The entire Pledge 1% community stands with the families, individuals, businesses, and organizations in Texas and along the Gulf Coast that have been effected by Harvey.  Only a few days after the storm hit, thousands of people have been displaced and there is a great need to support communities in need in Texas and beyond.  No matter your company’s pledge type, there’s a way you and your team can make an impact.

Give funds:

In times of disaster, it’s always best to donate funds versus goods, as many organizations get overwhelmed with incoming donated clothing, supplies and food.  As a company, you can organize a team Harvey fund to collect donations to donate as a group.  You can also talk to your executive team about matching employee gifts, to help your team’s generosity go even further.

Here’s some funds that are currently accepting donations for Harvey relief:

• The Harvey relief fund through The Greater Houston Community Foundation.


• GlobalGiving, which has set a $2 million fundraising goal for its Harvey relief fund.


• The Salvation Army is providing food and water to first responders.


• Among many others – this NPR piece has some great information and ideas to donate.

Give time:

There’s always a need for volunteers and there’s no better time to activate your pledge to give 1% of time.  If you are in the Houston area, ask your colleagues if they would consider volunteering to help the many organizations on the ground providing shelter and supplies.  You could also organize a team volunteer event in the weeks following the storm to help with clean up and any other needs.  Here’s some organizations to help you find nonprofits to volunteer with:

• VolunteerMatch has put together this post with information and names to volunteer if you are in the area.


• The American Red Cross also offers a disaster relief training program for volunteers to help.  You can learn more here.

Give product and goods:

It’s always better to give money versus goods during disaster, but there are many ways companies are giving product to help with relief.  For instance, Airbnb has set up an urgent accommodations site for people to house evacuees and provide shelters. Airbnb is waiving all service fees for those who check in this week.

If your company serves the greater Houston area, think about what products you can donate now or after the storm settles.  There will be plenty of rebuilding of homes, schools, communities, parks and more.  Do you have any supplies or goods you can donate to help communities save on those costs?

In the meantime, you could organize an office clothing or food drive this week.  If you want to donate food, Feeding Texas is working alongside state and federal relief efforts.  You can also donate to many local food banks.

Give blood:

Local organizations like Carter BloodCare and the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center are accepting blood donations.  You can also go to your local Red Cross to learn more about becoming a blood donor.  Email your team with information about where they can give blood locally or offer an afternoon or VTO time for people to leave the office and donate.

Of course, these are only a few of many organizations working hard to help those effected by the storm.  To learn more, follow us on Twitter @PledgeOne for more recommendations and ideas to give.

Our thoughts are with all of those effected by the storm, and we encourage you to join us and other Pledge 1% members in supporting the relief efforts in the Gulf Coast.

Thomas B. Shea/AFP/Getty Image

Originally posted on the RFPIO blog.

It’s back to school time, so the RFPIO team is giving back to our educational community. For our Q3 philanthropy mission, we’re partnering up with a local school in Beaverton to support their school year initiatives.

There are many causes, and each quarter we think about the best way to lend a helping hand to our community. There are plenty of options online, but we truly love to serve our local organizations. We are fortunate to have the support of our community as a rapidly growing startup and we feel it’s important to give back.

Source: American Association of School Librarians

As Salesforce partners, we work with Pledge 1% to participate in the culture of giving.

In Q1 we hosted the ROI of Compassion and helped Oregon Food Bank bring over 600 meals to families in need through online donations and an office food drive. In Q2 we got our hands dirty with SOLVE for the Go Green campaign and cleaned up Kelley Point Park on Earth Day. The result? Nearly 6,000 volunteers collected 35 tons of trash and debris from 162 sites.

Now we’re kicking off our Q3 initiative, the Give Back to School campaign. It was difficult to choose from so many wonderful schools near our headquarters, but Elmonica Elementary happens to be the same school where Ganesh’s daughter attends—so we reached out to find out how we could help.

That was when we discovered their amazing new program, MakerSpace.

Elmonica Elementary is beginning to use the idea of MakerSpace to enhance the learning environment by combining the benefits of library, media, and technology. The Elmonica staff believes in teaching students to be independent thinkers who will actively learn and create. MakerSpace blends the traditional library experience with 21st Century technology skills. Elmonica would like students to explore STEM learning while they research ideas.

