This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

At MK Partners, commitment to community is one of our core values. Whether it’s our local communities of North Hollywood, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, our business community of staff, clients, and partners, or the Salesforce community of admins, developers, and Trailblazers – our community’s success enables our success, and giving back is an organization wide priority.

Giving Tuesday is an annual opportunity to celebrate the strides we’ve made over the last twelve months and to inspire and reinvigorate our efforts for the next twelve. It’s a chance to recognize the cumulative effects of small, but impactful action. To take stock and be grateful that we have the means and opportunity to give back.

This year, as we’ve watched our lives, businesses, communities, and families be dramatically reshaped in the face of global pandemic, Giving Tuesday is more important than ever. Not just as a chance to speak, but as an opportunity to listen. As more people need help than perhaps ever before, and still others with the means, opportunity, and desire to help, might feel overwhelmed or lost, unsure how to contribute meaningfully against what feels like a faceless, unstoppable force. Giving Tuesday represents an opportunity to align our ideals with action. To give voice to those in need and ensure their words land on the ears of those desperate to help ease their burdens.

At the start of April we announced a grant program, offering over $1.5 million in support and services to Los Angeles-based small businesses, and US-based nonprofits to help them transition to remote work, maintain effectiveness and keep their businesses afloat while protecting their employees. The program has already had positive effects, both to those we’ve been able to help, and also internally as it reaffirmed the fact that we can make a difference and that together, we’ll make it through this.

There are still grants available through the program so we’d encourage you, and anyone you know who qualifies, to enroll. Help us find those who need help the most, amplify their voices this Giving Tuesday, and let’s get through this, together.

We’re listening. We’re here for you. We’re going to be ok.

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

We are so proud of the work we’re doing at Trust & Will. 

From Day 1, we made the commitment to Pledge 1% as it not only aligned with our personal values, but also with our ambitions to build a wildly successful company with philanthropy ingrained in our team’s DNA. The current pandemic put us all in an uncomfortable and vulnerable position — with regards to our lives, health, and family.

As a husband to a sonographer, and having many close friends and family members in healthcare, I see and feel the stress and anxiety hitting healthcare professionals during this time. With the added pressure hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals are facing, the last thing they should be worried about is if they and their families are at risk without having an estate plan in place.

Beginning April 1st, any healthcare professional working in a public health setting in the US, can apply to receive a free Will-based estate plan for themselves including health care documents, HIPAA Authorization and Medical Power of Attorney. Healthcare professionals can submit verification of credentials in the US here. 

Many members of Team Trust & Will have friends and family that are directly impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. It was a team decision to come together to bring this initiative to reality. Our mission is to protect families and provide them a better way to plan for life.

Trust & Will is disrupting the trust and estate planning industry with an easy, fast, and secure way to set up your estate plan online. We’ve modernized estate planning with a design-first approach, layered on top of incredible customer support to help people throughout the process — making estate planning simple, affordable, & accessible. Since starting the company in October of 2017, we’ve raised $8M in capital, went through the Techstars accelerator, lined up partnerships with MassMutual, Policygenius, and more, completed the first electronic Will in history, and have helped over 90,000+ Americans kickstart their estate plan.

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

Horizon Therapeutics has been an active supporter of the community since its founding, a little more than 10 years ago. Horizon’s CEO, Tim Walbert, invested in corporate social responsibility even before the company was profitable.  When the repercussions of COVID-19 started to become clear, Horizon immediately sought out how to best lend support. We landed with a $1.5 million+ donation, split amongst community nonprofits and foundations in Illinois, the City of Chicago, Lake County, San Francisco, Washington D.C, Canada and Dublin, Ireland.  

Additionally, we helped seed two new funds with the Governor in Illinois.  The first is focused on supporting our communities throughout Illinois and the second is focused on the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) for our frontline healthcare workers.  More information on the PPE fund can be found here. 

As a community, we must address the immediate need to support our healthcare workers and first responders.  These unsung heroes are working directly with patients; and in these unprecedented times, they are doing so with a lack of critical protective medical products and equipment.

Donations will help provide increased access to medical PPE for healthcare providers and first responders throughout Illinois.  As of 4/20, the following PPE has been donated: 3,080 goggles; 13,740 protective clothing; 93,100 cleanroom gloves; 3,620 N95 masks; 14,930 surgical masks; 101,750 testing swabs.

Each of us as individuals, and collectively as part of our workplaces, can lend support to someone, somewhere in need.  If donating to the PPE fund speaks to you, please do so here.  Any amount helps.  

