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.
Archima Solutions’ give back initiative focused on Allies in Service, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping veterans and their families attain employment, affordable housing, education and healthcare. The relationship between Archima and Allies in Service is an extensive one – we have sponsored Allies at Vetforce and Dreamforce events in order to raise funds for the organization to fuel their resources and programs. After discussing the project and submitting a proof of concept, the long term goals derived were to make data analytics through email communication more organized, and redesign the process of collecting data to make timely reports accurate and streamlined for the organization, the sponsors and the participants.
Our pro bono work revolved around implementing and updating Salesforce for Outlook through Einstein, writing APEX codes for email lightning template automation, email list configuration, writing visualforce PDF reports (the one-two page PDF allows sponsors to see an instant snapshot of how the program is helping veterans or their spouses and if the organization’s efforts are beneficial), creating succinct and combined dashboards for easy data analysis and reporting, and a few other system redesigns. All these efforts were done to help the organization have concise and accurate data reports for their participant base, be able to send timely surveys to participants for program feedback, and understand the effectiveness of providing resume workshops, networking and sponsorship opportunities, and more to service members. Allies employees are now able to automate and send email campaigns with ease, can have all information regarding a participant in one clear dashboard, have a synchronized Salesforce for Outlook calendar, and have easier SMS Messaging. The only “third party” tool used during the solution design was Archimeta Studio data model – an Archima tool created by our technical architects. Since this project is still ongoing, Archima will be deploying full changes in the next few weeks as we are on the last stages of stress testing now for what has already been done. The delivery resources are taking the technical revamp process slow so that Allies employees are comfortable with a few changes at a time, and can get acclimated to changed features to provide feedback before more work is done.
The work accomplished to date has, “been critical to [their] success,” and Allies has noted Archima as being, “an extension of [the] organization,” as our solutions have helped them conduct better business. Furthermore, Allies was pleased with how Archima “met and went well above [their] expectations,” and used a wonderful team of “intelligent and amazing women” for the project. After three years of sponsoring Allies in Service, Archima was finally able to give back to them with these solutions to help the organization become more efficient in their marketing and communication technology. As Archima’s motto goes, “You have the obligation to make something better if you can,” and we certainly helped Allies employees have an efficient method of conducting their business of giving back to and supporting the service members of the United States.
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 Bret Peters
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has changed all of our lives in many ways, including our ability to give back. In the midst of the holiday season, this is a time where people often reflect on the year and contemplate giving. So often, many of us volunteer at food pantries, organize toy drives, participate in charity fun runs, or find ways to participate in community service with others.
Today, on Giving Tuesday, we here at ADF are reflecting on the state of the world and how we are making a difference in the lives of the people we serve. We are a technology company with 15 years of experience building digital investigation software that helps stop crimes against children. We employ former law enforcement and digital forensics experts and our team members are passionate about helping stop child exploitation, human trafficking and
cybercrime — so in addition creating tools that help quickly identify victims as well as suspects, we work to find ways to spend our profits with like minded nonprofit organizations tightly aligned with our mission.
How to Give Virtually
Our entire company is now remote and with the decrease in business travel and the move from industry events to online formats, we actually saw some savings, primarily in marketing spend. This allowed us to expand the number of justice minded nonprofits that we were able to support and it opened up opportunities for us to spend more time connecting virtually with our international partners that are often helping fight human trafficking and child exploitation, such as the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII), Project VIC and International Justice
Mission.
In addition to financial support, we were also able to offer our nonprofit partners seats in our new online self-paced ADF Certified User Training which has the dual benefit of raising individual skills, and helping learners understand investigation best practices. This was particularly beneficial for ATII which had more than a dozen college interns learn mobile forensic triage.
Giving Time
Last year, we launched the ability to have each team member give back one percent of their time – about 20 hours per year. It’s a lot harder for individuals to do this when working remotely so we encouraged everyone to think about their unique skill sets and the organizations that might need their time remotely. Rich Frawley, our Director of Training was able to leverage his mobile and computer forensic skills to create a video to teach high school
seniors about digital safety. As the CEO, I had to consider my unique skills, which led me to donate my time to teach sales and marketing skills for a virtual world to United Way Worldwide leadership executives via Zoom.
Giving Back & Team Building
Like teams everywhere we love being together when we can and since we can’t be together, we’ve had to find unique ways to do team building. We recently underwrote team member participation in the annual Turkey Trot benefiting the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We also launched a matching giving campaign so team members can give to their local food bank with a company match during the holidays.
The pandemic has created many new challenges, but it has also created opportunities for companies that are in the unique position to give back, with even more of an obligation to do so. Our team is blessed to serve those who serve communities around the world. Learn more about ADF Pledge 1% here.
