This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Empower your employees to give back at the individual level by downloading our new Virtual Volunteering Playbook, which includes ideas and best practices on how to excite and inspire individual giving.
By Jeffrey Rangel, Senior Director, Global Corporate Responsibility
The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the world. Widespread and deep economic devastation pales only in comparison to lives lost. We all know this is a very difficult time for so very many people. One major impact has been on charities serving the hungry. The food bank near our Santa Clara, California headquarters is reporting twice as much need as this time last year. We really want to be as impactful as possible and have therefore decided to significantly broaden our annual U.S. Food Drive and our support of employee giving in 2020.
On November 17, we launched our first global Hunger Relief Campaign. For four weeks (over Giving Tuesday), we are matching donations to charities identified as “Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition” up to $5,000 at 400%—if our employees give $5,000 we will match it with $20,000. Our goal is to raise enough to provide at least two million meals at food banks around the world.
Fewer than 72 hours into the campaign, we are well on our way: our employees have donated $50,000 and we have matched $200,000.
Historically, our food drives focused on one beneficiary near each of our four US offices. But we know the needs are far greater, and now working remotely, our employees are more distributed. So aligned with our FLEXWORK approach, which is centered on employee choice, we’ve expanded the hunger campaign to help enable our worldwide employees to support what is local to them.
The Hunger Relief Campaign is a part of our overall coronavirus relief efforts. In March, we set a goal to raise $5M for communities and colleagues impacted by COVID. We’ve raised $4M towards that goal benefiting 18 causes around the world. We believe this Hunger Relief Campaign will surely move us past our goal! This is certainly the biggest response Palo Alto Networks has delivered in the face of a disaster in our 15 year history, but it’s commensurate with the biggest challenges faced by our world in 100 years. It’s been inspiring to see our global workforce rally so strongly to support something so important, even as their own lives have been disrupted by the multiple crises they’ve faced in 2020. Through these efforts, we are proud to be living our corporate values and mission.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Originally published on addteq.com
The business world is beginning to understand the importance of being accessible. The COVID-19 outbreak has forced most of us to re-evaluate our IT infrastructure and its importance it is to our organization. While private organizations are working fast to create an accessible IT infrastructure, government organizations are increasingly expected to abide by digital accessibility standards; e.g. US federal (Section 508) or EU accessibility (WCAG 2.1) requirements. Addteq’s Unstoppable app enhances accessibility to Atlassian’s Jira, Jira Service Desk, and Confluence products. Making it easier for users to read with the latest screen reader software. It also provides 508 compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards. Unstoppable is compatible with JAWS and NVDA screen readers and can be used with Chrome and Firefox browsers.
Auto Enable Accessibility
A major challenge for any organization is being able to identify all of the users that need access to accessible software. Unstoppable is able to auto-detect a user that is using a screen-reader software and auto-enables the accessibility options, without the need to contact the administrator or manager. This helps users to overcome the initial hesitation of asking for support, and may potentially overcome a legal requirement. The video below demonstrates Unstoppable identifying a visually impaired user and prompting them to enable accessibility features.
Navigate Better
Jira, Jira Service Desk, and Confluence are full of links that a visual user can navigate easily. However, all these links are not always properly read by screen readers. Most of the time, the issues are that the links may have some missing ARIA tags or labels. Unstoppable has the ability to add the missing ARIA tags and labels to Atlassian’s front end, to ensure seamless user experience. Below is a video showcasing the navigation on a Jira ticket while using Unstoppable and NVDA screen reader.
Cover Your Corner Cases
Unstoppable solves some of the minor issues visually impaired users face. Some of those issues may include creating a page from a template in Confluence, or adding a list of components in a Jira ticket. Although these issues seem small, a non-visual user may find it extremely frustrating. With Unstoppable these minor issues are resolved and allows the user a seamless experience.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
The entire business model of SeaFreight Labs (www.seafreightlabs.com) is based on the open-innovation principal that no single company has enough smart people, or all of the right people, to solve all of their mission-critical problems. This foundational tenet drives us to look outside for potential collaborators in all that we do. We look to the ‘global crowd’ as the source of expertise, innovation and creativity for our clients.
