By Lucia Maffei.  Originally published on BostInno.

By Laura Anderson, originally published on the K15t Sotfware blog.

Trash belongs in garbage bins – a statement we probably all agree on. Sadly, beautiful places, such as forest trails, meant for everyone’s enjoyment and recreation end up being littered with plastic bags, empty bottles, and lots of cigarette butts. In order to help clean up some of Stuttgart’s public forest trails, six of our team members recently spent a sunny afternoon picking up all kinds of trash. And who would have guessed that walking through shady forests can be much more exhausting than a project-filled day at the office?

Pledge 1% in action

Before we get into the details of how we set out to rid a forest trail of bottles, car radios, and socks, here are few facts and figures from our day:

• Participants: 6


• Location: Stuttgart, Germany


• Route: approx. 3 km


• Equipment: trash bags, trash grabbers, and gloves (Thanks to Stuttgart city’s AWS)


• Time: 4 hours per team member (total of 24 man hours)

Our team’s clean-up route through part of Stuttgart’s forest

Shortly after our K15t forest clean-up crew gathered at the trail head in Stuttgart South, it became obvious that finding garbage wouldn’t be a problem. As soon as we started paying attention and looking for trash it seemed as if we were surrounded by it – everything from small, transparent plastic bags to larger, more curious litter items. Anja was the first to discover one of these more unexpected pieces – a abandoned shoe.

Other strange trash pick-ups included:

• BBQ equipment


• plastic grave lights


• socks


• a jacket


• a car radio


• an entire bag full of . . . we weren’t brave enough to look

Of course, we also found lots and lots of cigarette butts, empty packs, and plastic, as well as glass bottles and cans.

Even though some of these items were located in difficult terrain, the team didn’t shy away from scaling steep slopes and crawling through thorn bushes to collect every piece of man-made rubbish they could find. As it turns out, this hunt and retrieval effort gets pretty tiring, at least in comparison to a normal busy work day.

Hard to reach? No matter, our team didn’t give up. 

Trash collection in retrospect

At the end of the day, we were able to collect over six big, heavy bags of garbage. And while some of us might have been more exhausted than others, we all felt good about volunteering to make our local trails a more enjoyable place for everyone.

Originally published on the Pledge 1% Colorado blog.

On May 16, as part of Boulder Startup Week, Pledge 1% Colorado – an initiative of the Community Foundation Boulder County – and other sponsors launched a contest to showcase how cross-sector collaborations are positively impacting our community. El Centro Amistad, one of the six finalists, shared with us their approach to the contest, and what they learned:

Who we are & why we entered the contest

What we did

What happened and how we feel

How this process was for us

Where we go from here

By Dan McConvey, Development and Partnerships Associate, The Boston Foundation.  Originally shared on The Boston Foundation’s blog.

Pranam Lipinski was born and raised in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts in the town of Adams.  While attending Endicott College as a business major, he co-founded the college’s Investment Club.  It was through founding that club that Pranam developed his desire to support and harness the initiative of students who participate in clubs at schools.  Today, he is Co-Founder of the new Pledge 1% Boston company Door of Clubs.

A few years ago, he toured Massachusetts and met with about 50 different student clubs to research ways he could support them and connect them with opportunities.

“The one thing students in clubs have in common is that they take the initiative to grow outside the classroom,” says Pranam. “Student clubs are the number one way to develop soft skills. You would think that potential employers would benefit from gaining access to those kinds of students.”   He says that many clubs are underfunded and companies have a difficult time recruiting from them directly. The Door of Clubs model aims to address this gap and is built on the belief that initiative should be both supported and rewarded.  “The support is the funding and the reward is the opportunity,” says Pranam.

As an entrepreneur, Pranam has been fortunate enough to have mentors and champions.  The Executive Vice President of Human Resources at iRobot, Russ Campanello, is one of his closest mentors today. The CEO of Mastercard, Ajay Banga, has also been a gracious mentor, as well as fellow Endicott alumna, Libby Moore, who was Oprah Winfey’s Chief of Staff for several years.

Now Pranam wants to make sure that Door of Clubs is giving back early on.  “I think what’s great about Pledge 1% is that we believe you can be a company of purpose and contribution from day one. This is about setting an intention and doing the right thing even before you’re successful. We’re doing this to have a successful company and a consciousness about where we ultimately want to go as a company.”

“Pledge 1% embodies this intent of goodness that is so easy to overlook when you’re going at a breakneck pace as a startup. But it’s important to take a second and set the right intention from the start. There’s a true honor in that. I believe it’s also character building for companies.”

