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.
Recruiting is usually defined as the act of attracting and selecting candidates for employment within an organization. Thanks to SmartRecruiters’ Reverse Recruiting initiative, that definition is taking on new dimensions.
On the careers section of their website, the company states the following: “We are on a mission to connect people to jobs at scale.”
However, they realized that in order to truly enact their mission statement at scale, they’d have to come up with a more inclusive strategy. One that could help job seekers who have traditionally been successful, as well as those who have encountered setbacks.
In February of 2019, SmartRecruiters’ CEO Jerome Ternynck introduced Reverse Recruiting— an initiative that offers assistance to job seekers who have experienced difficulty finding stable, long term employment. Among them are immigrants, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, parents and caregivers returning to work, as well as senior citizens.
Pilot sessions were held in the spring of 2019 in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Spokane, and Krakow—the collective response was overwhelmingly positive. Since then, volunteers from over 100 companies across the world have taken the Reverse Recruiting pledge to help “connect overlooked candidates to jobs at scale.” More than 15 events have been organized where, in total, 250 recruiters coached approximately 400 job seekers on how to market their professional experience, sharpen their resumes, improve their interview skills, and strengthen their personal branding.
Reverse Recruiting Session in Krakow, October 2019
As a boutique consulting firm specializing in Agile training, coaching, and transformation, SmoothApps
Agile for Patriots’ experience with previous graduates of their program has shown that knowledge of Atlassian products like Jira and Confluence has become a must-have during interviews. Fringe Technology’s generous contributions will help Veterans and their spouses develop new in-demand skills, boost their self-confidence, gain employment and hit the ground running!
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 Passageways, every employee is called a Pathfinder: one that discovers a way and explores untraversed regions to mark out a new route. We’re consciously “marking out a new route” in philanthropy by weaving its collaborative spirit into the very fabric of our daily lives. Indeed, giving back as part of Pledge 1% is not only something we enthusiastically support but have made standard operating procedure.
We are honored to be a part of #GivingTuesday, and wanted to highlight a few ways that Pathfinders demonstrated the spirit of the Pledge 1% movement in 2019:
Volunteer Time
At Passageways, we give back 1% of our time to volunteer in our communities and help local nonprofits. Not only is volunteer time off built directly into our culture of giving, it’s even written into our employee handbook!
Earlier this year in July, two members of our Customer Success team traded in their headsets for life jackers and headed to Lake Harner in Lafayette, Indiana to volunteer at Camp WACK (Water Adventure Camp for Kids). Camp WACK is an adaptive water-skiing day camp that caters to children with physical or mental disabilities, including Down’s Syndrome, Autism, and Cerebral Palsy. For two days, the two Pathfinders helped children who normally may not be able to join typical community programs enjoy the thrill of flying through the open water.
Read more about their adventure on our blog.
Product
Every year, we donate our OnBoard board meeting solution as part of Pledge 1%. Five worthy nonprofits driving real change in their communities receive the software for life. This year, we wanted to expand our reach and invited our community to nominate a nonprofit of their choice.
Interest has been modest in recent years, so we were prepared to receive only a handful of responses. Instead, we were humbled and honored to receive more than 100 nominations! It certainly made our review committee’s job difficult. In the end, though, we chose 5 nonprofits to receive OnBoard for life and they include:
- Rise Above
- United Cerebral Palsy Association of Greater Indiana=
- Girls on the Run of Montgomery County
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Flint and Genesee County]
- Happiness Through Horses
Read more about our Nomination campaign adventure.
Profit
While we donate 1% of our profits to local charities and nonprofits making an impact, we’ve chosen not to just simply write a check. Instead, we’ve committed to investing in our community and fostering civic-minded leaders. We invest both time and money to organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and Purdue University’s Women in Management Scholarship. Ultimately, our aim is to amplify the voices of the underserved and create a culture of philanthropy that extends generations.
Being a Pathfinder Means Giving Back
We enthusiastically support the Pledge 1% movement. We’ve made it an active and standard part of our culture by engaging in cooperative community outreach and demonstrating a commitment to helping others. Not because it checks a box or fulfills a PR initiative. Ultimately, we do it because that is what it means to be a Pathfinder.
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.
Donating time and money is an important part of Spotlight’s culture. One thing that was important to the co-founders (Rick Nash and Andrew Hsu) as we started incorporating philanthropy into our culture was making sure the causes we were donating time and money to were important to the employees of Spotlight. Rick and Andrew have causes that are important to them, but they understand the employees of Spotlight have different things they are passionate about.
