In 2021 Easy Agile was proud to release our first Sustainability, Community, and Inclusion Report. We believe business should be good for both people and planet, and we are consciously learning how to play our part and commit to creating a more inclusive, just and equitable future.
The Community chapter of our SCI report highlights our commitment to Pledge 1%, and how we work together as a collective to give back. Easy Agile commits to pledging 2% of profit: 1% going directly to Room to Read, and 1% allocated for team member giving through Good Thnx and Open Collective.
- Good Thnx Foundation provides a link between people and corporates that want to give, and charities. As our team send ‘thanks’ to one another the recipient is given $50 to donate to a charity of their choice.
- Room to Read transforms the lives of millions of children in low-income communities by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.
- Open Collective enables Easy Agile to support the maintainers of the open source software libraries that we depend upon to build test and deploy our software.
We pledge 1% of product licenses via the Atlassian Marketplace Community, Student and Open Source programs, with plans to implement license donations for Cloud customers.
And finally, we commit to pledging 1% of employee time, with all Easy Agile employees having access to four paid volunteering days per year. The team have been proactive with their time and undertaken work building websites for local charities such as Need A Feed, mentoring students at the University of Wollongong, and running courses on Social Media for Business for the Multicultural Communities Council of Illawarra.
Hear from Sean, our Head of Marketing, about how he Pledged 1%.
How I pledged 1%: Sean
One of Easy Agile’s company values is Give Back. It’s one of my favourites because it’s not just a slogan or mindset. It’s practical. With COVID-19, we’ve been unable to volunteer at many places in-person, so I had to think outside the box about how to spend the time. This is what I did:
Siligong Valley #marketing meetup
Siligong Valley is a local tech community. Each month there are different community meetup events about different topics like infrastructure, product management, agile, and marketing. The Marketing Meetup was a virtual event where local marketers gathered together to learn and discuss a topic together. I was asked to speak at the event so I took a day of volunteer leave to prepare the content for the session. I really valued being able to prepare for this in work hours. I knew that by making the content as relevant as possible, it would go a long way in helping give back to the community. I presented on the topic of content marketing and experimentation.
I really loved being involved in this event so much that I would likely do it in my own time to continue with giving back.
FTS is been a proud member of Pledge 1%. Given the extraordinary circumstances that businesses and communities alike have faced over the past 18 months FTS was compelled to give back to our community in new and meaningful ways in 2021. With our expanding team we were able to give back in both volunteer time as well as financial contributions to businesses impacted by COVID-19.
Creating a non-profit arm of the business was always part of our long-term vision but seeing our fellow small businesses suffer due to COVID-19 jump-started our execution. This past year the FTS Foundation, an accredited 501c3 organization, was established to help distribute our 1% of profits to businesses and communities in need. In our inaugural year we were able to support restaurant and service businesses whom COVID-19 had an outsized impact on. The FTS Foundation awarded two $5,000 grants to restaurants in the Rochester area, where FTS is headquartered. These grants will help to ensure local businesses continue to play a part in the economic development of downtown Rochester and surrounding communities. For more information on the FTS Foundation visit www.fasttrackingsolutions.com/foundation.
In addition to monetary contributions, the FTS team was excited to give back to the community through volunteer efforts as we continued to develop key relationships with other organizations in our area. In 2021 the team will have helped to ready a local community garden that supports residents with limited access to fresh produce, cleaned up a playground to ensure children in long-term care have an outdoor place to play and supported holiday gift giving to families in need. Community is core value here at FTS and pledge 1% helps give us opportunities to live out that value each day.
FTS looks forward to continuing to support the Rochester and surrounding communities in 2022 and beyond. Congratulations to the team who made these contributions happen and to the team at Pledge 1% for their continued advocacy.
It is commonly believed that the main objective of any business is to make profit.
Techaim believes that along with profit, a business should create Value in the lives of all connected with it directly and indirectly. That’s what our core product Salesforce offers to our clients. And, that is exactly what we attempt to create for our employees too!
For the birthday of our senior consultant Swarupa, a talented & sensitive leader, we could have celebrated it like any other software company – cake cutting followed by a pizza party.
