This story is part of Pledge 1%’s Impact Award Winner feature series. Learn more about the Cloud 100 List and other Pledge 1% members that were featured on the list here. 

Why did you first decide to join Pledge 1%?

Social impact at Procore first started happening through employee-led initiatives to create volunteer events and one-off product donations to educators that were referred to us by our customers. This culminated in Procore.org being formalized as the social impact arm of Procore in 2017, with a mission to advance the construction industry through advocacy, education, and technology.

Once we formalized with a dedicated team, we went through a benchmarking exercise with other organizations to help us get started. Throughout these conversations, rave reviews about Pledge 1% came up repeatedly. Pledge 1% has helped us maximize our impact on the communities we serve, providing invaluable learning experiences and networking opportunities from the first connection until today. 

What does your Pledge 1% program look like in action? What does your program involve?

We’ve formally pledged to give 1% of our time via employee volunteerism, as well as donate 1% of our construction management software to nonprofit builders, educational institutions, and training centers. 

Procore has various impact initiatives. Some of our programs involve:

Product Donations 

Over 800 nonprofit builders, educational institutions, and trade association training and apprenticeship centers in 21 countries have in-kind donated access to Procore with unlimited users, data storage, and support. 

Education

We provide product, training, and certifications to over 30,000 students in 10 countries. In fact, 96% of accredited construction management university programs in the US now have access to Procore through Procore.org. 

• The Top Tool for These Leading Construction Management Programs: Technology


• Nelson Mandela University: Future-proofing talent in construction

Nonprofits

Procore.org provides in-kind donations to over 320 nonprofits dedicated to building for communities in need and rebuilding for those impacted by disaster. Nonprofit & NGO users leverage Procore to optimize efficiencies and make a difference where staff is spread thin and resources are limited in low-income housing projects, disaster response, religious institutions, and more.

• Video: How Team Rubicon is Built to Serve

Advocacy

In 2021, Procore.org began providing free product training and a discounted buying program to better partner with minority contractors to support and amplify the impactful work they’re already doing. By the end of the year, over 100 minority contractors had received free training on Procore.

We focused our advocacy efforts on taking action to increase the number of minority contractors and leaders in construction. We accepted AGC’s Education Research Foundation’s challenge to create a $250,000 donation gift to assist African American and disadvantaged minority students who are studying construction fields at historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. 

• Videos/article: Procore and AGC’s Education Research Foundation Create a Scholarship Fund for Students Studying Construction at HBCUs

Procore Cares: Employee Volunteering

All Procore employees globally are encouraged to volunteer and give back to their local communities, with 16 hours of Volunteer Time Off (VTO) annually. All employee-led volunteering, donations, and other social giving opportunities are accessed through giving and volunteering platform Benevity.

• Video/article: Making volunteerism a tradition at Procore’s annual Revenue Summit

Procore was the Cloud 100 Pledge 1% Impact Award Winner in 2019. We offered a $50 donation for every demo of our product–a program that helped raise over $30K for Team Rubicon to support relief efforts for those impacted by Hurricane Dorian.

How has Pledge 1%’s framework helped you scale your impact? 

Since winning the award, the COVID-19 pandemic made us reimagine how we would run our programs. However, because of our partnership with Pledge 1% and Builders, we were able to learn from each other and adapt quickly to implement Benevity to scale our global employee volunteer efforts, build virtual classroom curriculum for instructors to use with students learning remotely, create our first large scale donation through the AGC ERF HBCU Matching Scholarship Fund, and start our program to support underrepresented groups in construction.

Has your Pledge 1% program changed since winning the Pledge 1% Impact Award? 

We have not pledged equity or profit, however we have made a donation of $250K with AGC Education Foundation for HBCU students in construction management programs. We challenged AGC members – and the industry at large – to match our donation in order to double our impact, and we achieved our collection action goal of $500K within 4 months.

In addition, we implemented the use of Benevity so that our employees can give directly to the nonprofit causes they care about.

