As a Munich-based software consultancy, anarcon endeavors to provide its customers with the highest quality services. Since summer 2017, we also dedicated ourselves to help people for whom it is not going so well in life and to contribute our part to environmental protection by joining Pledge 1%.

Already via Pledge 1% our employees have taught German to refugees, drove ambulances with care-dependent people, or liberated rivers from trash. When we heard about#GivingTuesday and #Pledge1Gives we knew we had to establish a whole new way of giving back. For this reason, we are launching a one-of-a-kind campaign where we as a company invite socially deprivedpeople and refugees to our business training facilities in Munich in order to facilitate their way back to a better life.

Germany is facing huge social challenges these days and therefore we believe that 

this campaign comes exactly at the right time. Furthermore, we are convinced that this activity will have a great impact on our company culture and our employees.

The campaign kicked off on Tuesday 21^st November with a couple of young women–all with completely different social backgrounds. What they all had in common was that they shared a lost control over their lives due to diseases, nursing cases or emigration caused by war in their countries. In a one day workshop, our director of consulting and two more consultants took the chance to teach them how to write a letter of application, to perform well in a job interview, and last but not least, helped them gain confidence. It was great fun to meet such courageous and determined women and to discover the story behind their faces.

This is just the beginning.  At anarcon, we will definitely proceed with this campaign, spread the word and tell our business partners to join us in giving via Pledge 1%.

By Chirag Mehta, Founder and CEO, Satrang Technologies

We are especially excited to participate in Pledge 1% Gives this #GivingTuesday, and plan to do a cloth donation drive at office and/or visit a local orphanage to teach children about recycling and waste management.  We will also provide lunch to all the kids of orphanage.

At Salesfix, our culture is still evolving. We are a SMB business with big dreams; not just for the business but for the impact we are capable of making on our community and the individuals within, including our own people.

Our philanthropic values have become an integral piece of our day to day business, being driven from management and as a core piece of our annual business planning days.  It is at our annual conference that we put a $$ figure beside the 1% Pledge items of profit, services and time. Then we strategize how we are best able to fulfil these targets.

Every year is different, 2016-2017 included a week in Cambodia for a team of 11 out of 13; we packed hampers for Foodbank, we ran up and down the beautiful Sunshine Coast for Cancer, we supported our beautiful Maria as she cycled the mountains of New Zealand for the Smiddy Challenge to name just a few.

It’s not always fun packed days though. As a Salesforce Gold Consulting Partner, we are well positioned to provide valuable support to the administration of our Australian based Non for Profits. This can include Salesforce implementation, Salesforce support and/or Health Checks along with pro-bono sessions supporting our general NFP community. We also support our Melbourne and Brisbane NFP Salesforce User Groups, in fact Wyan Carter is the Melbourne NFP User Group leader and a valued employee of SalesFix.

In addition, our CEO Jason Lawrence actively promotes a workplace culture of respect and equality and is at the forefront on our philanthropic endeavours. He sleeps under the starts every year for the CEO Sleepout (supporting our homeless community), sponsors all our individual charitable endeavours by donation matching, and has a swag of NFP’s that are thankful for his regular donations and services.

Why should partners join the global Pledge 1% philanthropy movement?

Community involvement improves not only the world in which we do business but also the world in which we want to live. Our community is us, we are our community.  In fostering respect and equality both internally and beyond, staff appreciation is high, team participation and collaboration comes easier, and the SalesFix business is a happier, and more successful workplace.

By Joel Markoff, General Manager, Nexus Notes

Founded in 2011 in Adelaide Australia, Nexus Notes is a peer to peer marketplace that allows high performing university and professional students to monetise their course summary notes by selling them to students across the globe. Buyers get the benefit of seeing how the top students prepare for exams, and sellers make a passive income from selling their notes and helping other students learn.

We started Nexus Notes because when we were at university – we found it much easier to learn from other students, as opposed to university lecturers and tutors. We believed (and still do) that students are often the best teachers, yet there was no collaborative platform that enabled students to learn from each other.

And so from humble beginnings the company grew and yet in early 2014, we recognised that a lot of our high performing students were less interested in monetising their services and more interested in helping other students learn. We went back to our founding vision and looked to determine the best way to help our top students to give back to the student community through our platform.

After many late nights brainstorming how we could give back to the student community, we decided to partner with a charity organisation and allow students to donate their sales commissions directly to that organisation. After doing significant due diligence we eventually settled on partnering with AIME, Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience. AIME is a not-for-profit with a simple mission: to get Indigenous students finishing high school and going on to university, further study or employment at the same rate as all Australians. Like Nexus Notes, AIME puts facilitates anyone to learn from top performing students and mentors.

Since introducing the option to donate commissions to AIME, 11% of our note sellers have opted to donate part or all of their commission to ch. Our generous sellers have been amongst our top performing students, resulting in a massive 16% of total commissions occurring through our site being donated to AIME.