But the whole Techaim team decided to do this differently – we threw a surprise party for her at Umed Foundation, a center that works to care & rehabilitate special children at Kothrud, Pune.
Swarupa cut her birthday cake with Ovee, a young girl at the center and had loads of fun with all the kids there. We had arranged a magician, a guitarist and a sumptuous Biryani meal to make it a memorable time for all.
Every member of Techaim team was touched by this experience. The joy of sharing with the innocent souls like those special kids is indescribable!
The tears that welled up in our eyes were not of sadness but of pure gratitude for the opportunity of being there.
Techaim pledges to create more such occasions and engagements.
Martin Luther King Jr. said the “surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.” For a very long time, the greatest thinkers of our time have suggested the same thing: Happiness is found in helping others. Studies show that the very act of giving back to the community improves your happiness, health, and sense of well-being. In mid-October the time had come to organise Agilcon’s autumn team building. We set out to do something different and contribute to others.
We decided to combine the pleasant with the useful, join forces as a team and give back to the community as a part of our time pledge. As a Salesforce partner, Agilcon d.o.o. is a part of a 1% pledge global initiative by which organisations commit important resources to support integrating philanthropy into their business. It could be 1% of equity, time, product, or profit. So instead of meeting at the office on a typical Friday, we headed to Polzela where Društvo za zaščito konj (a horse protection organization) expected us.
The horse protection organization takes care of several abandoned, aged, sick, donated horses and other equidae that were taken away from their owners from all over Slovenia. Although the Organisation focuses on horses, donkeys and ponies in distress due to poor care, illness, old age or the incapacity of their aging owners, the Society also takes care of many other rescued animals. They are known for creative workshops for children, adults and also team buildings for companies.
Agilcon employees spent a whole day with volunteers from the organisation at the location and rolled up our sleeves. We helped with building new fences, painting and sanitisation of stables. We spent our free time walking ponies, feeding animals and enjoying their company. Overall experience? It was amazing. We felt empowered, useful, we learned new skills, we recharged and relaxed. We enjoyed spending time together without phones and computers.
Volunteering and helping others made us feel great and we all agreed to organize team buildings like this on a regular basis. Kindness is the key to creating a happier, more trusting local community and we hope our story will inspire other companies to do the same.
At WELLReceived, we believe that caring is the answer. We’re a live call answering service for professionals in the medical and healthcare sector. As a company, our clients’ callers are cared for by our compassionate virtual medical
receptionists. Our employees are cared for by being given the flexibility to work Anywhere. And we believe in extending our care to those who need it most.
In 2021, we launched our employee-led Giving Back initiative. Every two months, WELLReceived partners with a different medical based charity or non-profit organization to help give back to underserved communities. Employees are encouraged to suggest any medical based non-profit organization for WELLReceived to support.
Our first Giving Back project included donating to the Covid relief project in India in partnership with Doctors without Borders, an international organization working on the front lines in many countries dealing with endemic diseases. Their team responded to COVID-19 by caring for patients, offering health education, mental health support, and infection control training in health facilities around the world. In a fundraiser facilitated by WELLReceived, employees and clients contributed a total of $7,550 to this cause, $5,000 of which came directly from WELLReceived.
We’ve also had the pleasure of hosting presentations with each of our Giving Back partners. These sessions have allowed our partners to discuss their mission and charitable efforts, while allowing the wider WELLReceived team to engage in a Q&A session to learn more about the work that they do. We have continued to donate to many other medical focused NPOs, such as MiracleFeet and Amref Health Africa. At WELLReceived, we are committed to expanding our Giving Back initiative and are excited to continue to Pledge 1%.
If you’re interested in learning more about our Giving Back initiative, or know an organization that could use our support, please reach out at givingback@wellreceived.com.
New Verve Consulting is proud to have taken the pledge as part of the global movement Pledge 1% in order to give back to the local community by sharing our skills and giving our time. We chose the Scottish charity, Mary’s Meals as the deserving recipient of our first Pledge 1% campaign. We are able to help them make a difference by committing up to 2 days per month for free to assist them in evolving their Atlassian solution.