Door of Clubs is pleased to announce its current campaign, which has the goal of raising a $1 million fund for clubs this fall, and is proud to partner with the Boston Foundation on this initiative. Clubs will compete for funding around questions like “What does the inclusive, inspiring and engaging workplace of the future look like?”  A dance club could create a dance about it; a business club could create a business plan; and computer science club could create an app.

Door of Clubs has pledged $500,000 and is looking for companies and individuals who want to be strategic partners and help raise the remaining $500,000. Reach out to  Pranam to learn more about this initiative.

Fun facts about Pranam Lipinski:

• He has committed to a year of ice cold showers. “I’m now in month 10,” he says. “It’s a good daily awakening and a mental discipline—and it wakes up the senses.”


• Pranam’s name means “I salute the truth within you.”


• He loves trout fishing in the brooks and rivers in Western Massachusetts.


• He is from Adams, which has the tallest mountain in Massachusetts, and his mother is from Nepal, which has the tallest mountain in the world.

By Anna Hendry, originally posted on Inside the Salesforce Ecosystem.

“The business of business is improving the state of the world.” These words from CEO Marc Benioff serve as the guiding principle for the impact Salesforce wants to have on our community. And they describe why, when Salesforce was founded in 1999, the leadership team vowed to set aside 1% of the company’s equity, 1% of employees’ time, and 1% of its products to improve communities around the world.

It’s an idea that’s caught on. Following the 1–1–1 model that Salesforce pioneered, Pledge 1% encourages companies to dedicate 1% time, 1% product, 1% profit and/or 1% equity to improve the world. Since its launch, more than 1,900 companies have joined Pledge 1% to make the community a key stakeholder in their businesses.

It’s also why we encourage our Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies to integrate philanthropy into their culture. And more recently, we hosted our first ever Cloud Gives Back — an afternoon of volunteering for our portfolio companies, to help them turn those pledges into action.

If you are a bootstrapped early-stage company with limited time and resources, it can be easy to dismiss a philanthropic philosophy as something you formalize when you’re more established. But in addition to the benefit of improving the state of the world, there are a few other reasons to build this approach into your corporate DNA in the early stages of your company:

Attract & Retain Top Employees

Companies today are fighting for top talent, especially among millennial employees, who will comprise over 50% of the workplace by 2020. And unlike the generations that came before them, millennials are far more concerned with what their company can offer them beyond the traditional HR benefits.

In fact, 49% of millennials prefer for work for a company committed to positive social & environmental impact compared to only 13% of baby boomers, and six out of ten millennial employees say that a “sense of purpose” is part of the reason that they chose to work for their current employers.

Not only do millennials prefer to work for companies that give back, businesses that do have 2.3 times the employee retention than businesses that do not. Just as Vidyard CEO and Founder Michael Litt says:

“As a group of millennials with bleeding hearts, it’s not just about making money; it’s about making money that matters. And that’s what gets me out of bed every morning, and I think what gets the broader team out of bed every morning. And since we’ve started involving ourselves in corporate philanthropy, I’ve been in interviews, and one of the reasons they want to come to Vidyard is because of the impact we can provide through this program.”

 

Giving Back Helps Build Employee Morale

This past April, Salesforce Ventures brought together nine of our portfolio companies for our first-ever The Cloud Gives Back — an afternoon of volunteering. Over 100 employees joined us and volunteered at four different locations including Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, La Casa De Las Madres, The Presidio Trust and the Surfrider Foundation.

Not only was the feedback extremely positive (multiple people asked us to host the event weekly), employees were able to bond with their coworkers outside their standard office environments all the while giving back to their communities.

Volunteers from Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies participate in our first-ever The Cloud Gives Back.

 Volunteers from Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies participate in our first-ever The Cloud Gives Back.

“It was great to get out of the office and actually feel like I was making a difference volunteering,” said Lauren Mallen, a marketing coordinator at FinancialForce.

An event such as this is an example of how striving towards a common goal and supporting a cause that you believe in can create a sense of community among your employees. And when charitable giving is a part of the culture, it encourages employees to spend time together in environments outside of the office, letting them get to know each other in contexts that go beyond the day-to-day workday challenges. Beyond that, it exposes them to new environments and ways of life and promotes a work-life balance, something that can often get overlooked in a startup.

Consumers Prefer Socially Responsible Companies

In addition to increased recruiting, retention and employee engagement, philanthropy and corporate responsibility efforts can also affect your company’s bottom line. According to Nielsen, 55 percent of global online consumers are willing to spend more on products from companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact.

