Written by Jay Parekh, VP of Partnerships and Business Development at Chime. Originally published on Medium.
You’ve probably heard the term ‘food desert’ — it’s used to describe a large geographical area where residents don’t have access to a grocery store. The term ‘banking desert’ similarly refers to an area where access to banking services is limited or costs significantly more than where services are easy to come by.
As an online banking service, many of our members live in these banking deserts. Even though we don’t have much of a presence on the ground in these communities, we’re still able to provide them with the services they need without charging them exorbitant fees.
And while our members benefit from our services regardless of where they live, we are always looking for ways to connect in real life with the communities where our members actually live and work. Establishing a connection with and giving back to our communities has been important to us from the beginning. In fact, it was our founders, Chris and Ryan, who suggested we start a program to help Chimers give back. In 2018, they started the wheels turning on a company-wide pledge program and they asked me to help.
To start, we thought about different ways we could give back: our time, company equity, money, and our product. The more we thought about it, we realized it’s a bit hard to give away our product because it’s already free.
In the end, we decided to give 1% of our time — roughly 7,000 hours. We feel it’s a goal that speaks to who we are as a company and helps us further endorse our mission to help Americans live financially healthy lives with our actions and company culture.
While committing 1% of our employees’ time was a no-brainer, we came across a few challenges once we decided to do so: How would we decide where to spend that time? How could we make sure Chimers are engaged with our pledge program? How would we find organizations who would want to work with us? And how could we do all of this while our company scaled? It was important to us to think about this program holistically, make it accessible — and appealing — to all Chimers, and find organizations that could absorb our growing team and be aligned with our mission.
The How: Connecting our Why with partner organizations
To formalize the commitment we wanted to make, we partnered with the folks at Pledge 1%, who have had many leading companies make similar pledges, including Yelp!, Atlassian, and Twilio to figure out which organizations we should work with. Without any preconceived notions about who we’d end up partnering with, we started by gathering groups of Chimers to understand where they want to give back their 1%.
It was important for us to understand what people from all teams and levels of the organization were looking for out of this program, since our goal is to have every employee participate. Each focus group included employees from every part of Chime and covered topics of what matters to them, which communities they want to know more about, and which activities would make giving 1% of their time feel fulfilling.
Something emerged pretty quickly in the group discussions: Chimers were interested in how to help people with economic empowerment. Whether it was helping people manage their personal finances or educating them about businesses and entrepreneurship, Chimers’ interests in helping communities grow economically aligned quite beautifully with our mission. While we did guess that this would be important to many Chimers, it was exciting to see such consistency across our focus groups.
Once we’d narrowed down a theme to focus on — economic empowerment — we identified partner organizations. With an initial list of over 200, we narrowed them down by answering the following questions:
- Will the organization help us develop empathy for our communities by working directly with people? Our hope was to find partners whose work would allow Chimers to meet and get to know members of the community.
- Does the organization serve a diverse location or population? With many of our employees living outside of San Francisco and in Chicago as we scaled our second office, we wanted to make sure our partner organizations would represent folks from different geographies than where we work.
Once we’d narrowed the list to a handful of organizations, we invited them to meet with us — in person or virtually — so that we could get to know them better. We learned what their missions were, what was important to them when it came to taking on volunteers, and what they wanted to see from us, a potential volunteer partner.
After our meet-and-greets, we chose two organizations with whom to pilot our pledge. Both organizations would allow Chimers to meet community members directly. They were also open to collaborating with us on the early stages of our program. We’d found two partners willing to help us iron out the kinks as we got this program off the ground. Those organizations are Oakland Promise and WeThrive.
Oakland Promise: Oakland Promise provides resources and support to Oakland kids to empower them to achieve higher education and careers. We chose to partner with them because they think holistically about intervening positively in peoples’ lives, from offering financial support for low-income people who are about to have a baby to providing one-on-one mentorship when people are going to college. They also allow Chimers to engage at different levels, ranging from a phone call once a month to mentor someone in college, texts throughout the month to offer financial advice, or in-person meetings. We love how Oakland Promise empowers Chimers to develop long-term relationships with community members in the Bay Area.