Upon hearing about our pledge, Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow said:
“This is wonderful news – we are so grateful for the kindness of organisations who give their support to Mary’s Meals and help us reach more children with daily school meals. Thank you to New Verve and Pledge 1%.”
The mission of Mary’s Meals is simple – to provide a daily meal for each child in their place of education. Mary’s Meals feeds over 1.5M children daily through its school feeding programmes and they work in challenging environments across 18 countries. Mary’s Meals is a low-cost charity and spends at least 93% of donations on charitable activities.
As an Atlassian Solution Partner, we work directly with the Mary’s Meals Glasgow office IT team and assisted them in introducing Atlassian tools like Jira Service Management and Confluence to help streamline their internal service desk. Our work with them includes consulting and training on products. Our solutions and services help Mary’s Meals to efficiently offer their global support service and to manage the delivery of project work with third-party suppliers. You can read more about the technical solution we created with them in our case study.
Mary’s Meals was also the charity sponsor for our event New Verve presents Atlassian in Scotland 2020 Webinar Series and their Infrastructure and Operations Manager, Stephen Neil was one of our speakers. You can watch his presentation here.
As you can imagine, it was vital that Mary’s Meals kept their costs as low as possible which is why our Pledge 1% campaign has been such an important benefit for them! As part of our Pledge 1% commitment, we gave 24 days of our time (£20,000) for free to Mary’s Meals since 2020. This has meant they’re able to provide high quality and efficient IT support while maintaining a low budget and ensuring their money is better spent elsewhere in the charity. Mary’s Meals Infrastructure and Operations Manager, Stephen Neil was delighted with our efforts and said:
“Our experience of working with New Verve has been incredibly positive. From initial engagement they took time to
understand our organisation, its aims, objectives, structure and processes so that they could become a valuable partner to us in delivering consulting and services.”
After the success of our first Pledge 1% partnership, we are now looking to expand our commitment and involve more of our team in the initiative. Pledge 1% has solidified itself as a key part of New Verve’s strategy and has enabled us to integrate giving back into our culture and values.
A social responsibility bodes well when one considers the knock-on effect that social and ecological obligations bring to the profession. A global movement where corporations engage business leaders and their employees to give back to the society/community through commitment of time, goods or cash from the company’s profits. This is what we call humanity.
Zero Carbon Footprint
Being a remote functional company, we are followers of “Carbon Neutrality”. Work at your ease, work from home, work from anywhere are the anthems that we carry in our mind. Connecting virtually anywhere is the best part of utilising the technology to the core. While we are still in the early phase of decarbonizing, we understand every step counts and every effort matters.
Satyalok Foundation
As human beings, the right to education is the fundamental right. BugendaiTech has touched countless underprivileged children who don’t have access to education by tying up with Satyalok . On the occasion of International Literacy Day our CEO and employees have devoted their time in spending quality time in educating over 300 children in every possible way, big or small. As an initiative, BugendaiTech also helped in developing their website, to support the NGO receiving donations and nominations to help and nurture the future of orphaned children.
Employee’s Birthday
Employees are the true asset of any organization and as a matter of fact, charity begins at home. As a practice and to encourage employees to lend a hand to the deprived, for every birthday, they promote the ideology by confronting the social economical and environmental challenges and wholeheartedly participate in doing what they find the most suitable like:
● Spending time with the underprivileged
● During Covid with the help of our employees we could distribute masks, sanitizers, and other household essentials in multiple cities throughout India.
