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.

Teachers from Loreto Normanhust, in Sydney.

ADAPTOVATE are proud supporters of Pledge 1% and commit to giving back 1 percent of our time and skills every year in all our offices globally. We have worked with several in need organisations over the past few years, and this year we are proud to have worked with Brittany’s Backpack Ministry in Texas USA and Loreto Normanhurst School for girls, in Sydney Australia.

——

Brittany’s Backpack Ministry was founded in 2009. The purpose and passion behind the ministry are in honor of Brittany Nicole Smith who passed at the age 8 from Asthma. In memory of Brittany, who was incredibly generous and fond of school, they provide food, school supplies, and other resources to their neighborhood and under-resourced communities.

As part of our Pledge 1% partnership – ADAPTOVATE supported the organization recently with launching their new website and providing business advice from the team.

Read more here

——-

Loreto Normanhurst, an independent school for girls is running a Design Sprint program at scale for 180+ year 10 students in November 2021. ADAPTOVATE partnered with them as part of our commitment to Pledge 1%

The school has partnered with 9 businesses including Netflix, Google, Universal and Guzman and Gomez to help them solve 9 business problems with an adapted version of the widely used Design Sprint format created by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky in 2016 (book published). 

Read more here.

More case-studies from our Pledge 1% commitment

This Giving Tuesday, we wanted to try something different.

By living out our “be the change you seek :bethechange: ” value, we are empowering Atlassians
to be their own Mini Fundraisers. The month long campaign encourages Atlassians to tap into
their own networks, form little fundraising teams, promote and raise much need funds for the
causes that they are most passionate about.

So how does it work?

Participation is really simple: employees need to set up (or join) a team of 5-10 other Atlassians,
find a cause that they are passionate about and promote the opportunity to raise funds. Most
opportunities aren’t big or elaborate but they drive team engagement and some healthy
competition. After all, there are some limited edition personalised apparel (hoodies) up for grabs
for the team that can attract the most number of donors.



Just in the first week of launching, we have over 300+ Atlassians joining different teams with
causes ranging from doggie rescues to multiple causes like End Homelessness or The Hunger
Project.



With this we’re hoping Atlassians can reach out and create impact not just for their
causes but also with their fellow colleagues and maybe enjoy the holidays wearing some
warm and nice hoodies with their teams.

Originally published on Twitter.

Today, we’re celebrating the news that as part of our 1% equity commitment through @PledgeOne, we’ve helped to unlock $1B in new philanthropy in just 4 months. pic.twitter.com/B8MxQXZVUl

— BetterUp (@BetterUp) October 26, 2021

With the support of @dougpepper of @ICONIQGrowth, @alexkayyal and @jsomorjai of @SalesforceVC, and @RonConway of @svangel, we’re leveraging our assets to connect corporate philanthropy to community building to help people everywhere live with more clarity, purpose, and passion.

— BetterUp (@BetterUp) October 26, 2021

Beyond our equity commitment, we’re also donating 1% of our revenue, employee time, and product to create positive changes within our communities and support mission-aligned non-profits.

Better all for a better world ⚡️

— BetterUp (@BetterUp) October 26, 2021

Congratulations! We’re proud to have you in the Pledge 1% community. Thank you for your leadership and support, BetterUp!

Originally published at Inside Philanthropy. Written by Ade Adeniji.

Fellow tech donor Marc Andreessen once called him “the human router.” Others call him the Godfather of Silicon Valley. Ron Conway, 70, has invested in hundreds of internet companies since the early 1990s, including PayPal, Google, Twitter and Airbnb. He founded SV Angel, the San Francisco-based seed fund, in 2009. But his Silicon Valley bona fides go way back to early positions at National Semiconductor Corporation and Altos Computer Systems in the 1970s and 1980s. Along the way, Conway has amassed a rolodex of allies in technology, politics and Hollywood. And he’s advised a number of celebrity figures—Kevin Durant, will.i.am and Ashton Kutcher among them.

Through the years, Conway has been a major donor to the University of California, San Francisco, including via a $40 million donation to the new 207,500-square-foot UCSF Ron Conway Family Gateway Medical Building at the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. More recently, Conway helped organize an all-volunteer COVID Tech Task Force to increase coordination between technology companies and policymakers. And amid new calls for social justice and racial equity, he backs Slauson & Co, which aims to democratize access to entrepreneurship.

At the end of 2020, Conway and his wife Gayle signed the Giving Pledge. A driving force behind their decision to sign, he writes in the pledge letter, is to “encourage more tech founders to join and become role models for their generation.” He goes on, “I encourage founders to see the tipping point when they donate meaningful amounts of their net worth and begin the process of becoming ‘never-billionaires’ by donating their worth now and not later. And advise them not to let their money sit in a donor-advised fund. It’s much better to put it to work in philanthropy and see the good it does.”

I caught up with Conway by phone to ask him about his philanthropic approach and his thoughts on the broader philanthropic landscape in Silicon Valley. This conversation has been edited for clarity.

Tell me about the 1 % pledge and signing the Giving Pledge. Why have you chosen multiple ways to catalyze giving?

I spend vast amounts of time encouraging founders to begin thinking about philanthropy and to give back from the very beginning. The catalyst that I use for that is getting their company to sign up for Pledge 1%, which Marc Benioff of Salesforce started. It’s an effort to invite technology entrepreneurs and their companies to commit 1% of their time, product and pre-IPO equity to develop philanthropic programs at their companies. Each employee also uses 1% of their time on volunteer causes in their community. It’s a public pledge. (Inside Philanthropy covered the launch of Pledge 1% here.)