Being a technology company, the RFPIO team was excited to help support this forward-thinking program to support the students at Elmonica. Last week RFPIO donated to the MakerSpace program, giving solar robots and a crazy fort (yes, we’re considering one of these for the office!).

Want to contribute to RFPIO’s Give Back to School campaign?

Supporting education is incredibly important and we’re excited to help make a positive impact on Elmonica’s bright young minds. You can help too!

We understand if you have local schools you want to work with, and we fully support that. If you’re not sure where to start, and you’d like to join forces with the RFPIO team, you can donate to Elmonica’s MakerSpace program easily by selecting items straight from their Amazon wish list.

Donate online right here to help Elmonica Elementary!

By Igor Sereda.  Originally published on the ALM Works blog.

Today, we are pleased to announce that ALM Works has joined the Pledge 1%, a global movement creating new normal where companies of all sizes integrate giving back into their culture and values.

Pledge 1% empowers companies to donate 1% of product, 1% of equity, 1% of profit or 1% of employee time to causes of their choice. Over 1,500 companies in 40 countries have taken the Pledge and committed to give to communities around the world. We are excited to join Pledge 1%’s network of founders, entrepreneurs and companies around the globe that have committed to giving back.

We have committed to pledging 1% of Equity, Product and Time to a good cause. We have already started in December 2016, when our 3-day Delivery Week hackathon was also used as a fundraiser for two local charity funds in St. Petersburg, Russia — «Кислород» (Oxygen), a charity fund that supports children with cystic fibrosis, and AdVita, which funds expensive cancer treatments unavailable under the public health service. ALM Works and our employees together raised and donated an equivalent of 8,000 USD to these funds. (For more details on this hackathon, see our Facebook post.)

By joining Pledge 1%, we intend to make such events regular in our company and we encourage our friends in other enterprises to join too. For more information about Pledge 1%, visit www.pledge1percent.org.

Igor Sereda
CEO, ALM Works

Originally posted on PR Newswire.

DALLAS, Aug. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Tim Houlne, CEO of leading business process and technology outsourcer Humach, will be participating in the upcoming Over the Edge charity event at the Plaza Towers in Iowa City, IA.

The event, which will benefit the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois, occurs on September 15, 2017. Houlne joins 8 other participants in repelling down the largest building in downtown Iowa City. Together, Houlne and Humach are actively raising funds for the event.

“It sounded easy until I saw the 13-story building. But when it’s for such a fantastic cause it’s worth it,” said Houlne. “Humach has service woven into the fabric of its charter, and this is a great chance to exemplify that.”

Over the Edge is the latest in a series of community service activities in which Humach has participated as a part of the Random Acts of Humach Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization devoted to improving the lives of local communities through service and corporate philanthropy. As an official member of the Pledge 1% initiative, Humach is changing the world by pledging to donate 1% of their time, 1% of their resources, and 1% of their founders’ equity to charitable organizations around the world.

Humach employees have participated in over 100 Random Acts of Humach sponsored events this year, such as hosting blood drives for the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center and the LifeServe Blood Center, delivering Meals on Wheels, participating in Relay for Life events, and volunteering at Minnie’s Food Pantry.

To learn more about the event, please visit here.

ABOUT HUMACH

Humach helps its clients find more innovative ways to engage, acquire and support their customers by combining business intelligence, experienced agents and machine automation. They offer best-in-class multi-channel contact center services leveraging numerous patents spanning cloud-based, scalable infrastructure and experienced agents. Humach provides contact center services to some of the world’s largest brands. Learn more at www.humach.com.

Hindsight Software is proud to have joined the corporate philanthropy movement Pledge 1%  and we have pledged FREE licenses of our hero tool Behave Pro to charities. Behave Pro is already helping hundreds of organisations across many different sectors around the world to deliver successful Agile projects, including several charities.

A clear understanding of user requirements by the whole Agile team, from the beginning, greatly increases the chances of project success (annual Chaos Report, Standish Group). Behave Pro directly addresses the clarification and agreement of user requirements and ensures they’re met.

The end result is timely delivery of successful Agile software projects.

Get Behave Pro totally free for your team

If you work for a registered charity, simply fill in the form here we’ll guide you through the process so you can be up and running with Behave Pro in no time at all.

The below letter was originally published on the Rapunzl Investments blog.

