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.
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.
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!
TWIYO is excited we are working with global humanitarian NGO Humanitix as our first in kind Virtual CFO (VCFO) partnership.
The story of how this came about is worth sharing.
I’ve only recently find my dream job with TWIYO Capital & Advisory since January 2021 but it took me about 10 years to find what I wanted to do.
I always had a passion for social organisation – the idea of an economy where profit is redistributed where it is needed, and where organisations behave like good citizens.
My previous career did not quite scratch the social impact itch, but I still managed to spend my spare time attending public lectures or conferences on the subject. This way, I made connections and good friends that share the same passion.
At one of these conferences I met Joshua Ross, Co-Founder of Humanitix , when the business was just a year old. I have been engrossed by Humanitix since this day, finally coming across a business that embodied the values I wanted to see.
Joshua confessed to a friend in common, Kat Dunn, then COO of Ideapod, that a non for profit model like Humanitix did not fit the box when it came to obtaining donations from large organisations. She therefore decided to create a conference called Reimagine, and I accepted to join her as the producer of the conference. It was an amazing experience and inspired me to follow a career path that would enable me to work for a positive-impact company like Humanitix.
A few years later, I joined TWIYO, moving into VCFO work and servicing clients that have social and environmental impacts. Finally working within a business where I felt I was making a difference.
Humanitix represents the perfect client for TWIYO. Sharing the same company values, both sides were keen to join forces. As TWIYO joined the 1% Pledge movement this year, we offered Humanitix our service as part of our 1% time donation.
Click here to find out about Humanitix, and how you can get involved.
The Long Walk Home for Wayside Chapel
A Sydney institution since 1964, Wayside Chapel in King’s Cross has been serving the local community for decades. Founded by Reverend Ted Noffs, Wayside has been central in providing shelter to rough sleepers, food for the socially isolated and vulnerable, and easy access to mental health care. After a year of insecurity and hardship for so many, it was important for our team to recognise an organisation that was directly making a positive impact in people’s lives. So we went walking in someone else’s shoes for the day.
28 is the average amount of kilometres a person who is experiencing homelessness travels on foot to find shelter. Within these 28 kilometres, a rough sleeper may experience personal and verbal abuse and have an increased vulnerability to becoming permanently homeless.
As part of our pledge, the team walked from the Sydney office in Surry Hills to Bondi Beach. Surprisingly, for some of our team, this was their very first time visiting the iconic stretch of sand. Being prepared with water, snacks and good shoes, it gave us pause for thought to consider how the many rough sleepers and people affected by homelessness in this city are in short supply of such resources.
As our CEO Toby Wilcock has previously discussed on LinkedIn, the walk was pretty special. Not only did the team hit a $6000 donation high through fundraising, it enabled everyone to get outside of their projects and own lives to take a look around and be a part of their community. In short, it was the perfect way to kick-off the 1% Pledge.
COVID in India: A cause close to home
For our second project, it was a crisis of a different kind.
It’s no news to anyone that India is experiencing a devastating second-wave of COVID and humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Due to our close ties with India through team connections, we didn’t think twice about helping out wherever we could. In collaboration with Seva Sahayog, an NGO that provides on-the-ground support to underprivileged communities in Pune City, we teamed up to do our part.
One of the problems that aid organisations in the Pune region experience is working within an area with poor infrastructure, making it harder to receive and distribute charitable donations. This was a particularly tricky barrier, as demographically, the urban slum communities needed urgent health aid, food and COVID resources more than most.
As many of our team in India were (and still are) in lockdowns themselves, and the rest of our team are scattered across the globe, we had to find another way to help. So, we called in the devs.
Over two days, 25 developers and Salesforce Administrators built (as a part of a hackathon) a donation portal that gives everyday citizens the ability to donate money and resources to where they’re needed most. This bespoke tech has enabled the NGOs on the ground to connect with a global community that previously had no idea how to directly give or donate money for this monumental crisis. Currently, the Seva Sahayog ground crew have distributed 20,000 food kits across the Pune, Mumbai and Maharashtra regions.