This worldview led us to join the Pledge-1% movement in May 2020 (read our press release here and our Pledge-1% blog posts here). The sheer number of 1%-pledgers and their great diversity excited us because we know the power of a large and diverse group to achieve great things when it focuses on a common goal. In this spirit, we pledged to donate at least 1% of our ‘product’ to global non-profits to aid their work on humanitarian issues.
After taking the 1% Pledge, we initiated two major projects to honor our product commitment: Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org) and World Vision (www.worldvision.org). Each organization is working on intractable problems where a solution would positively impact tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Both projects are soliciting the global crowd to find breakthrough ideas and solutions. We need solvers to engage in any of four different challenges that include:
- Seeking ideas for improved construction- and demolition-waste management: https://bit.ly/34wMzzW
- Making homes with no foundations more typhoon and/or earthquake resilient: https://bit.ly/34yrvYG
- Seeking ideas for affordable rural single-family sanitation solutions: https://bit.ly/3nChTF4
- Seeking low-cost chlorine monitoring for rural piped-water systems: https://bit.ly/3er4ZWq
Challenge #1
Challenge #2
Challenge #3
Challenge #4
The due dates for submitting solutions to the challenges are in January 2021. Prizes to winning solutions are up to US$25,000.
Participation in the 1%-Pledge movement emboldened us to seek strategic marketing collaborations with global innovation groups totaling over 1,000,000 members. Participating promotion partners include InnoCentive (www.innocentive.com), Engineering for Change (www.engineeringforchange.org), HeroX (www.herox.com) and the Maker Community (www.make.co). Each of these organizations has contributed time and resources to give all four challenges a better chance of success and to help SeaFreight Labs with honoring of our 1% Pledge.
As of 11 November 2020, over 440 people have registered as potential solvers in the 4 challenges. They hail from over 45 countries. Each one has the potential to be the “elusive solver” with a new answer to an intractable problem.
It is truly amazing what our commitment to the 1% Pledge has engendered. We are eager to continue our efforts to impact the world in collaboration with the global crowd and the Pledge-1% movement.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Empower your employees to give back at the individual level by downloading our new Virtual Volunteering Playbook, which includes ideas and best practices on how to excite and inspire individual giving.
Classy is a social enterprise that helps nonprofits build meaningful relationships with their supporters through a suite of world-class online fundraising tools. Nonprofits of every size and cause—from human rights to disaster relief—use the Classy platform to raise money, engage their communities, and advance their missions. Today, Classy’s staff of 200 people serves more than 6,000 nonprofit organizations, including The Salvation Army, Oxfam America, and Team Rubicon.
Classy’s business model is uniquely designed to serve nonprofit organizations exclusively, and as a pending Certified B Corporation and Pledge 1% member, the technology company is built to power social impact. Classy recently formalized its stakeholder model and commitments to each of its primary stakeholder groups (customer, team, financial, and community). One of those investments was the creation of a new role overseeing sustainability and stakeholder impact.
This major focus soon led to the launch of a reimagined employee volunteering program. ClassyGives is an evergreen customer connection program that enables employees to engage with nonprofits in meaningful ways, not only increasing customer empathy, but also delivering value to Classy’s nonprofit customers. A few ClassyGives initiatives include:
- The ClassyGives Fundraising Competition, in which employees raise money for a Classy customer with the chance to visit and volunteer with the organization
- The ClassyGives Idea Jam, in which employees are paired with Classy customers to solve pressing business problems within a day’s time
- The ClassyGives Customer Day, in which several customers are invited to come and present their work and participate in employee-led workshops
To further engage employees with this program, Classy rebranded its historical volunteer-time-off (VTO) policy to Impact Hours, defined as time that Classy employees spend engaging with the nonprofit customer outside of their typical work responsibilities. This expanded policy now includes participation in nonpartisan voter engagement activities, signing or starting a social good or civic engagement petition, serving on a nonprofit board, or serving as an advisor for a nonprofit.
In addition, as part of its Pledge 1% commitment, Classy invests 1% of top-line revenue back to the nonprofit sector primarily through the Classy Awards, one of the largest impact awards programs in the country.
Classy has never been more proud and motivated to give back and help nonprofits and social enterprises change the world for the better. As the world’s problems grow more complex, Classy’s ability to support these efforts has never been more important.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Empower your employees to give back at the individual level by downloading our new Virtual Volunteering Playbook, which includes ideas and best practices on how to excite and inspire individual giving.