And here’s the secret: Giving back doesn’t take much. Take employee time, for example. One percent of an eight-hour workday comes to just five minutes, roughly the amount of time it takes to grab a cup of coffee and heat up a Danish (and certainly less time than is spent recapping the most recent “Game of Thrones” or “American Gods”). But over the course of a year, that works out to 20 hours — a good amount of time for a good cause.

Amanda Kahlow, Founder and CEO of 6sense, says it best: “Making a commitment to Pledge 1% — that was one of the easiest decisions that I had to make as-as a CEO. We wanted to be a company that could grow revenue and drive a big profitable business, but also one that cares about the world.”

By Erin Reilly, Twilio.  See original post on Entrepreneur.

These days, it seems like every startup is trying to figure out how to launch a social impact or “.org” arm. They see it helps build the brand, boost loyalty and even drive revenue. But, many aren’t sure how to start.

In my time working in social impact at Yahoo, Google and now at Twilio, I’ve learned that social impact can’t be “a nice to have” or something you add on so that your company is able to say, “We give back.” Social impact works best when it is an integral part of your company’s strategy, culture and values. How do you make that happen? Here are my tips for anyone who is getting started: 

1. Figure out the unique assets your company can offer.

Too often, a company’s attempt at doing good in the world is inspired by the favorite cause of a philanthropy-minded executive. Instead, consider the assets and offerings of your company, and find an angle into helping the world that your company can uniquely provide. While I was at Yahoo, I was working on the company’s green initiative. At the time, Yahoo’s home page was viewed by hundreds of millions of people every month, so it became our greatest asset for sharing tips on how consumers can be more eco-friendly in their own lives.

Ask yourself, does your product make it easier to mobilize volunteers? Do your employees have a specific skill that’s hard to come by? You’ll drive more impact by drafting off the momentum of your company’s core offering, and you’ll generate a halo that makes sense for your brand.

2. Make social responsibility as critical to the success of your company as any other strategic initiative.

Build ties so that when your company grows and generates more revenue, you also increase your ability to generate social impact. With an estimated 10 million nonprofits worldwide, providing your products at discounted rates to nonprofits, like Tableau, Splunk, Slack and many others do, allows you to make your products more accessible to many organizations while generating sustainable program revenue. Creating a virtuous cycle between social impact and business success and actively making them inextricably tied is important for the sustainability of both efforts.

3. Put a team in place.

If you’re serious about social impact, then it can’t be the side project of an employee who has another role at the company. When you value your social impact program as much as any other revenue-generating program, it is critical that you staff it that way. Hire a team who is responsible for creating, executing and reporting on your plan. That way, it won’t be ancillary, it will be integral to the success of the business.

For example, if it’s a product-driven company, then the social impact team should report into product or supply chain to ensure they align with the goals of product development. Or if the company’s brand is one of its biggest assets, then reporting into marketing will help social impact be imbedded into the overall positioning.  Better yet, have the team leader report into the CEO as part of the executive team to ensure social impact aligns with the overall company strategy and direction.

4. Join Pledge 1%.

Pledge 1% is an organization that encourages companies to dedicate 1 percent of their employees’ time, their product or their profits to social impact. More than the authenticity of putting your money and time where your mouth is, formalizing your commitment to social impact will inspire your company to real action for the long haul. Taking the pledge also immediately brings you into a community of over 1,500 peer companies, including Atlassian, Box and Okta, who are committed to giving back in the same ways you are.

5. Celebrate loudly.

So often we work, work, work, and even when we have a win, we move too quickly to the next thing. Take time to celebrate because it helps everyone in the company feel proud of the good work they’re doing in the world. For example, at the Salesforce annual Dreamforce conference, there’s an entire summit track dedicated to customers who are doing good. It’s powerful watching the employees as well as the community be inspired by the work of these organizations. One of the genuinely wonderful realities of corporate social impact is the impact on morale.

6. Measure and report. 

Set goals for social impact in the same way you would any area of the company — this holds you accountable and keeps you focused on progress. Be sure to articulate metrics for business impact as well as social impact in your objectives. Measure monthly and quarterly, report out to other departments to share your impact and successes. Many companies, including Google, LinkedIn and Twitter, use an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) system to track progress. The social impact team’s OKRs should roll up and support the overall company objectives, just like every other team at your company.

As part of Boulder Startup Week last night, attendees of “Boulder Community Night: Innovation + Impact” filled the house at the Boulder Theater. The free and open event recognized entrepreneurial and innovative nonprofit ideas to solve pressing problems and critical issues facing Boulder County. 