MediStays is a digital platform that provides patients and carers with suitable accommodation when needing to travel for medical care, especially for rural and regional patients, and for people with a disability. With the finding of accommodation still a major barrier for people to access specialist care, MediStays uses the potential of digital health to break down geographical barriers and bring about a fairer and more accessible healthcare system for all.
Taking the Pledge 1% earlier this year enabled MediStays to live our values and develop our own ESG policies and framework. As an early stage company, we wanted to establish our philanthropic culture from the outset. Pledge 1% provided us a way to do this, knowing their model will grow and scale with us. Our first goal was to donate a minimum of 1% of profits to organisations that closely align with MediStays vision and values. We have also pledged 1% of our equity, with product and staff time to follow. Most importantly, it enabled us to make an immediate impact in our community.
In October 2021, MediStays met our 1% profit pledge with a donation to Angel Flight. Angel Flight is a charity that provides flights to regional and remote Australians to access specialist medical treatment that would otherwise be unavailable because of the vast distances in Australia and the associated travel costs.
This is important to us at MediStays because when people can’t access travel and find suitable accommodation, they often delay, and even deny themselves of, life-saving medical and healthcare. Most devastatingly, this can result in poorer health outcomes, quality of life and survival, especially for rural and regional Australians. An example of this is the survival of Australians living more than 200km from cancer treatment can be up to 30% lower than people living close by.
MediStays was delighted to meet our 2021 Pledge 1% target by donating to Angel Flight. The service they provide, and the values they demonstrate, aligns with MediStays mission to make a profound impact on the health outcomes of people who are marginalised with a disability or live in difficult to reach communities.
We are already looking forward to the next impact we can have with our commitment to Pledge 1%.
Bold Content Video and Kidney Cancer Association
‘Strong alone, unstoppable together’ is the rousing campaign for the Kidney Cancer Association, a cancer advocacy nonprofit who are currently celebrating their 30th anniversary.
KCA approached us at Bold Content Video back in July 2020, looking for a short video highlighting the amazing work that the charity has done over the years, featuring interviews from the world’s most predominant oncologists.
Over many discussions between our Managing Director Adam Neale and KCA’s Chief Advancement Officer Kendall Pace Monroe, the video project became more and more ambitious.
Something that really struck us during our conversations with the team at KCA was how much progress there has been for the kidney cancer community since the charity was founded in 1990. KCA has been instrumental in evolving kidney cancer from a disease with a few treatment options, to a future of hope and promise as a result of their hard work approving treatments, facilitating research and running clinical trials. We wanted their 30th anniversary video to go above and beyond, in their endeavours to build momentum and further raise awareness for the amazing work they do.
Our creative team got their heads together and we came up with an idea for a story that resonates on a deeply emotional level to anyone who has had a relative in hospital.
We pitched this idea to KCA as an animation that tells the story of a young person whose life is changed by kidney cancer. We explained that the animation would be full of pathos, and that the idea behind the story was to show how much progress has been made by their scientists, researchers and doctors to find the cure for kidney cancer.
In terms of the narrative, the story follows a young girl who loses her father in the 90s to kidney cancer, but she forges her own path through life, becoming a doctor and helping patients become cancer-free.
The client loved the fact that the story leads the viewer in a certain direction to the point where they predict what’s going to happen, but then it subverts the traditional narrative in favour of a fresh approach. It also underlines one of their core messages about how they’ve helped to enable the treatment of Kidney Cancer over the last 30 years meaning it’s no longer a terminal condition.
Thankfully they were willing to take a creative leap with us and green-lit the production.
These kinds of stories have a deeply emotive connection with the viewer but we needed a unique visual style to bring this concept to life.
We searched and searched for the right illustrator who could create a painterly effect but quickly enough to make a hand drawn animation possible on a small budget.