● In the winter season, BugendaiTech extended its assistance by distributing blankets to the destitutes by distributing quilts
Bugendai’s Associations with NGOs
BugendaiTech as an organization has associated with more than 30 NGOs in India. We have always distributed food, clothes, study material to the needy ones through different NGOs. We have run blood donation campaigns and tree plantations periodically. To name a few of the NGOs:
● Shrimad Dayanand Bal Sadan
● I can Thrive
● Satyalok Foundation
● Sevashram
● The Hyderabad Children’s Aid Society
Winston Churchill once said, “we make a living by what we get” . At the point when we give our time and assets to an option that could be more significant than ourselves, we have the ability to change the existence of others and ourselves and drive an impact on the community. Serving a non-profit organization is a great way for go to bat for the things that matter to you and have a lasting impact. Non-profits depend on volunteers, benefactors and different accomplices to propel their motivation. BugendaiNoble has a different approach to it, along with the financial support we help them in educating them with technology and services that we offer. Few examples:
● EAI: A non for profit organization aimed at providing a platform for entrepreneurs and enterprises to connect socially. Keeping the intention i.e “building national and local entrepreneurship networks” we helped them set up a Nonprofit Success Pack with “O” error. Sequentially helped them set up Donor management, Fundraising and Campaign management in Salesforce NPSP enabling larger visibility.
● Cancer Aid Society: Cancer Aid Society is an ISO 9001 NGO that has been working across India since 1987 on prevention of Cancer, other NCDs, Tobacco and Pain, & Palliative Care across India. We helped them with the end to end development of their site without any charges enabling them to reach a larger mass and create Cancer awareness through digital platforms.
In the end, we would like to mention BugendaiTech in its initiative BugendaiNoble follows the footprint of Pledge 1% dedicatedly and always tries to help the society in a unique way.
Satrang Technologies has helped to develop and execute strategic, holistic, and end-to-end Salesforce-enabled applications and products tailored to the needs of the clients, migrating existing systems and applications or deploying entirely new ones. We have been recommended by the clients we have worked for and have very good ratings on Appexchange, which can be reviewed on the website Satrang Technologies.
When it comes to the team, they know the value of time and the desired needs of the client. Satrang Technologies Team always puts together well-researched ideas and matches up the spirit with today’s world. As there’s a beautiful quote- “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined efforts of every individual”.
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, our company used to visit particular NGOs for helping in community services. During the Covid-19 outbreak, as a gesture of goodwill, Satrang Technologies made donations to the Being Sevak Blind NGO, Powai Jain Sangh, Ketto, Thakur Vidya Mandir Child Education, and Kavisha Shah Gowshala this year.
Our contribution to Appexchange application development has been a good experience. We have created apps listed on Satrang AppExchange Apps. Considering our customers as a priority, we give a flat 20% discount to the non profit clients on the app subscription. Following is the list of apps we have created so far on Appexchange:
Although we started as few, now we are many not only in numbers but in creativity and talents. Looking forward to facing new challenges and opportunities.
A big big thank you!
In my head of culture role I had the pleasure to interview a mid life information technology professional today who wished to work four days per week. I was delighted to be able to assure her that my company embraces a range of working arrangements. We not only acknowledge that a high performing professional may give 20% of their productive time to other concerns – be it children, parents or the broader community – we as an organisation also devote a portion of our time to the community in which we live. Pledge 1% is a formal way that we give expression to this.
We all have personal stories to tell – here is mine.
I had a lot of troubles when I was an adolescent. Finding my place in the adult world seemed more of a challenge than it perhaps should have been. The adults around me had their jobs and I was not really a part of this – my role was to study and become a professional. I did not have a clue.
I have always loved carpentry. This is one passion my father and I could share. Through a number of strange coincidences I ended up building boats with a passionate man driven to help communities. Last November my wife and I took a week from our busy professional lives and went to Eden with the simple intent of helping a bunch of local indigenous young adults build and paddle wooden canoes. The two week process was made into a short film documentary that featured in the 2021 Melbourne and Sydney festivals.
The second half of the film talks a lot about reconciliation. I can’t comment meaningfully about this – I’m a first generation migrant and it is complex. I was honoured to be part of ceremony.
I was only there for the first week but in that time we built and paddled three wooden double canoes. Lots of other stuff happened around this simple, focused carpentry exercise and in many ways that was the point – it was a gathering of young and old and I will always remember it.
We have so much discretionary time to give and I for one have a great desire to spend that time well. Being part of an organisation that actively supports this kind of thing is heart warming.
DataColada supports Pledge 1% and in fact endeavours to surpass it by achieving Pledge 5% targets each year.