For Visit.org, corporate social responsibility is not just an aspect of its company culture — it is the heart of its business! As people around the globe are increasingly looking to contribute to causes they care about — in their personal lives as well as at work — companies are beginning to understand that perennial giving back opportunities are an indispensable part of a positive employee experience.
And that’s where Visit.org comes in. For companies that need help keeping #GivingTuesday’s momentum going through the holidays and beyond, Visit.org’s platform and service will connect them to nonprofit organizations and facilitate virtual volunteer activities that amplify the social impact of both the org and the company. Through this, not only do the nonprofits receive the financial support they need to continue their essential work, but the companies also benefit from a strengthened sense of community and purpose, which has positive effects on individual employees as well as on the corporation as a whole.
What Visit.org offers has been especially significant in 2020, as an unprecedented number of companies have migrated to a work-from-home model in the wake of COVID-19. While physical separation has become the norm for many, Visit.org has been able help teams from Moody’s, Samsung, Panasonic, and Colgate, among other Fortune 1000 companies, stay connected to each other, to their communities, and to causes they care about.
CEO Michal Alter says, “Today, there is no other company who provides the same end-to-end service that we do.” By this, she means that Visit.org provides a robust inventory of online activities from all over the world and the opportunity for companies to fully customize their itinerary of events. The result: companies get to build an excellent giving back program that addresses employee interests and values in a way that keeps them coming back for more.
Whether the activity involves writing cards to isolated seniors in Australia, creating care packages for hospitalized children in the United States, performing virtual mock interviews for under-resourced students entering the job market in India, or participating in a cooking workshop led by a refugee chef in the United Kingdom — each participant, despite being remote, gets to make a hands-on impact that is both immediate and lasting. And with Visit.org, the opportunity to do it again (and again, and again) is available any day of the week, any time of year.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Originally published on medium.com.
While these are clearly trying times, we see stories of generosity all around us as people and companies find new ways to show solidarity with those who are most in need. In an effort to help people and organizations throughout the global community find solutions to this crisis, many companies are making their products and services more accessible. From free technology tools for first responders and healthcare organizations, to assistance for struggling individuals and businesses, companies are doing what they can to support the cause and quicken recovery.
We’ve provided a roundup of resources being offered by Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies below. For more information about these programs, please reach out to the companies directly.
Benefits for first responders and healthcare organizations
BugCrowd is offering emergency response teams, hospitals, & care providers free access to their Vulnerability Disclosure Program and Attack Surface Analysis for the next 90 days.
Guild Education has partnered with Southern New Hampshire University and Penn Foster to build free training courses to assist workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic with staying safe.
JazzHR is providing JazzHR PRO for free to Primary, Emergency & Urgent Care providers.
Process Street launched COVID procedure templates for hospitals and clinics and offered free accounts for certain facilities.
Snyk’s cloud-native application security solution is free for six months to organizations in the healthcare, hospitality, travel and entertainment industries.
Free or discounted tools for organizations working on COVID-19 solutions
Algolia’s Pro Plan is free to any developer or team working on COVID-19-related, not-for-profit websites or apps.
Automation Anywhere has a free thirty-day trial of Automation Anywhere’s Enterprise A2019 to create bots for solutions to aid those affected by COVID-19.
CartoDB is offering its spatial analysis and visualization platform to private and public sector companies using maps to fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
Copado announced the immediate availability of free access to its platform for anyone working on applications to fight COVID-19.
Dropbox Business and HelloSign Enterprise subscriptions are free for a three-month period to nonprofits and NGOs that are focused on fighting COVID-19.
Helpshift is offering their technology to community, government and healthcare organizations at no cost, enabling them to leverage the power of automation to rapidly scale operations without additional staff.
PropelPLM launched the Healthcare Manufacturer Community, a free and open community built on Salesforce Care which contains easy to navigate medical device designs, sourcing and component data, and documentation that allows companies to pivot and manufacture ventilators, as well as other life-saving medical equipment.
Free or discounted access for schools, teachers, and students
AdmitHub is offering free access to the AdmitHub platform and its AI-powered bot to the government & educational community for 90 days.
FutureFuel launched a free service to help all student loan holders get on federal repayment plans that lower monthly payments, all the way down to $0 for 12 months.
Hustle’s texting platform is free through June 30, 2020 (up to 10,000 messages) to help governments, NGOs, and schools to connect with their communities.