We also have invested in resources and new nonprofit partnerships that directly help our industry with a prevailing challenge, the labor shortage. Procore.org cares about the labor shortage in construction and the industry’s workforce development because Procore is built solely for the construction industry, and these are major top-of-mind challenges that the industry faces. Our new Workforce Development web page is a hub for construction professionals, educators, students and parents to access Procore’s workforce development resources and content in one place. In addition, we started a partnership with the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) as a founding member of CareerStarter, a new tool powered by NCCER’s Build Your Future (BYF) initiative that provides career-seeking individuals direct connections with local training programs and entry-level jobs. 

What have been some of the greatest highlights or impact moments to date?

Awards: 

• Procore Named Philanthropist of the Year by the United States Minority Contractors Association


• Procore Earns a 2021 Tech Cares Award From TrustRadius 


• Procore Recognized with Forbes Cloud 100 Pledge 1% Impact Award

• AGC & Procore Meet Initial Goal of Raising $500,000 To Launch a New Scholarship for Minority Students Studying Construction at HBCUs


• Launching New Workforce Development Resources to Combat the Construction Labor Shortage


• Featured Company in National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) 2021 Report to President


• Procore’s commitment to customers in response to COVID-19


• Procore Promotes Construction Safety With Third Annual Procore Safety Qualified Program


• Procore.org Provides Construction Software to Habitat for Humanity

Each year, we work with Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Forbes to honor one company from the Cloud 100 list with the Pledge 1% Impact Award. We are delighted to share that this year’s winner is Snyk.

Snyk joins the ranks of past winners DocuSign, Twilio, Slack, Procore, Canva, and Guild Education, and is featured this year alongside 26 other Pledge 1% members on the Cloud 100 List. We are so proud to have so many Pledge 1% members featured on this year’s list! You can read more about each of their impact programs below and connect with them directly in the Community to learn more about how they are leveraging Pledge 1% to be a force for good:

• 6sense – By setting aside equity for impact, 6sense is helping charities like Girl Rising that concentrate on developing quantifiable solutions that assist and develop local and global communities.


• ActiveCampaign -Through their Digital Study Halls, ActiveCampaign is helping clients continue to learn from their Education team.


• Algolia – As a company that prioritizes care as a core value, Algolia has various impact programs ranging from charitable donation matching to supporting open-source projects to providing mentorship for local organizations to give back to organizations such as Techfugees and Konexio.


• Alloy – The leadership team at Alloy believes it is crucial that we take a more overt stand in support of reproductive rights. In addition, to support for their team, they provide financial donations to organizations that support reproductive rights, such as Planned Parenthood, The Center for Reproductive Rights, and the National Abortion Federation. 


• Arctic Wolf – Arctic Wolf’s “Pack Gives Back” initiative is dedicated to helping employees become involved in the impact program by supporting local charities.


• Automation Anywhere – Through its partnership with the Center for Humanitarian Technology, Automation Anywhere is automating humanitarian efforts for thousands of families across Ukraine. Their “Telegram for Humanity” bot will help refugees receive aid more quickly and save hundreds of hours per week of manual processing. 


• Automattic – Through Five for the Future, Automattic commits 5% of its workforce to core projects, including development, documentation, security, support forums, theme reviews, training, testing, translation, and any other tasks that further WordPress’ purpose.


• Canva – Canva is dedicated to ‘Be a Force For Good’ with both the Canva Company and Canva Foundation, leveraging their equity pledge to ensure social impact funds for the future, and by donating products and services to 250,000 nonprofits. 


• ​​Celonis – The Celonis Academic Alliance was created in collaboration with the top colleges and schools in the world to support and inspire the upcoming generation of process miners. Celonis also utilizes technology for good and works to make a difference by developing inventive solutions that benefit both its ecosystem and clients. 


• Checkr – Through Checkr.org, Checkr is creating possibilities for all through the design of technology.


• Collibra – Collibra has implemented a hybrid ESG plan this year to increase its focus on sustainability initiatives. They are actively working to increase their attention on climate change to make sustainably aware and equitable choices.  


• Dataminr – Dedicated to supporting humanitarian response, first responders are informed of breaking events through Dataminr’s First Alert product for the public sector, enabling the quickest real-time response.