1. Boulder Day Nursery


2. Boulder Food Rescue


3. Community Cycles


4. El Centro Amidstad


5. “I Have a Dream” Foundation of Boulder County


6. Imagine!

Leigh Christie is the Executive Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation. In this role, Leigh oversees the daily operations of the organization; leads member company programming and events; manages the philanthropic contributions for realized equity donors; directs the corporate community involvement programs for member companies; and supports the organization’s leadership projects.

Leigh is a lawyer by trade and has more than 20 years experience in program development and operations. Building and supporting strategic and impactful collaborations to address community needs is her greatest strength and joy.

She is a graduate of the Leadership Austin Essential Class, the Acton Leadership Edge Program , the AISD UpClose Program, and a sustaining member of the Junior League of Austin. Current roles include: Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Board Member; City of Austin, Corporate Engagement Council, Member; Austin Gives, Executive Council Member; and SXSWedu Advisory Board Member.

Leigh was named one of the 2016 Austin Business Journal’s Profiles in Power & Women of Influence Finalist. She’s also getting geared up to complete her 4^th and 5^th marathons in 2017 and 2018.

Adhamina Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of AR Green Consulting, a boutique sustainability consulting firm based in San Francisco that strives to change the World one building at a time.

Adhamina brings over 20 years of experience in the construction industry managing interdisciplinary teams to improve sustainability in buildings and organizations. In her roles of Director of Sustainability, Project Executive, and Senior Project Manager for large corporations, Adhamina has managed hundreds of complex projects from beginning to end, has established strategic sustainability policies, and implemented green building design and construction to deliver healthier and better performing buildings.

Adhamina has served in the Board of several Energy and Sustainability Committees, is an official instructor in sustainability at U.C. Berkeley and has lectured at Stanford University since 2001. Adhamina is an Architect/Civil Engineer from the University of Seville (Spain), and has a Master’s Degree from Northwestern University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.  In 2011 Adhamina was recognized by Engineering News Record (ENR) as one of California’s Top 20 Under 40.

Read the full interview below to hear Adhamina’s ideas for leadership and how to have an impact in the workplace.

Q1: How long have you been in your current position?

2 years. Before that I worked for almost 17 years for a large corporation as Director of Sustainability and Project Executive.

Q2:  What inspired you to work in this industry?

I am Architect and a Civil Engineer with a Master in Project Management. I was drawn to the building industry because of its unique combination of art and technology, and the enormous impact that buildings have on our environment and on our every-day life. We spend 90% of our time indoors, buildings are our habitat.

Q3:  What would you tell women who are looking to work in tech?  Any advice on how they can build their career?

Technology surrounds us, it is in every aspect our life, but even so, there is so much that we still can improve. There are traditional industries, like construction, that take longer to adapt than other industries like transportation or manufacturing. I encourage women to take on the challenge of transforming traditional men-dominated niches into progressive markets that help us close the gap towards a sustainable future.

Q4:  Is your company a Pledge 1% member or do you personally give back to your community? If so, how do you give and to what cause?

Yes, my firm is a Pledge 1% member from day one and I have personally given back to my community during my whole career. I have a passion for sustainability, protection of the environment, and children, as they are our future. I have volunteered hundreds of hours to my local community educating and feeding people in need, and worked pro-bono to create a new playground in the City, and community centers in low-income areas. I have also volunteered as a role model in organizations that strive to close the gender and minority achievement gap in the STEM field including: “Techbridge Girl”, “Scientific Adventures for Girls”, and “Tech-women” ( a program managed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to mentor to young women from Africa and the Middle East through exchange).

Q5:  Do you serve as a mentor?  What does mentorship mean to you?

Mentoring to me means teaching and coaching. I strongly believe that if we allow others to build on our foundation of knowledge, we will reach higher levels of sustainability from which we will all benefit.  I have been a mentor and lecturer on green design and construction at Stanford University for the past 17 years to students from all over the world, and I am an official instructor at UC Berkeley Extension since 2009.  My mentorship to many students has continued to date through email, and in person with some that followed me throughout my professional career as new employees.

Q6:  What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received to help you with your career?

Always move forward. Do not set yourself back, not even to get impulse!

Do not give up, work hard, and show confidence. If you do not believe in yourself, none else will.

Q7:  What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself 5 years ago?

Do not be afraid to explore new possibilities. It took me many years to venture into opening my own firm, and now I could not be happier with my decision. Yes, managing your own company takes a lot of work, a learning curve, and making some mistakes. Learn from them and move on!