As the company gets bigger and the founder gets wealthy, or if they become a billionaire, then I pitch them on signing the Giving Pledge. That also places a marker in the ground that this founder is philanthropic. I later introduce them to the [confidential] “Conway philanthropy chart” to show founders how to pick philanthropic sectors they want to donate to and focus on.

By the way, the founders of these companies are not the only wealthy ones. Overall, there’s hundreds of people who become very wealthy from these IPOs. So when a founder says, ‘I’m going to give away 50% of my wealth,’ that sends a message to everyone else on their team who also made lots of money on the IPO that they should be generous and they should start donating money, too.

What do you find are some of the most attractive giving interests for Silicon Valley donors these days? And I’m seeing you using this “Never Billionaire” slogan.

Well, the Airbnb founders, because it’s synergistic with Airbnb, are donating millions for refugees. Many founders are very interested in aspects of healthcare and healthcare research. Others are interested in the education space. Really, it’s whatever floats their boat. I just encourage them.

As for the second part, part of what’s made Silicon Valley great, is that we’ve created all these philanthropists. But you can’t do it on your own. You need a mentor, you need somebody suggesting this to you. They just need a path, and I provide them a philanthropic path. And then they become role models themselves. It just feeds on itself and becomes an ecosystem.

What was the tipping point for you getting involved with social justice causes?

Oh, George Floyd, for sure. It was a huge wake-up call for me. I think racial equality, the only way to solve it is through economic prosperity. The only way to do that is to have more founders of color. Well, the only way to get more founders of color is to have venture capital firms invest in founders of color. So I interviewed 20 Black-led VC firms. I could only partner with one, but I’m helping them all, and make sure they become the next Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia. I partnered with Slauson & Co in Los Angeles. I’ve helped them raise over $60 million. And they’re already actively investing in founders of color. We need to create, through venture capital funding, the next Google or Facebook-sized company, and we will do that with Slauson & Co. And those founders of color will build a diverse management team naturally.

When those companies go public, then the employees in that company will go out and start their own shops. Just like all the people who left Google and Facebook started companies. That’s how you build an ecosystem of racial equality and racial equity. It’s going to take time, but it’s about time we start. I talk to Ajay and Austin (Ajay Relan and Austin Clements, the managing partners of Slauson & Co) every single day.

You signed the Giving Pledge in the winter of 2020. I saw that interesting line about not really wanting to set up a personal foundation. What do you think are the advantages of this?

I like to give big and give fast. And I encourage that in all the founders that I work with. Once you get going, give big and give fast. The more you give and the faster you give it, the more you’re going to enjoy it. It feeds on itself with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It’s hard to pull the trigger for the first time. What I’ve been doing lately is to get them to pull the trigger in a certain area. I just say, ‘You’re really interested in this, aren’t you? Let me make it easier. I’ll write a check for a million and you write a check for a million.’ I said, ‘Yes, I want to encourage you to get started. So I’m happy to invest a million of my philanthropic dollars to kickstart your philanthropic journey.’ I’ve done that three times in the last few weeks and it works every time. It just gives the founder confidence.

Is there any reason why you’ve conducted a lot of this giving under the radar?

Yeah, I don’t want to take the limelight from the founder. The founder will decide if they want to disclose the gift. If they disclose the gift, I’ll say I’m happy to disclose mine too, or I’ll keep quiet. I just want them to get used to donating and if they want to do it quietly, I’ll do mine quietly. I’ll follow the founders’ lead.

There’s a component of your work that involves connecting with athletes and celebrities and empowering some of their work. When did that start? And why?

That goes all the way back to the very early days of Google. will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas visited Google. He talked about his goal of helping inner city youth and was just so passionate about it. I went up and introduced myself to him and told him he had a special calling to help inner city youth. I introduced him to Laurene Powell Jobs, who is the founder of College Track, which has a number of branches around the country that help inner city youth with college preparedness. Ten years ago, he started the College Track branch in Boyle Heights, where he grew up. Now, they’ve helped 1,400 kids get placed in college and they do another 400 every year.

And then Ashton Kutcher and I were doing some investing together. He said he wanted to find a charity that would be on his tombstone. Something that he would support for the rest of his life. We did some research and he said that human trafficking and child pornography are what he wants to solve. He went on to start Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, which is is now a huge charity, stopping online child trafficking and pornography.

Kevin Durant—same type of story. He wanted to help his community in Washington, D.C. I introduced him to Laurene Powell Jobs, too. He’s in his second year into College Track in the D.C. area where he grew up. I [also] helped Goldie Hawn with her mental wellness cause.

So if a celebrity wants to do good, I want to be a facilitator of that. I want to make sure that they’re successful. So I introduce them to the right people who give them infrastructure.

What first got you involved with UCSF and why have you continued to support the school steadily through the years?

First philanthropy I ever did was at Ronald McDonald House at Stanford. We lived down there at the time. I was thankful my young kids were healthy. So I managed the first three capital campaigns for the Ronald McDonald House. When we became empty nesters, we moved to San Francisco and there were some folks in San Francisco I connected with. I was born in San Francisco. I was kind of moving back home, so to speak, and they said, ‘why don’t you get involved in UCSF?’ The largest donation we’ve ever made is at UCSF—$40 million.

Who was someone who helped you when you were coming up?

Well, Laurene Powell Jobs has been a real inspiration. will.i.am has been an inspiration. The people that I collaborate with, we all inspire each other. Chuck Feeney. He is a huge inspiration and he’s in the venture capital business. He came out of venture capital with Atlantic Philanthropies. Marc Benioff, massive inspiration. Benioff’s probably the first person that I had deep conversations with about the importance of philanthropy. We hosted founders at his home, evangelizing. You have to put a stake in the ground that your company’s going to be community-minded.

Originally posted: October 25th, 2021