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 Joseph Fung
As we celebrate another #GivingTuesday, a worldwide celebration of generosity, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the reasons we give and the impact we hope to achieve. Earlier this year, on top of our existing donation program, we became members of Pledge 1% and donated a portion of our company’s equity to the Upside Foundation in support of charities focused on diversity & inclusion.
Uvaro is an online training company, and exists to help close employment gaps — sometimes those gaps are due to systemic problems. As soon as we acknowledge that we can’t solve these challenging problems alone, it becomes clear that we have to not only focus on our own solutions, but also support others in their solutions. Building a culture of philanthropy becomes clear. That said, with so many organizations out there, why give through Pledge 1%?
While donations are up across the board (thanks to initiatives like #GivingTuesday), the average age of donors is 64 years old and makes 2 gifts a year. As donor populations age and giving moves more towards online and smaller donations, we need to consider ways to build lasting habits of philanthropy. We need to help build a movement.
Through our participation with Pledge 1%, like so many other companies, we have not only embedded social impact into our business, but tied our success to public good.
Pledge 1% helps companies make a public commitment to give their Equity, Time, Product, and Profits. Joining this community of like-minded companies is the best way to build the movement that’s needed, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made!
Along with our equity donation, we’re also giving our products and our money. Our Community Fund, established with the help of the KW Community Foundation, enables our team to contribute with every paycheck; the resulting endowment will support our community throughout our company’s lifetime and beyond. While our tech sales training program is available to the public with up-front and income-geared payment options, we also offer Uvaro On Demand, a free continuing education offering to help professionals build their sales and business skills.
While we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, there’s always more to do; giving as part of Pledge 1% lets us amplify our impact, helps learn from others, and ensures that these gifts are part of a broader movement towards doing more good, together.
Uvaro is an online tech sales training company that offers a 12-week training program with live classes, $0 up-front tuition, and agency services to help students land great jobs in tech sales. Uvaro’s work-integrated program builds sales teams that ramp faster and achieve more.
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 adaptovate.com
ADAPTOVATE has a responsibility to give back to our community, and Pledge 1% is a great opportunity to do so. Our company is young, and it’s critical to our culture that we give back. As our company continues to grow, we will continue to pledge our time and services for the greater good of our community.
We have a unique offering focused on transforming the way organisations deliver results, and we offer our valuable time, resources and services to our Pledge 1% partners to teach them how to more effectively fulfill their missions. We work closely with our pledges and we are committed to their success.
In the year 2020, ADAPTOVATE had the honour to provide pro-bono services to a hospital, 2 not-for-profit foundations and multiple schools across the globe. These inspiring organisations across the globe are:
Australia
Gomo Foundation provides education opportunities for young women with potential so they can drive change in their developing communities. ADAPTOVATE supported Gomo Foundation in creating their Objectives and Key Results to help guide the organisation into their next phase and implementation of strategy. ADAPTOVATE shaped the high-level strategy into a detailed roadmap with dedicated iterations using Agile methodology to align and engage a fully volunteer-led team.
Our Place | Colman Foundation works through local schools to create the environment for children, families and communities to flourish. They aim to reshape the service system and open up access to the resources, opportunities and support that all children need to learn and develop, and that enable families to achieve their aspirations. We supported Our Place and their partner organisations in Morwell, Australia to facilitate 4 key workshops. We helped them create a vision , focused their priority areas, and a roadmap to implement their strategy and objectives. This helped them to achieve their vision of happy, healthy and aspirational children in thriving families with a sense of belonging to the community.
Singapore
Tan Tock Seng Hospital, together with National Centre for Infectious Diseases, have played a pivotal role in the COVID-19 efforts for Singapore and it is a privilege to give back to them with our agile experience. ADAPTOVATE had recently conducted an Agile Virtual Immersion (VI) session with the hospital to introduce agile concepts and practices. The 32 participants from 16 different functions were able to experience first-hand working in an agile way and appreciate how it can engage the organization, optimize the processes and empower its people in the hospital.
Poland
The Covid-19 pandemic forced schools around the world into a swift and unexpected transition to remote learning. ADAPTOVATE trained, coached and mentored teachers across Poland to embrace an agile mindset to boost a culture of feedback, reflection and adaptation at schools. This new culture will lead to greater learning outcomes, promote collaboration to problem solve, and build resilience to change.
United States of America
JerseySTEM is a fully volunteer-led not for profit organisation providing STEM education to underserved children in New Jersey through innovative, hands-on and online after school projects and inquiry-based learning opportunities. ADATOVATE supported JerseySTEM’s IT initiatives of implementing a new Service Desk and knowledge base by refining their proof of concept and developing a full roll out plan to their 150+ volunteers.
The more we can practically help organisations achieve their goals, the better the world will be, and the better our organization will become. We are committed to serving our communities across the world to create a better future.
Please find a link to case studies of our Pledge 1% projects on our website.
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.