Other ideas include ordering from your favorite neighborhood restaurant and having it delivered to your local domestic violence shelter, tipping your grocery delivery driver double, donating to your local food pantry, or calling a loved one to check in. Do something.   

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

The Community Blood Center is a nonprofit organization that is the sole provider of blood and blood products to more than 20 local hospitals in Northeast and North Central Wisconsin, as well as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Every 2 seconds, someone in the United States is in need of blood, and the Community Blood Center has the daunting task of sourcing, organizing, and hosting over 100 blood drives every month, collecting more than 50,000 blood donations annually, all under the simple mission of “connecting lives and sharing life.”

As COVID-19 loomed over Wisconsin, and the governor issued a SaferAtHome order, blood drives were being cancelled and donor collection was immediately being affected. With a growing need in mind, the Community Blood center recognized that enhancing their Salesforce system would allow for expansion of their future blood drive campaigns, and positioning their organization to better serve our communities post COVID-19.

Canvas Cloud, a Salesforce Partner and Salesforce Nonprofit Partner, had previously met with team members of the Community Blood Center regarding enhancements to their existing Salesforce system, and were impressed by their vision to serve our local communities. Recognizing the severe impact that COVID-19 was having on the Community Blood Center, the owners of Canvas Cloud wanted to help – deciding without reservation that they would donate consulting and configuration services to meet their project requests, free of charge, to help ensure that the Community Blood Center would be better positioned to help our local communities.

Canvas Cloud is committed to the 1% Pledge by offering their expertise and services pro bono to the Community Blood Center.  By helping them, we can help everyone in our local communities.

As difficult as it may seem when any organization or business is suffering from economic hardships, we must not think of “if” this hardship ends, but “when” it ends.  Where will we be and what will we do next? With the widespread impact of this pandemic, you can have an enormous impact on your community by reaching out to your local nonprofits and community leaders to offer your assistance so that we are all better prepared to move forward as we recover from COVID-19.

For more information on the Community Blood Center, visit their website. 

For more information on Canvas Cloud, visit their website.

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

Giving is part of what we do every day at B1G1. But today, it is even more important.

In fact, we’ve been working for 12 years to make giving – specifically effective giving – part of what businesses around the world do. Our mission is to enable and empower all kinds of businesses to celebrate their wins by giving regularly to projects they want to support. We work with cafés giving access to water for every coffee they sell. We work with consulting firms that help educate disadvantaged children for every successful meeting they have…

But what happens when businesses are hit by unexpected challenges? 

The impact of this pandemic has been huge to our own business too. 

Many of our members – businesses that participate in our initiative – have faced significant challenges. As a social enterprise, we have suffered the consequence of this pandemic in various ways. To our dismay, the major conference we were planning to have this July was postponed. It just didn’t seem like the best time to be talking about giving – when so many of our members and partners were having challenges of their own. 

And yet, here is what we, actually our team, did as we entered the downturn:

We hired additional team members

Our team has taken this time of remote work and quieter period to execute on some of our important projects. For so long, we wanted to bring in more team members so that we could accomplish more. But finding the right people and onboarding them seemed overwhelming when we were so busy with our day-to-day work. The pandemic gave us a chance to do this and we discovered that we could still attract and bring in good people working remotely. We have never changed our stance to take care of our team members first. They are like our family members.

We connected with our partners even more

It’s easy to get bogged down in our own challenges. Yet when we look outward, we can always find those who may face greater challenges than us. So, our team reached out to all of our charity partners first to see how they were all doing. As a result, we discovered some additional ways we could help them. Our members can now support women in Kenya to sew thousands of reusable masks to protect people in their communities, or give much-needed meals to families in quarantine in the Philippines, or even help equip community clinics and health workers in disadvantaged communities. By having more intimate conversations with many of our business members, we realized that the spirit of giving is still there, strongly. 

We increased our giving 

Just like what we help our members coordinate, our own business has regular giving activities. With new team members onboard and having the time to re-think everything we do, we decided to engage the team more in the planning of our giving. Now, each team member is given a budget to add additional giving to their own wins. 

We think the occasional reminders like #GivingTuesdayNow can help all businesses re-think the purpose of their own business and renew their goals. 

Because now, that giving spirit is needed more than ever.

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

xocial is a gaming platform that measures and inspires acts of positive impact.  Participants complete challenges that measure impact, effort, and time including donations, volunteering, acts of kindness, the environment, and action on UN Sustainability Goals.