What follows is a serendipitous story about two separate philanthropic efforts Spotlight worked on that ended up being connected. Last Spring, Spotlight employee (and co-chair of our philanthropy committee) Jenni Keyes signed Spotlight up to help maintain 17 garden beds that were two blocks from our office. Jenni is particularly passionate about locally grown food, so she helped lead this effort by teaching us how to prepare the garden beds, plant the sweet potatoes we grew, weed on a regular basis, and ultimately how to harvest the sweet potatoes. It was a fun, dirty, gratifying process that resulted in 550 pounds of sweet potatoes donated to Harvesters (a local food bank) in October.
In November, a few Spotlight employees volunteered at NourishKC, a community kitchen that provides meals to those in need. NourishKC is devoted to the philosophy of “dining with dignity” which means the volunteers that come to NourishKC serve the patrons as if they were in a restaurant setting. The day Spotlight was there, Linda, the woman who helped guide the volunteers through what needed to be done, talked through what was to be served that day. On the menu was a side dish of sweet potatoes Linda said came from Harvesters. The Spotlight employees shared with Linda that there was a chance the sweet potatoes being served that day were the ones we had grown in the garden by our office. We all thought it was special that not only did we grow the sweet potatoes, we had the opportunity to see what ultimately happened with them, and meet some of the people those sweet potatoes fed.
We always planned on continuing our efforts with the garden and with NourishKC, but this fun turn of events helped solidify that plan.
We work closely with PrepKC to help prepare low-income high school students for college. For two years in a row, we have hosted 25-30 students at Spotlight for a day. We taught them about Analyst Relations, shared with them the importance of virtually working with our clients, and gave them a project which showed them a real-life example of how we do work every day. This mentor program also gives students exposure to presenting, creating presentations, and researching as a part of experience they can utilize in their studies and potential future careers. This event is always well-received and we plan on continuing this for years to come.
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.
In 2005, I founded Language Lizard to provide creative, fun, educational products in over 50 languages to schools, libraries, and bilingual families. Our aim is to offer resources that not only enhance dual-language literacy and promote early language learning, but also teach children about other cultures and traditions, thus helping to build welcoming and inclusive classrooms.
Nearing our 15th anniversary, our Customer Outreach Representative, Nicole Smith, introduced Language Lizard to Pledge 1%. She inspired our company to make a formal commitment to supporting global literacy with a pledge of funding and time to the non-profit organization, Room to Read.
Nicole is a founding member of the New Jersey Chapter of Room to Read. Room to Read focuses on literacy and gender equality in education in 16 countries across Africa and Asia. The organization helps children learn to read and develop a love of reading from an early age. Room to Read ensures girls complete secondary school with the life skills necessary to negotiate key life decisions, be leaders in their own lives, and act as agents of change. Room to Read has benefited over 17.6 million children across 38,000 communities and aims to reach 20 million children by 2020.
Nicole has spent countless hours as a volunteer for Room to Read. Since 2011, she has run programs throughout New Jersey to enhance awareness for Room to Read’s work and to promote global giving. Nicole was familiar with Pledge 1% through her work with Room to Read and felt it was an ideal match with Language Lizard’s values and mission.
Over the last decade, Language Lizard has partnered with charitable companies and local organizations to provide literacy materials to dual language families. By joining Pledge 1%, Language Lizard is able to formalize its commitment to global giving as part of our company culture.
On Giving Tuesday 2019, Language Lizard is initiating an ongoing pledge to support Room to Read’s Book Publishing program. Through this program, Room to Read volunteers conduct writer and illustrator workshops around the world where participants learn best practices in children’s storytelling. Many of the manuscripts developed in the workshops are then produced and distributed in Room to Read school libraries. Room to Read also collaborates individually with talented authors and illustrators who create books for these libraries. Books developed in partnership with Room to Read are regularly recognized for their superior quality, winning several national book awards. In 2011, the UN acknowledged Room to Read’s contribution to children’s book publishing with the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy.
To date, Room to Read has published over 1,500 original titles in 35 languages and distributed 20 million books to students. As a publisher, I love the idea of supporting writers and illustrators throughout the world, and ensuring that culturally relevant books go to children who will learn and be inspired by them.
The coming year is an exciting one for Language Lizard. We will be celebrating 15 years supporting dual language learners. We are publishing a new manual to help educators in diverse communities build welcoming and inclusive classrooms. Language Lizard will be rolling out several new educational product initiatives. I am most excited about this new collaboration to support children’s literacy around the world.
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 Xandr
Xandr is building a new kind of advertising company that leads with curiosity and courage as we move toward the future. We believe this future, and our long-term business success, is intrinsically tied to the strength and health of our communities and the world.
Xandr Cares, our company-wide Corporate Social Responsibility program, helps us create meaningful change for our communities and for our business, harnessing the passion and generosity of teammates worldwide and leveraging AT&T’s deep commitment to building a better tomorrow.