The model of donating commissions in a marketplace is something rarely seen across the world and we are proud of have come up with such an innovative way to give back to the student community.

By Doug Cronin, Pledge 1% Member and Director of Change and Upstander, Our Race

Recently someone asked me why are you a Pledge 1% member, you are already giving back so much more than that.

My response was that for any significant change to happen, a movement if you will, it takes many voices standing together, not competing of who is doing more but what as a collective are we doing.

Later, I reflected on this answer and looked at what is it that my organisation can do in supporting a social impact movement like Pledge 1%. As a start-up and an organisation which aims to create more inclusive and welcoming workplaces and communities by connecting people through storytelling, mentoring and leadership, I realised we could definitely play a role with organisations who stand up against racism and see multiculturalism as one of our greatest strengths.

You may ask what are the similarities between these two movements?

This, for me is where it gets very interesting as both have an authentic purpose but also a positive impact on profitability and attracting and retaining talent.

We have all read the Benefits of Pledging on the Pledge 1% website and will look at how a few of these are related to Leading for Change: A Blueprint on Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Leadership. To do this I will refer to research conducted by the Leadership Council on Cultural Diversity, chaired by Dr. Tim Soutphommasane, the Race Discrimination Commissioner of The Australian Human Rights Commission.

Attracting customers and increasing productivity

“87% of consumers believe corporations should place equal weight on business and supporting communities”, yet do we need the data to prove this point or can we look around at our own spending habits and that of our friends and family?

At the same time, we often buy products and/or services that are aligned to our values, whether that be environmental, social or cultural. From there consumers ask the question does the company know how to provide goods and services to my preferences.

As a result, businesses find that having greater diversity they are able to reach a broader audience.

We all know there is a push for gender diversity and that this makes good business sense. A study of 366 companies from the United Kingdom, Canada, Latin America and the United States, found that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity were 15% more likely to have financial returns above the median, while companies with in the top quartile of cultural diversity were 35% more likely to have financial returns above the national industry median.

So just from a profitability perspective a culturally diverse leadership group just makes basic business sense. And with Australia increasingly becoming more culturally diverse (half the population were either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas) working towards culturally diverse and inclusive leadership is a no-brainer.

Attracting and retaining top talent

“60%+ of Millennials state that a “sense of purpose” is a key reason why they work for their current employers, while companies with giving programs have 2.3 times the employee retention rate.”

The idea of a sense of purpose goes hand in hand with a sense of belonging because if there is no sense of belonging, how can one of a sense of purpose?

Businesses which have culturally diverse leadership, employees from diverse backgrounds feel a greater sense of belonging where their uniqueness and input is also valued. This then benefits both the business and employees.

As Ajay Banga, the CEO of MasterCard says ‘If you don’t have a diverse company, if you don’t have people around you who don’t think like you, don’t walk like you, don’t talk like you, didn’t have the same experiences as you, how will you ever make sure that you are not blinded to the same mistakes that you can otherwise make because you can only see things through one prism.’

Everyone can make a difference. Be part of something bigger than yourself

Finally, if we were only pledging 1% to increase profitability and attract more customers then what is the purpose?

And is an organisation employing one or two people from a different background just a tokenistic gesture?

After attending a breakfast with Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar, I could see the passion and the leadership he is showing in this movement. It is obvious that he is taking action on this but is also agitating the market to help grow the size of the movement, and therefore impact.

This same type of leadership from him is also being shown by many members of this group, which ultimately will lead to greater change.

A movement is also occurring in the area of culturally diverse and inclusive leadership starting with members of the Leadership Council on Cultural Diversity. As a result of this and other forward-thinking leaders, we are seeing organisations agitating in this space. This has been through their recruitment strategies, policies and training, but most importantly by starting the conversation and committing to the movement.

Both of these movements are very much in their infancy but some progress is being made. It now takes the agitators and leaders to show this staunch commitment.

Are you going to be a leader of this movement also?

If you are leader in this space and want to start the conversation, we would like to invite you to the launch of Our Race in Sydney on Thursday 4^th December or organise another time to be part of this movement.

Pledge 1% is proud to have partnered with India Dreamin this past September to inspire greater giving and philanthropy across the India Dreaming community.  As part of the event, Pledge 1% was featured as the nonprofit partner for India Dreamin and all attendees were invited to take the pledge as part of this registration process.  Through this integration, nearly a dozen startups joined the movement and shared their intent to give back through their business.

This exciting partnership is providing a new pathway for startups and companies around India to get involved in Pledge 1%, and give either 1% of their staff time, product, profit, or equity to charity.  We are honored to have been featured as the nonprofit partner and we look forward to welcoming more of the India Dreamin community to Pledge 1%!

If you are interested in learning more about India Dreamin visit here or Pledge 1% for your company at p1.today.

Originally posted on the Our Big Kitchen blog by Jeff Newton.