WeThrive: WeThrive helps underestimated youth build businesses by providing schools with curricula focused on entrepreneurship and empowering kids to start their own businesses. We decided to partner with WeThrive because we felt truly inspired by their founder, Daquan J. Oliver. As the child of a single mother growing up in a low income household, Daquan discovered entrepreneurship at a young age and credits it with keeping him out of trouble through his adolescence. By providing schools with curriculum and volunteer support, kids can build and grow companies and while getting advice and mentorship from partner companies like Chime.
While committing time was important to us, we also realized that helping support Chime volunteers wouldn’t be “free” for the organizations, and wanted to also have additional impact. So we made unrestricted financial donations to both organizations since we know how valuable these kinds of funds are to non-profits.
Measuring success and overcoming challenges
Once we’d figured out how to partner with our community, we wanted to be sure we were holding ourselves accountable to some measurable metrics of success for the program. To measure success, we looked at our 1% Pledge program from a few perspectives: participation, engagement, empathy, and value provided to our partners.
The first measure of success is whether employees are donating 1% of their time. Without a full-time team dedicated to the program, we rely on champions across the organization to encourage participation — people who are passionate about volunteering and are developing their leadership skills, whose responsibility it is to get fellow Chimers involved in the initiative and act as cheerleaders for our partner organizations. Measuring participation is a first step to analyzing how the program is getting off the ground, as well as a proxy for how inspired Chimers feel to give back — both in and out of the workplace.
The second way we’re measuring the program is the relationship between employee engagement and involvement in our 1% Pledge. Already, we’ve heard that many employees feel a sense of pride that Chime is doing this, but long-term success will be evaluated after the annual engagement survey is completed. Our People team will analyze engagement scores and look for a correlation between engagement and involvement in the program.
The third measure of success of our 1% Pledge program is whether it’s building empathy among Chimers for our members. It’s important for Chimers to understand what our members are dealing with day to day because it informs our company culture and how we build our products. Helping people with their financial health contributes to how Chimers solve problems at work by empowering them to better understand and connect with our members.
Finally, we want to add value to our partners’ organizations by giving them our time. To that end, we’ll maintain an open line of communication between our Chime 1% Pledge champions and our partners to continue evaluating our partnerships. After all, they’re the ones we are hoping to positively impact.
The future
While our 1% Pledge program is in its infancy, we’re excited for Chimers to get involved with our partners and find ways to give back on their own — something many Chimers already do. It’s important for all of us to foster a culture where taking time away from work to support and help others in our community is a good thing. This program is just one part of that and we hope to see Chimers giving back in a number of ways.
Giving back during COVID-19
Due to the current shelter-in-place mandates in San Francisco and Chicago, all Chimers are currently working from home. Our top priority during this time is the wellbeing of our members and employees, so we are urging everyone to do what they need to take care of themselves. However, it’s often during times of crisis that people most want to help — so we’re finding ways for Chimers to do so during this time.
We’re working with both of our partners, Oakland Promise and WeThrive, to find ways to offer our time while we weather this pandemic. For example, Chimers are still offering financial advice via text and phone calls for Oakland Promise, as well as advising kids on their entrepreneurship and business ideas for WeThrive. A silver lining of schools being moved to an online model is that Chimers can now help students with their entrepreneurship ideas across the country in partnership with WeThrive.
Written by Terry Windell. Originally published on Massachusetts Newswire.
The Law Office of Edward A. Smith, dba AutoAccident.com, is providing food assistance to present and former clients of the firm by delivering groceries to their homes, free of charge.
Beginning May 1, clients can contact the firm and order up to $100 worth of groceries from their choice of either Whole Foods or Raley’s.
