACT 

Summary:  Sierra Club, one of the world’s leading environmental nonprofits, has increased online donations by a 830% since 2015, and experimenting with Optimizely has been instrumental in fueling this growth. Partnering with Cro Metrics, they have used Optimizely to run tests around home page design, donation forms, and email signups. After seeing a dramatic improvement with their initial web and form tests (to the tune of two million dollars), Sierra Club has tripled the size of their internal team to nine and are running more complex tests like actions around advocacy, petition signups, and even encouraging members to write letters to Congress.

 Congratulations to all of the 2019 Outperform Award winners, finalists, and our customers and partner community for the outstanding work they have accomplished.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Education is a human right. We believe that all people deserve the opportunity to grow, access quality learning resources and build their skills. And this is especially true for the 70.8 million people displaced around the globe right now.

When people think of the needs that people fleeing conflict have, they often think of them in a hierarchy—food, shelter and water. But equally important is access to consistent, quality education. Education enables continuity, agency, development and a path toward employment. It creates agency among youth and adults, so they can make informed decisions, access services, advocate for their rights and build a new future for themselves and their communities.

That’s why on this Giving Tuesday, Pluralsight One is proud to deepen our partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a humanitarian, non-governmental organization that protects the rights of people affected by displacement.

Our Giving Tuesday campaign is focused on raising awareness for NRC’s children and youth education programs. And we’re asking you, our community and team members to join us in support of children and youth who have been displaced by conflict by making a donation to the NRC’s education programs, which we’ll match dollar for dollar up to $50,000. 

The NRC works hard to empower refugees and spread awareness about their situations by sharing stories from some of the most challenging and volatile places in the world. In 2018, the organization helped 8.5M people in need by providing them with life-saving resources like food, clean water, warm clothes, shelter, education and legal assistance to help them claim their rights.

Pluralsight One’s strategic partnership with the NRC was formed to help create sustainable social impact for displaced and crisis-affected populations around the world, while increasing the efficiency and efficacy of the NRC staff who serve them. We’re helping the NRC digitally transform and improve its ability to use data for decision making. We’re also focused on helping all displaced people gain access to education opportunities.

Together, we can ensure everyone has the ability to learn and develop the skills they need to create their own future and build a stronger global community.

Join us to ensure access to high quality education for refugees, internally displaced, and people escaping conflict this Giving Tuesday. Help us reach our goal by donating today at this link.