Greetings,

I am pleased to announce the launch of Rapunzl Cares  – a social outreach initiative dedicated to promoting financial literacy and entrepreneurship education in under-resourced communities. By exposing students to investing and breaking down the stock market (which transacts over $40 trillion every year) into digestible content, we knock down barriers which many may have believed to be insurmountable.

Our company’s inspiration for community outreach has existed since our inception. Although, a basic understanding of the financial markets relies upon math we are exposed to in secondary school, financial markets are viewed as dauntingly complex and difficult to navigate. In an era of unprecedented access to information, we see this as an issue, with a solution.

We are excited to announce a formal partnership between Rapunzl Cares and UrbanX Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating the opportunity gap for high school youth by providing educators, students and families access to breakthrough innovation.

How Did This Happen?

Since 2016, I have served on UrbanX’s Associates Board and could not be more thrilled to partner with a more inspiring organization.  Their mission to eliminate the opportunity gap for low-income students by expanding access and exposure to meaningful opportunities, thus breaking the cycle of poverty resonates with me personally. How does UrbanX transform communities and classrooms?? By providing professional development support to educators and tuition-free blended learning summer immersion programs at the University of Chicago’s Charter School and Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s Bridgescape.

So where does Rapunzl Cares play into their vision?

UrbanX knows that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’: students need to visualize themselves at college and  in the workforce, to believe there is a path to success. We believe the same can be said about investing. The stock market is a portal to the world and we must see companies for more than a share price before we invest in them.

In order to understand Facebook’s market valuation, you have to understand the intersectionality of big data, advertising, and the promise of their recently acquired virtual reality companies. When you examine Amazon, we are inevitably introduced to career paths dedicated to coding and logistics; when we delve into Home Depot’s profit margins, we must understand the place of commodities in the overall economy. When we look to invest in Boeing, we first understand airplane costs, the upcoming pilot shortage due to low wages, and arrive at the understanding of an industry.

Ultimately, the stock market is the world in numbers. It can enlighten and empower individuals to see just how much opportunity is in the world; jobs that students have never heard of defining our economy, career paths that don’t materialize because students were not exposed.

We founded the company on the idea that the high returns of Wall Street are trapped in an ivory tower. A tower which the ordinary person cannot scale alone. UrbanX sees the same gap we saw with financial markets, except with student achievement being dictated by zip code, gender, and ethnicity. We are united in a mission to fix a system that controls access and to explore opportunities to improve our community.

Together, we are launching a blended learning program that will guide students and educators view the world through a financial lens.

I.P.O. – Idea, Product, Opportunity – is built on a simple premise:  everyone has an idea. However few know how to build a  business. IPO takes students from inspiration to opportunity through understanding the stock market, and the ways in which it connects the world. We provide meaningful resources that are intuitive, engaging and take the onus away from educators to know the right answers. It’s our mission to show every class that  opportunities abound: that we are powerful in numbers and smarter, together.

I look forward to growing Rapunzl Cares into a transformative source of financial literacy programming. If anyone has comments, suggestions, or synergies to explore, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Until then, all the best,

Myles Gage

COO & Director of Rapunzl Cares

A company is much more than its product.  Take GlobeIn, for example, a subscription company that delivers “a fresh collection of useful and enthralling [artisan] items from around the world” straight to your doorstep each month.  While the contents of their boxes are delightful, their fair-trade and philanthropic philosophy is equally important for members.  By embracing their potential to lift communities in developing countries, they are creating not just a new line of products, but a sustainable change in our world.  Such kind-spirited inventiveness inspires our team at Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA) to raise the bar and challenge ourselves to give back.

First and foremost, our newly launched Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA) understands the need for a unifying force in the rapidly growing subscription box industry.  Currently, more than 2,500 subscription box companies comprise the industry that is projected to exceed $90 billion in annual revenue over the next decade, said SUBTA co-founder Christopher George. Our association is building the ecosystem for box companies and partners to provide networking, professional development, customer experience, profitable growth and research.  Essentially, explains George, “we want to help our members grow enduringly fantastic businesses.”

In addition to profitable growth, SUBTA believes that part of what makes a business “enduringly fantastic” is a commitment to sustainability and philanthropy.  “We want to foster a socially conscious sustainable box industry, where profitable growth and impact thrive together,”  explains SUBTA cofounder Michelle Lange.  Part of this holistic approach to successful business means engaging in “conscious capitalism.”  This is where Pledge 1% comes into play.