• Flutterwave – Flutterwave, supported charities working in Nigeria during the pandemic. 


• Front – Through the Front Foundation, Front donates 1% of its time, equity, and output from its team to the community. They partner with organizations such as CHAYN, Empower Work, and Code For America to improve their communication and increase their impact globally.


• Guild Education – Through fair access to education, skill development, and professional routes, Guild Education is on a mission to open up economic and employment opportunities for everyone.


• Harness – Harness is committed to #BreakTheBias in tech (and beyond) by working towards a gender-equal world.


• Kong Inc. – In order to increase employee engagement, Kong Inc. places a strong emphasis on employee wellness and welfare. Additionally, they utilize the Donut Slack plug-in to encourage and promote teamwork.


• LaunchDarkly – LaunchDarkly launched the LaunchDarkly Foundation to donate time and money to education, housing, and climate groups that are bringing about meaningful change.


• Mambu – Passionate about the impacts of climate change, Mambu is leveraging its Pledge 1% program s to minimize the environmental impact of business operations.


• OwnBackup – OwnBackup supports well-known relief organizations in the healthcare, social and legal services, education, and environmental advocacy sectors by donating backup and recovery services and offering product discounts to a variety of non-profits.


• Personio – Through the Personio Foundation, outstanding and forward-thinking teams in the fields of education and climate change mitigation are given support through Personio Foundation’s Impact Portfolio and Impact Accelerator. 


• Rubrik – Rubrik has implemented its official Corporate Social Responsibility Program, Rubrik Beyond Work (RBW), through which the company commits 1% of its staff time each year to volunteering, with the objective to spread corporate principles to underserved communities and bring about positive, long-lasting change.


• ServiceTitan – ServiceTitan helps fund cancer research and organizations that help children fight cancer and other deadly diseases, like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. 


• Shippo – Through their Pledge 1% program, Shippo gives 1% of its profits, employee time, and sales to the community.


• Snyk – Through Snyk Impact, the company is empowering social impact groups with its technology, operating as a CarbonNeutral certified company, supporting programs that have a positive effect on communities, and by promoting inclusion, equity, and diversity both internally and toward the larger developer community. Snyk is this year’s Pledge 1% Impact Award Winner! 


• TalkDesk – The TalkDesk team volunteers it’s time to the community and actively works to minimize its carbon footprint via its remote-first workplace system.


• Workato – Workato created an integrated non-profit suite, so organizations may now use best-of-breed apps and have them function seamlessly, increasing efficiency, scalability, and growth. 

Once again, congratulations to our members who made the list this year, and a particular thank you to our Boardroom Allies and the coalition of firms for helping businesses set aside equity for impact. This enables us to establish a new standard for corporate giving and make sure businesses can have a lasting impact on the communities they serve, as demonstrated by the Cloud 100 event.

Originally published on Snyk. 

 Snyk, the leader in developer security, today announced that it has formally joined Pledge 1%, a global movement to inspire, educate and empower companies to effectively leverage their financial assets for positive social impact. With this announcement, Snyk has set aside 1% of its current equity to fund Snyk Impact initiatives long-term.

Launched in October 2021, Snyk Impact was founded with a mission to mobilize Snyk’s technology, resources and community in order to enable a more secure, inclusive and sustainable technology sector. In its first year, Snyk Impact has supported a growing list of compelling nonprofits including AIEDU, CareerVillage, DevelopforGood, FastForward, LearningEquality and UPchieve. By now pledging 1% of Snyk’s equity to Snyk Impact, Snyk is boldly reaffirming its long-term commitment to philanthropic leadership, bringing greater scale to this already successful foundational program.

“We founded Snyk Impact to ensure that our efforts toward making lasting positive social change became an integral, ongoing part of Snyk’s overall business strategy,” said Peter McKay, CEO, Snyk. “By joining the Pledge 1% movement, we’ve significantly accelerated that initial investment, doubling down on our commitment to give back within the communities where our global Snykers work and live.”