As the world comes together in the face of adversity, the xocial response is to do what we do. We’ve joined forces with the NHL Alumni Association on the ‘Kicking COVID with Kindness‘ campaign, to build community, make a positive impact, and have a little fun.

We’ve raised $10,000 and some amazing prizes.  Players win donation dollars with every challenge completed and the change to win (or donate) grocery gift cards.  You can join as an individual or create a team.  It’s a great way to make an impact in the spirit of Competitive Kindness!  

For #Giving TuesdayNow, we’re ramping up the impact with special challenges and donation opportunities.  

For companies that want their own employee engagement campaign, or want customized outreach to activate their clients, we’re here to help with heavily discounted services during these challenging times. 

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

Archima Solutions became a partner for Vetforce and Allies in Service. During the COVID-19 shutdown, we understand as a company and members of society, we must come together to help each other out during this pandemic. Whether it is donating food and essential supplies to healthcare workers and shelters, or it is about reaching out to fellow employees and neighbors to lift spirits up and offer a shoulder, the ways we give back, regardless of size, do make a larger impact than any of us think possible. 

Veteran Community:

Our company has been giving back by supporting Vetforce by conducting interviews for Vetforce candidates who need employment. We still have a few candidates waiting on their interview with our managing director, but at least this is a way for us to keep others hopeful about employment opportunities during these uncertain times. 

For Allies in Service, since this non-profit is currently focused on their efforts towards veterans, we are helping this non-profit by offering our support in alleviating some of their responsibilities and duties by taking them on ourselves. We expect to assist on upcoming projects from Allies in Service in the upcoming weeks. 

Spreading kindness, gratitude, and hope:

• Our managing director has been giving back to our team by sharing words of encouragement and motivation through emails and calls.


• We have team calls that are more focused on bonding and having fun with each other. This is a way for us to keep in contact with one another from time to time, and it reinforces how much we care about our employees and are there to talk and listen when things are rough. 


• We have participated in online creative games and Happy Hours to boost morale and to end the week in a positive, fun way. 

Individual Give Back Efforts

• Bethany has been delivering supplies and groceries to her parent


• Ankita has helped her younger sister with homework, has delivered groceries to friends, and has given food/water to the less-fortunate


• Marianne has been making cloth masks for friends and family; she’s been sending these out particularly to those located in high-risk areas like New Jersey, Boston and West Virginia 


• Raj has continued donating once a month to St. Jude’s Childrens’ Hospital 


• Suzanne has:
  
  
  
  • Cash donations to Second Harvest Food Bank
  
  
  • Donated blood to Red Cross
  
  
  • Buying from local farmers and produce vendors
  
  
  • Buying gift cards from local merchants and restaurants
  
  
  • Continuing to pay for regular services that aren’t able to be delivered during this time
  
  
  
  


• Swetha has been helping her child with online classes and homework, had donated funds to India, and has helped friends/family look for job opportunities during this time


• John and family have made and donated masks to essential workers, friends and family

Company Donations: 

Donations to partners so they may donate to local businesses of their choice

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.

Blue Skies Bakery is a family owned & operated wholesale bakery located in White Salmon, Washington.  We make artisan par baked bread & small batch granolas for cafes, restaurants, and grocers throughout the Pacific Northwest.  We are grateful to be able to continue working with our grocery customers through this rollercoaster of a time in the food world.  

When the virus shutdowns first hit in March we scrambled, along with so many others in the food world, to fulfill big orders, take care of our employees, and try to figure out which way was up!  

We were pleased to be able to shift our employees’ schedules so that everyone could work solo in the bakery, thus protecting our bakers by minimizing the risk of any contact with others.  

Working solo works well for granola making, but not so much for shaping our loaves.  Our loaves are naturally leavened & long fermented, and require a 7 day process.  We shape all 360 of our loaves in 1 day each week, and bake them the following day, after an overnight cold proof.  Shaping the loaves requires 3 of us to work in close quarters, and so now it is a family affair, which has been very, very lovely.

By April we had settled into our new rhythm & we are happy to say that this month we have been able to donate $,1372 worth of bread and granola to our local food banks, school lunch program & community food boxes, domestic violence shelter, and to the local homeless population.

By Lisa Abbott

This piece is shared as part of Pledge 1%’s #GivingTuesdayNow campaign, which highlights how Pledge 1% members and the business community are coming together as a force for good to combat COVID-19.