Vidyard is offering free access to Vidyard for Schools to enable teachers and staff to record and share secure video messages for better engagement with students, parents, colleagues, and the community.
Zoom is free to all new users and has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit for free Basic accounts for K-12 schools. Zoom is used by businesses for meetings, by families to keep in touch, and by teenagers who want to hang out with their friends.
Services that make it easier to give back
Beliive is using technology and time exchange to help individuals connect with one another. By sharing an hour of knowledge or experience with someone in the community, you receive a credit that can then be used to learn from someone else.
Catalant is waiving their fee on projects for qualified 501(c)(3)s that need to accelerate strategic work to help people affected by the pandemic.
Classy’s online fundraising software modernizes the giving experience and allows nonprofits to start fundraising in minutes with no subscription fees. They have enhanced their free platform offering through May 31, 2020.
UniteUs is offering an option for new communities to launch a rapid-response network for the immediate crisis that also provides the infrastructure to grow in the coming months.
Support for small businesses
Automattic’s WooCommerce has partnered with GoDaddy to offer 3 months of WordPress e-commerce and hosting for just $1.
BringgNOW, a last-mile delivery solution to immediately launch or scale your delivery operations is free for SMBs.
Digital Asset’s world-class legal team is available free of charge to advise small companies who may be struggling under the current circumstances.
Gusto has put together a compilation of federal, state, and private resources to help small businesses find loans, grants, and credits.
SmartRecruiters SmartStart is available to make hiring easy for teams and smaller organizations of up to 250 employees. SmartStart is entirely free with an unlimited number of users and candidates.
Narvar is offering its Simple Returns solution to all retailers for free.
nCino’s SBA solution helps to quickly respond to regulatory changes as a result of the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Program by decreasing loan processing time and increasing capacity for new loan applications.
Ureeka has partnered with Salesforce for the Salesforce Care Small Business Grants as the grant application, judging and community partner. Ureeka will provide businesses with grant application support, ongoing resources, and counsel.
Tools to help companies take care of their employees and customers
Demandbase is offering two of its ABM Certification courses, available for free through July 31, 2020.
Dialpad is offering 2 free months of its business phone line and video conferencing products to help businesses impacted by COVID. Apply by May 31, 2020.
GO1 has made all COVID-19 related learning resources available for free to help teams continue to perform and feel supported during this time of disruption and change.
Odaseva launched DailyExport.io, a free product that automatically exports Salesforce data every 24 hours, retaining it for 30 days.
Pymetrics is offering two free solutions, Digital Interviewing and Internal Mobility to companies interviewing or looking to move current employees to different roles.
Simpplr is waiving implementation fees and offering a two-week deployment to support organizations with an enterprise-wide internal communications platform to keep the workforce connected and aligned.
SurveyMonkey launched new, free survey templates designed by their in-house survey experts to help business leaders and individual managers stay connected.
Thousand Eyes is offering free use of their end-user experience monitoring agents for 90 days to IT teams that need to support remote workers at an unprecedented scale due to precautions businesses are taking in response to COVID-19. Reach out to their team by June 30, 2020.
Vidyard is offering its new internal communications tool, free through June 30, to help companies adjust and stay connected to your remote workforce.
Information and other resources
Forter has created this weekly report to share insights on consumer behavior and fraud trends during this unprecedented time.
Gusto has a resource hub that provides SMBs with updated news, information, and advice as you navigate this difficult time.
Traction on Demand, through their initiative, Respond Together, is sharing an online inventory of response solutions that highlight rapid development projects they’ve completed and made available to others who might benefit from their use.
Re-entering the workplace
Finalcad is offering part of its product for free, helping construction sites return safely back to work by digitizing their HSE (health, safety, and environment) processes more effectively.
Traction Guest launched ZeroTouch to help enterprises safely reopen during the pandemic. ZeroTouch automates proactive safety screening and fully contactless access for employees and visitors, mitigating current and future risks.
If you want to join or support the cause
Loop & Tie Founder and CEO Sara Rodell along with other technology leaders joined together to provide donated tablets to hospitals across the United States to connect critically ill COVID-19 patients with family members. Loop & Tie repurposed their operational structure to help receive orders from hospitals, device donations, and manage shipping and handling of devices to matching recipients.