In recognition of Snyk Impact’s momentum to date, Pledge 1% has also named Snyk its 2022 Impact Award winner. This annual recognition spotlights one company from the industry’s prestigious Forbes Cloud 100 list that has most effectively demonstrated an outstanding commitment to social impact, serving as a leader to inspire their industry peers. On behalf of the Cloud 100 Pledge 1% Award, Salesforce Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners will donate USD $10,000 to Fast Forward in Snyk’s name. Fast Forward provides workshops, mentoring and seed money to a cohort of tech non-profits so they can scale solutions to our world’s most urgent problems.

“It’s an honor to officially welcome Snyk to the Pledge 1% community and acknowledge their philanthropic commitment with this year’s Impact Award,” said Amy Lesnick, Chief Executive and President, Pledge 1%. “Snyk now joins an esteemed group of former Impact Award winners such as Canva, DocuSign, Slack and Twilio, leading by example as they creatively leverage equity to make lasting positive social change.”

Snyk UK recently kicked off a partnership with 01 Founders by hosting 30 learners in its London office, while this summer Snykers around the globe participated in the company’s inaugural Snyk Week of Impact, a week-long volunteering initiative across five countries, offering over a dozen in-person and virtual volunteer opportunities. To get involved with Snyk Impact today, visit https://snyk.io/about/snyk-impact/.

Read the article here. 

35-year-old Canva founder Melanie Perkins got rejected by 100 VCs. Now her $26 billion design startup is ready to take on Microsoft and Google 

Originally published on Fortune. 

Originally published on Cision PR Newswire. 

Study.com, one of the most transformational companies in edtech, received the Primary Education award in Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Back to School 2022 for its Keys to the Classroom education initiative.

Study.com helps aspiring educators prepare for and pass their teacher certification exams with this initiative. Through scholarships to utilize Study.com’s teacher test preparation programs, Keys to the Classroom aims to ensure prospective educators of all backgrounds and ethnicities can access the profession and positively impact educational outcomes.

Study.com launched Keys to the Classroom in 12 states in less than a year, partnering with two state Departments of Education and the Vermont state chapter of the country’s largest teachers’ union – the National Education Association. Additionally, Study.com has partnered with Clark County School District (the 5^th largest school district in the country) and the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention & Advancement in South Carolina.

“We launched Keys to the Classroom to diversify the teacher pipeline and help reduce the teacher shortage by removing the barriers to becoming a teacher,” said Dana Bryson, SVP of Social Impact at Study.com. “The Keys to the Classroom program, along with our partnerships with school districts and teacher preparation colleges across the country, has allowed Study.com to make a difference in access and equity of education for underserved learners, non-traditional students and educators alike.”

Tech & Learning’s Awards of Excellence: Back to School celebrates exceptional technology that supports educators, students, and parents as they head back to school. Study.com was selected alongside 55 other edtech companies.

“As we head into another uncertain year in education, technology will continue to be one of the key drivers for innovation,” says Tech & Learning Group Publisher Christine Weiser. “Our judges chose the winning products recognized here for their versatility, compatibility, value and ability to help schools solve challenges and support continuous instruction. Congratulations to all of our winners.” 

In addition to Tech & Learning’s award, Study.com was named to the GSV EdTech 150, a list of the world’s most transformative growth companies in digital learning. Study.com’s CEO Adrián Ridner was recently named a 2022 Innovator of Color award recipient at this year’s ASU+GSV Summit, as well as being named one of the Latino Leaders Worth Watching by Diversity Journal.

Study.com is a leading online education platform providing academic support for learners and educators. Recognized on the GSV EdTech 150 as a leading EdTech company, Study.com simplifies learning for over 30 million learners and educators a month. Study has donated $25 million in-kind value across social impact programs committed to Making Education Accessible through our Pledge 1% partnerships and programs focused on increasing access and equity in education for underserved learners.

Read the article here. 

Originally published on Cision PR Newswire.

At Imagine 2022, Automation Anywhere, Inc., the global leader in cloud-native intelligent automation, today announced a collaboration with the Center for Humanitarian Technology (CFHT), a nonprofit that provides technology and operations solutions to humanitarian organizations. Together, Automation Anywhere and CFHT are enabling a greater number of internally displaced people and refugees to receive humanitarian aid in Ukraine.  