Eventually on a late night session scouring Behance we happened across Kurt Chang’s work and were blown away by the sense of magical realism in his work. We knew that this story would benefit from a slight abstraction of the normal world so we reached out and were delighted when he agreed to come on board.
This video has been a real passion project for the team at Bold Content, with everyone working on it outside of regular working hours. Our lead animator Agata Graczyk has been a real hero in making Kurt’s illustrations move. When we first saw the movements we realised that she’s injected humanity into the characters and brought the backgrounds to life.
The client has been immensely patient, knowing that this is not a cookie cutter animation. We’ve been developing new techniques and trying new things as we go, which has taken time. It’s been a real labour of love but after several months of work, we were able to release a video for their annual symposium.
We are big believers in telling stories that elicit an emotional response. A video has the power to evoke change. That’s why we also had an original score produced for the video, which really helps to elevate the production and increase its emotional impact.
As a Pledge 1% company, Bold Content have been proud to assist KCA with their video marketing in their efforts to find and support the next generation of doctors and researchers.
GivingTuesday marks a day of radical generosity, encouraging individuals and companies worldwide to do good – both within their communities and beyond. Within the world of work, traditional corporate social responsibility commitments are constantly shifting. Beyond established firms and NPOs, startups are now also recognizing the need to take responsibility and cultivate a culture that is committed to creating impactful change.
At rready, a community of young, dynamic intrapreneurs, with a vision to transform the world of corporate innovation, the theme of social sustainability extends across functions and departments. From our core product that involves empowering employees to realize their intrapreneurial power through the KICKBOX program, to playing our part in effecting positive change daily, we aim to foster a vision that transcends beyond a quest for profit.
rready for diversity
What started off as an intrapreneurial movement, with the four founders, Dave, Reto, Ralph, and Vinz; all of whom share relatively similar backgrounds, is now a global team representing 12 different nationalities. Over the course of only nineteen months, recognizing the need to diversify, the founders have assembled a team reaching across all corners of the globe: from Brazil to Serbia, Macedonia, Namibia, the Netherlands, UK and Switzerland. The journey is far from over however, and rready strives to continue creating and building a more diverse team across all aspects of diversity to continue the exchange of unique perspectives and fresh ideas.
rready for sustainability
rready’s flagship product – the KICKBOX program – utilizes a proven methodology to encourage fun, gamified, scalable, and measurable innovation practices within companies. The easy-to-use approach simplifies the complex innovation process and makes innovation accessible to all employees – independent of their background or hierarchical position.
Beyond defining common business challenges which clients may be facing, the program can also be used to identify and unlock meaningful opportunities to expand impact and tackle questions and challenges surrounding
corporate social responsibility.
At Swisscom, the largest IT- and telecommunication company in Switzerland, the intrapreneur Marcel Roesch, used rready’s KICKBOX program to bring a new product with strong social impact to market. Using the interdisciplinary KICKBOX approach, he created help2type – a first-of-its-kind compact, haptic keyboard that can be flexibly attached to any smartphone, to make the digital world more accessible for those who are visually impaired.
rready for inclusivity
The Züriwerk Foundation, located in Switzerland, is committed to aid predominantly cognitive impaired people. By providing them housing, work, counselling as well as overall assistance, their aim is to enable these individuals to partake in everyday life comfortably.
Together with rready, the Züriwerk team produces and assembles the physical innovation toolboxes, better known as KICKBOXES which form an integral part of the KICKBOX program. Afterwards, these are then distributed to the relevant clients. For every KICKBOX produced, rready donates an additional CHF 1.- to the Züriwerk Foundation.
While rready encompasses a tongue-in-cheek, playful and a little out of the ordinary approach to innovation, we also aim to cultivate a culture where social responsibility is imminent in our every practice and where we play an active role in establishing a global force for good. Do you have an idea that is guaranteed to create social impact? Then you can now download the KICKBOOK for free here, and find your way towards validating your idea step by step.