Spearheaded by Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education, Stop the Spread (STS) is a coalition of 1,500+ volunteer CEOs working to unlock the collective potential of US businesses to catalyze action and bolster the public sector in response to COVID-19.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Empower your employees to give back at the individual level by downloading our new Virtual Volunteering Playbook, which includes ideas and best practices on how to excite and inspire individual giving.
The summer of 2020 re-ignited an overdue conversation on the realities and effects of racial injustice in our country. We knew that we could not go back to business as usual when the protests, tweets, and news cycle died down. As part of Yelp’s commitment to doing better and laying the groundwork for change, we launched efforts to support
Black-led and Black-serving organizations to help drive meaningful progress.
To start, the Yelp Foundation donated $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP Legal Defense Fund – two organizations whose work is uplifting and empowering Black communities across the country. To mobilize Yelp’s employees, the Yelp Foundation built on its employee matching program by raising the donation matching cap from $1,000 to $10,000 and double matching the employee donations made in the month of June to any of the following Black-led and Black-serving organizations:
- Black Futures Lab
- Center for Policing Equity
- Common Future
- Equal Justice Initiative
- Know Your Rights Camp
- NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- National Black Justice Coalition
- The Bail Project
- The Movement for Black Lives
We were impressed with the generosity of Yelp employees. They donated more than $335,000 to all the organizations listed above, and those donations were double-matched by the Yelp Foundation to bring the total contribution to more than $1.5 million. Since then, Yelp has continued to engage with these organizations by inviting them to participate in internal fireside chats with their employees to build awareness and share their work.
We’re proud that Yelp employee efforts will help build Black political power, improve Black communities, and lay the foundation for lasting change in our country.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
By Nipa Nobel
At MTX, our impact does not stop after we implement our product or solution. The MTX family is committed to using our platform to make a positive impact on our community. Corporate responsibility is woven into the MTX DNA, inspiring us to partner with organizations devoted to creating positive change.
MTX is a proud member of Pledge 1%, committed to donating 1% of our revenue, time, and pro bono services to non-profit organizations and individuals in need. Through our Pledge 1% membership, MTX has contributed to groups like The Boys and Girls Club, St. Baldrick’s Foundation, Warriors on Wheels, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and many more nonprofit organizations. Our donations accelerate causes that the MTX family believes in, including the advancement of science and research at colleges and universities like Siena College and the University of North Texas.
Our commitment to corporate responsibility does not stop with donations. We are devoted to creating a world where everyone can succeed, which is why we partner with nonprofits to provide funding and provide our time and resources. MTX is a proud partner of nPower, an organization that helps transition US military heroes and their families into the workforce. By hiring and training veterans and their family members, MTX helps bring our nation’s heroes toward economic success.
As we continue to grow rapidly as a company, we are dedicated to increasing our community impact. Our CEO and Founder’s humble beginnings have instilled in him a desire to use his success to impact the world, specifically through education significantly. Das plans to open 100 schools globally and has already begun accomplishing this with the first school: Kin Beh in Quintana Roo, Mexico. MTX has committed $1Million to this school and is excited to create more educational opportunities for children worldwide. Here at MTX, we invest in people.
This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
COVID-19 has impacted all of us in different ways. For our nonprofit partner, 1951 Coffee Company, COVID-19 means that they may not be able to keep their doors open in 2021.
1951 Coffee Company, founded in 2015, is a non-profit specialty coffee organization that promotes the well-being of the refugee community in the United States by providing job training and employment to refugees, asylees, and special immigrant visa holders while educating the surrounding community about refugee life and issues.
With the upcoming presidential administration change in 2021, we expect the number of refugees being invited to the United States to increase 8 fold (15,000 people to 125,000). Being able to find and secure employment for refugees will be a crucial part of making the relaunch of the US refugee resettlement program a success.
As a hub designed to leverage the power of the coffee industry for the benefit of refugees, 1951 Coffee Company is the only industry specific training program that specializes in working with refugees in the Bay Area and one of only a few training programs for refugees in the whole country. We have an opportunity to do things better than they have been done before and secure refugee resettlement as a vital part of the fabric of this country.
For the first time ever, we are sharing 1951 Coffee Company as our Charity of Choice this GivingTuesday. Our employee base at Postmates, specific teams, and community members are encouraged to donate here if you can.
Every year we celebrate GivingTuesday, but this year is different for all of us. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past seven years, it has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
Let us all do what we can to help get through this together.