During pandemic we all noticed how studying from home can leave a negative psychological and academic effects on young students, especially on those already most vulnerable – troubled adolescents from problematic social environment.
As a part of our Pledge 1% commitment, eazyBI donated funds to the local charity foundation “R.R.” and facilitated access to the Adventure Therapy for kids that go through challenges and face various behavioral and psychological issues, every day. By experiencing a variety of fun and educational activities outdoors, such as hiking, expeditions in canoe or ropes courses, adolescents can get an emotional healing, take refuge from heir unhealthy environment and boost their social and collaborative skills. Adventure Therapy is a modern approach that has just recently been introduced in Latvia and we are glad that our support can open new doors to teenagers from our community. However, we see that it is only beginning and more support is needed in order to help all kids that would benefit from this powerful and inspirational program.
We, the team of eazyBI, believe that education is the driving force of development and by supporting people in individual level, we can start to experience an improvement in wellbeing of the whole community. Education can mean different things but for the last two years we largely see it as raising mental health awareness. We hope that by spreading the word we can inspire others to look for ways to help their community maintain positive state of wellbeing.
darwinLabs takes as one of its core values Add Value to our customers, to our community, and to society in general. It is within this scope that every year, darwinLabs contributes to, at least, one social cause.
Regarding the pandemic and working indoors, during 2021 darwinLabs chose to motivate each employee to exercise for a social cause. It was a very good way to keep people motivated in the need of others, and for themselves, getting out of their houses and their comfort zones.
3 times this year we’ve launched a Strava event, where people could choose to walk, run or cycle. In the end, a total of 2945.72 km were converted in Euros and given to three different non-profit organizations contributing to social good.
We have started the year donating to Ajuda de Berço, which works with new mothers and babies in need, then, Terra dos Sonhos, which fulfills the dreams of kids with cancer and in the 3rd round, we ended this year’s cycle, helping elders to feel less lonely through many types of volunteering, through Coração Amarelo.
I’m Nicola Askham, I’m known as The Data Governance Coach. I help organisations understand and manage their data better. Typically people turn to me because their data is a mess and they need help unravelling it or because they realise they are pouring cash into new initiatives that are failing because of poor quality data.
I have been designing and implementing Data Governance frameworks for almost two decades and have helped hundreds of organisations implement Data Governance, giving me a unique level of experience and insight into the typical challenges they face.
From my experience it is clear that a lot of organisations don’t value their data as an asset. As a result they don’t manage it correctly and this can lead to rising costs and inefficiencies and wrong decisions being made. This is not good news for any organisation, but is really bad news for a charity and the causes they are helping.
Having worked with a number of charities, it is clear to me that Data Governance can make such a difference and enable them to help more. Yet charities find it hard to justify the costs of getting training on how to do Data Governance.
A few years ago I started offering free places on my training courses to charities, because I feel it is important to give charities the skills to make sure that data is used to solve problems and make better informed decisions.
I am so passionate about the value that Data Governance can bring to the charity sector that I recently joined Pledge 1%. My pledge is to offer a free place to a different charity organisation on every single one of my public Data Governance courses.
I want to be part of a world where everyone understands the value of data and uses it to make a positive impact.
I’m thrilled to be part of Pledge 1% and committing to supporting charities on their Data Governance journeys and truly harnessing the power of their data.
As COVID-19 spread over the world and consequently over Britain, many organisations were affected and needed to act fast to adapt to their new realities. Such a challenge heavily resonated with Volunteer Edinburgh (VE).
Located in the centre of Edinburgh, VE is a Not for Profit organisation that manages volunteering opportunities across Scotland. In a matter of just a couple of days, the volunteering managers at VE were quickly overwhelmed and unfortunately not prepared for the enormous influx of volunteering enquiries that came in. They had to think of a quick solution to efficiently sort, manage and deploy their volunteers more than ever before.
At the forefront of the pandemic, VE’s volunteers would be crucial in helping reduce the spread of the pandemic and in helping the NHS manage the global crisis at a local level. Due to the urgency of the issue at hand, Color decided to deliver this project pro bono to VE as part of their Pledge 1% initiative and to show generosity in this time of need and to help the most vulnerable.
A New Reality
Through a series of conversations, Color and VE decided the most crucial area of work to focus on is their Response Pipeline or ‘Taskforce’ Management System. VE utilises a vetting process to sort through and make sure the appropriate and most qualified volunteer is matched to the right opportunity, delivering maximum value. This is accomplished via a number of different steps which include the gathering of information through forms from Survey Monkey, questionnaires, email exchanges, and the scheduling of interviews.
“The support that Color gave Volunteer Edinburgh was invaluable to our Covid-19
Pandemic response. Color’s commitment, skill and understanding of our business needs and
their work done on our Salesforce org enabled us to respond to a genuinely unprecedented
demand and enabled us to efficiently process a huge number of prospective volunteers and
deploy them in record time so they could support vulnerable people during the heights of
lockdown. Without Color’s support, we would not have been able to react as efficiently and
effectively as we did.”
Paul Wilson | Chief Officer, Volunteer Edinburgh
A Platform for Growth
In a matter of a couple of weeks, Color delivered VE’s very own Taskforce Management system. It integrated Survey Monkey’s contact information into their Salesforce org, a streamlined process to help Volunteer Managers sort through the numerous enquiries and volunteer tasks, create Contact records and schedule phone interviews through automation in a matter of a couple of clicks.
This collaboration enabled Volunteer Edinburgh to adapt to their organisation’s new increasing demand in volunteer enquiries efficiently and to deliver maximum value to their community. VE was able to train their Volunteer Managers quickly due to the new intuitive user interface and to ultimately deploy their volunteers in the most needed sectors and areas of Scotland.
This consequently reduced the onboarding time of Volunteer Managers, the processing time of the volunteers themselves and finally, the solution helped Volunteer Edinburgh to be a positive influence in Scotland and reduce the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To demonstrate the positive impact of the solution to VE’s internal processes, below is a chart that shows the number of volunteer records they were able to manage within the first few weeks using the system. Insights like these are instrumental for Volunteer Edinburgh in understanding their social impact in the community as well as tracking their efforts and to ultimately send help to the most vulnerable places in their region.
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.