In collaboration, Automation Anywhere and CFHT created the ‘Telegram for Humanity’ Bot — a customized software bot, or digital worker for Step with Hope (Крок з надією), a Ukrainian humanitarian organization that provides aid to more than 8,000 families each week in combat zones and recently released territories in southern Ukraine.

The ‘Telegram for Humanity’ bot is automating thousands of manual requests for aid with increased speed and accuracy, saving the organization nearly 200 hours of manual processing each week. This is expected to free up Step with Hope’s 96 volunteers across 20 centers to increase their efforts of direct assistance for refugees, providing food, hygiene kits and access to psychologists, lawyers, and child welfare specialists to those in need.

“Members of our volunteer team are refugees themselves, and the ability to help other Ukrainians is our main priority,” said Alla Semenchuk, Operations Director of CFHT. “It’s critical and tremendously challenging work to find and manage the distribution of necessary resources for refugees and internally displaced people. The customized bot that Automation Anywhere and CFHT have built for Step with Hope is both refugee-friendly and volunteer-friendly—it makes application processing quick and transparent, saving human effort and strengthening the organization’s structure.”

As part of its Social Impact Program, Automation Anywhere’s mission is to fuel the future of work by empowering nonprofits and uplifting human lives through automation technology. 

“Technology is all about human enablement,” said Neeti Shukla, Social Impact Officer and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. “In collaboration with CFHT, we are proud to support this humanitarian effort with life-saving technology that can make a difference to the millions of Ukrainians that have been displaced by conflict.”

“CFHT and Automation Anywhere’s collaboration to build a custom bot for Step with Hope has enabled us to provide humanitarian aid to a greater number of internally displaced people in Ukraine,” said Inna Kampen, Director of Step with Hope. “Our volunteers and the families we serve are enduring the unthinkable. Having a responsive, user-friendly bot to interact with vulnerable families who are requesting help allows the volunteers to use more of their valuable time providing direct support, while spending less time processing and validating requests manually.”

About Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is the leading cloud automation platform, delivering automation and process intelligence solutions across all industries globally to automate end-to-end business processes for the fastest path to enterprise transformation. The company offers the world’s only cloud-native platform combining RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics to automate repetitive tasks and build enterprise agility, freeing up humans to pivot to the next big idea and build deeper customer relationships that drive business growth. For additional information about our social impact endeavors, please visit https://www.automationanywhere.com/company/global-impact.

About the Center for Humanitarian Technology

The Center for Humanitarian Technology is a non-profit that harnesses the power of volunteer engineering, technology, and operations experts to optimize humanitarian organizations. CFHT develops, deploys, and operates information and communication technology to support scalable humanitarian emergency relief efforts. For more information about CFHT or to learn about becoming a partner or donor, please visit www.cfht.org, contact CFHT at contact@cfht.org, or follow CFHT on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Read the article here. 

Originally published on EPR Retail News. 

ContactPigeon, one of the leading omnichannel customer engagement platforms for retailers in Europe and the USA, expands its operations in Cyprus. By building up a special team of professionals that will be based in the neighboring country, ContactPigeon will be providing its customer engagement services to its cross-industry clients that are operating there. With this expansion, the Greek startup aims to consolidate its reach to the thriving Cyprus market. 

Furthermore, ContactPigeon becomes an official sponsor for the 14th e-Commerce Conference that took place in Nicosia, Cyprus on the 20th of September 2022.

The E-Commerce Conference by IMH is a benchmark for the e-commerce industry in Cyprus. With industry experts as keynote speakers and leading businesses as sponsors and participants, the conference presents the upcoming, international trends in the e-commerce sector as well as case studies that provide attendees with valuable knowledge and insights. The 14th E-Commerce Conference is addressed to entrepreneurs, Commercial Managers, Marketing & Communication and advertising professionals, Digital Managers, and also those who are interested to start operating in the e-Commerce sector.

This year, the participants had the opportunity to meet with ContactPigeon members at its booth and learn about the company’s activities and the benefits of its omnichannel customer engagement platform.