One of our most recent initiatives is the “Xandr Cares $100K Challenge.” Running throughout the month of November, we have gathered a group of employee social good champions across our global offices to advocate for causes near and dear to their hearts, including: pancreatic cancer treatment, homelessness, increased diversity and humanity in STEM, childhood education, and support for disabled veterans.
With a total donation grant of $100,000, employees are invited to vote for the organization or cause that matters most to them, with the non-profit with the most votes receiving the largest grant. The Xandr Cares $100k Challenge not only provides meaningful contributions to non-profits worldwide, but it creates opportunities for Xandr teammates to deepen their support for the causes they care about after the campaign through volunteerism, lunch and learns, and other activations.
Watch each of the nine stories, and our campaign sizzle, here.
Learn more about Xandr Cares at www.xandr.com/social-responsibility.
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 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.
K15t, a 4 year Pledge 1% member, has teamed up with Scienta, a tech consultant company out of Norway. They put together a team of inspiring conference speakers to present at a free and local developer conference in Kathmandu. Our team member, Sven Peters used his Pledge 1% leave time to prepare a workshop, travel to Nepal, and educate 100 developers, project managers, and team leaders working for local companies on how they can start a successful remote work career in the tech industry. A day after the conference, the team of speakers visited the Kathmandu University to learn more about the state of its developer education and to give a guest lecture to the Masters students who attend.
State of Software Development in Nepal
Software development is still a relatively young industry in Nepal. Although Kathmandu University has been teaching software engineering for over 18 years, it benefits a lot by bringing in experienced developers from abroad as guest lecturers. We had insightful discussions on how the western software industry is developing products in a practical, methodical way: Version control, deployment pipelines, serverless development, and agile development practices. It also became clear that students in Nepal can benefit a lot from these real world development experiences from companies abroad.
Continue to Help
Offering sponsored internships, exchanging experiences, and offering guest lectures can help the Nepalese software industry. Organizations like Gitlab, Trello, Zapier, Stack Overflow, and many more are fully remote companies and have proven that it shouldn’t matter where in the world we’re based as long as we have a good and stable internet connection. There’s a lack of software developers in every industry and Nepal is buzzing with great talent. We should continue to work on bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and the practical development experience in Nepal.
Diagnosing the current state of innovation culture within an organisation working on the frontline to put an end to childhood cancer
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.
Children’s Cancer Institute (CCI) in Sydney, Australia ‘exists solely to put an end to childhood cancer’ under the guiding principal “It’s not if. It’s when”. The incredibly talented and passionate staff at CCI work tirelessly to make this vision a reality; they believe every child can be saved and work tirelessly with a focus on the patient. To increase collaboration between clinicians and researchers, CCI is currently undergoing a major organisational transformation; moving to a Comprehensive Childhood Cancer Centre (CCCC) which would mean a change of location, organisational structure, and way of working for the institute.
As part of our 1% Pledge, we worked with the CCI leadership team to help them devise a strategy for the future by, ensuring efficient allocation of resources and funding to enable the talented staff at CCI to focus on their patients in a clinical environment and continue to undertake world-class research, bringing them closer to curing cancer for children.
Venturetec worked closely with the executive team and staff across the organisation, giving them a platform to voice concerns, their vision, and where they see the biggest opportunities to be. With so many talented, and dedicated researchers in the organisation, this allowed us to deeply understand the organisation, and showcase ideas and passionate voices which may otherwise not have had a platform.
“[The diagnostic’s] findings reconfirmed a number of insights (or suspicions) we had about ourselves, our challenges, gaps and general organisational characteristics, but reinforced them in a way that fostered more constructive discussion about how to address them, including the recommendations from Venturetec…It also highlighted risks and opportunities that we hadn’t considered, or had given cursory attention to.” – Mark Bizeray, Head of Business Transformation at CCI
Through our diagnostic process we engaged with staff across the institute, with representation from all teams and levels of seniority. The resulting learnings and insights were presented back to the organisation along with a series of recommendations. Venturetec is now continuing to work with CCI to guide them through the process of implementing these recommendations, paving the way for CCI as they transition towards the Comprehensive Childhood Cancer Centre in the following years and allowing them to continue innovating and creating life-saving treatments for children with cancer.
“The recommendations translated a way forward into actionable work packages across a range of functional/strategic opportunities. The focus of the recommendations was on small quick wins, with an eye to longer term change/goals. This suited us at the present time, as a full program of changes across all recommendations would have been overwhelming for an already busy organisation.” – Mark Bizeray, Head of Business Transformation at CCI
The opportunity to work with CCI not only assisted them to do boost their internal innovation culture and capability, but uplifted our internal culture at Venturetec as well with collaboration across the whole team, and we are looking forward to our next 1% pledge project and continuing to work with CCI long into the future.
– Trey Zagante, Managing Partner at Venturetec