About ContactPigeon

ContactPigeon empowers marketing leaders and business owners with the only omnichannel customer engagement platform built for retailers. The platform is designed to deliver perfectly timed and personalized messages for each customer, regardless of whether the point of contact is offline or online. The company has been awarded numerous industry awards and distinctions since 2015 and is also a member of the Pledge 1% corporate philanthropy movement. Its client base consists of hundreds of retailers in Europe and the USA such as Fujitsu, Tommy Hilfiger, GAP, and L’OREAL.

Read the article here. 

Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

Nancy Cooper

CEO, Servio Consulting LLC

Frankfort, IL, USA

What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences. 

CEO – I mainly oversee our partnership with Salesforce and our sales and marketing departments.

What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?

Strategy! I love working with our customers to understand their pain points, requirements and goals and work with our solutions team to show our customers how to bring those to life using the Salesforce platform.

We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?

Watching the fear and challenges that our customers are facing as they try to adopt digital transformation and learning how to sustain the remote workforce over the few years. We mainly work in education and this has been a huge challenge for institutions and driving them through this new normal is what motivates me to keep going.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

Document everything and have a running to do list that is consistently reviewed.

What does generosity mean to you? 

Going above and beyond to help others with your time.

How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?

Today’s largest challenge is adopting to our volatile world and learning the new digital and remote way of doing business. So having realtime access to data to be able to pivot quickly is what we need to be looking at. Implementing technology that gives us this data and the ability to adopt to change quickly. For example, Servio was able to use Salesforce to implement COVID tracking solutions for several institutions and school districts that will quickly give decision makers the ability to see who is sick, who has COVID, who has been exposed in realtime and react accordingly. Without this technology, it would take days/weeks to gather this information.

If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?

Strategic – I love strategy, planning and executing in all aspects of my life and I feel that is my strength. I feel you need to constantly be evolving to improve to be a better company and person.

If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?

If you are going through hell by Rodney Atkins

What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?

I am looking forward to seeing what our new norm is. We have been moved up to Premium Partner Level with Salesforce, we are figuring out our highbred office hours, we are rapidly hiring, implementing new processes and software. From the personal side, my daughter is getting married in October, my son was moved up to play on a D2 rugby team and I am looking forward to start traveling again. All of this gives me great excitement to see where the business falls at the end of the year, super excited to see my beautiful daughter marry her prince charming, very excited to become a rugby groupie mom this fall and cannot wait to start traveling again, my goal is to travel to a new destination every quarter.

Women Who Lead

Originally published on Vegconomist.

UK hemp milk producer Gaia’s Farming Co. has raised £500,000 in seed funding. The raise follows a £200,000 pre-seed round last year.

The investors in the round were not disclosed. Gaia says it will use the funding to “keep building and keep innovating in the hemp space”, with a particular emphasis on expanding its team.

The company has also recently partnered with Pledge 1%, a global movement encouraging companies to donate a proportion of their staff time, product, and/or profit to a charity of their choice. Gaia will be pledging 1% of both its sales and its time.

Gaia’s hemp milk

Hemp is considered highly sustainable as it captures four times more carbon dioxide than trees, while its strong roots help to replenish nutrients in the soil and remove toxins. Every part of the plant can be used, meaning there is no waste. Gaia’s Farming Co told vegconomist that it is on a mission to change people’s views towards hemp — the plant is often viewed negatively because it is part of the same family as cannabis, despite the fact that it does not have psychoactive effects.

Gaia’s initially launched in January with two products — Hemp & Oat M*lk and chocolate-flavoured Hemp & Coco M*lk. The latter was recently named a finalist in the Great British Food Awards 2022, and has also launched at plant-based burger chain Neat Burger.

“I believe the Food & Beverage category has the greatest opportunity to disrupt the hemp space,” said Gaia’s CEO Michael Kyriakou. “Truly untapped with great potential for innovation. There obviously comes great barriers that anyone in the hemp space can testify to, but what gives me the greatest pride is building a team to spearhead that innovation and change. After all, it’s in our hands.”

Read the article here.