Each order will be inputted to the nearest grocery store available and delivered directly to the client’s doorstep.
Edward Smith, who has considered the plight of many during the Sacramento quarantine, especially those who are presently out of work, recovering from an injury or at elevated risk and who cannot shop without worry.
“We want our clients to know that we are all in this together,” says Smith. Disasters lead us to a deeper knowledge that at some level we all are kin.
The firm will provide this service to clients upon request until dedicated funds are depleted.
“We wish we could offer this service to everyone, of course, but our resources are limited,” says Smith.
But we’ll provide for as many as we can.
As of May 1, there are 1,077 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 43 deaths in Sacramento County, making this area among those most deeply affected by the pandemic.
An inability to afford or be able to personally shop for groceries has become a challenge for many.
The staff of AutoAccident.com continues to handle personal injury cases remotely via video consultation, and in-office by appointment.
Some clients have revealed that the added difficulty of dealing with formerly simple tasks such as grocery shopping makes their lives almost unbearable.
“During this stressful time, the last thing we would want is for them and their families to worry about hunger.”
For further information, visit AutoAccident.com.
For more information, contact:
Bella Wilson
Bella@autoaccident.com
916-921-6400
AutoAccident.com
Law Office of Edward A. Smith
1900 Point West Way #200
Sacramento, CA 95815
About AutoAccident.com:
Established in 1982, AutoAccident.com is a Sacramento, California based Personal Injury law firm providing legal assistance with cases involving auto accident and personal injury, motorcycle accidents, wrongful death, medical malpractice, consumer product liability and railroad injury. It is a top-rated member of Avvo, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Better Business Bureau and National Association of Distinguished Counsel. They are also proud members of Pledge 1%.
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.
As the realities of COVID-19 began to unfold, the first action Unbounce leadership took was to prioritize the health and safety of its people and their families. From the outset, Leslie Collin, VP of People & Culture, was transparent about her team’s commitment to receiving and sharing advice only from reputable sources and committed to a regular cadence of internal communications so that employees knew exactly when to expect updates from P&C.
The company, most commonly known for its AI-powered landing page software, transitioned to a work-from-home environment early on and created channels to keep the team feeling connected- like virtual cafes, #fitbounce workouts via Zoom, and trivia events. Each employee was offered a $500 WFH allowance to spend on whatever they needed to transition to their new environment, including covering unexpected caregiving costs for children or other family members. Unbouncers were also assured that time taken due to illness during this period would not be deducted from their usual sick day balance.
Most importantly, leadership asked that the team support one another and help each other to navigate this uncertain time. The following quote is a snippet of an email from Leslie Collin, VP of People & Culture, sent to the Unbounce team on March 17, 2020.
“Unbounce is first and foremost a people-first, family-first company…we have fellow Unbouncers navigating unique circumstances as a result of this situation. Let’s help each other navigate …and consider how we can operate with a strong sense of flexibility and creativity around getting work done as we seek to accommodate what is new and uncharted territory for all of us.
It’s ok if you’re not as productive – that might happen, and we are ok with that. Perhaps you get a few hours of work done throughout the day, and hop on to do a few hours later in the evening – that’s ok. You might miss some important meetings due to juggling childcare – that’s ok. Deadlines and deliverable dates might have to change – that’s ok. To our people leaders, please be curious, assume positive intent, and ask how you can help.” (Leslie Collin, VP of People & Culture)
Next, Unbounce looked to support their customers, many of which are small businesses. These customers were experiencing a range of challenges – some were running into a complete lack of incoming revenue. Others, like those in ecommerce, were experiencing a surge in traffic they weren’t prepared for. Regardless of their situation, Unbounce didn’t want campaigns and software subscriptions to be piling stress onto an already stressful situation. They offered to set up one-on-one calls to work with each customer to determine how Unbounce could help them in their unique situation. You can learn more about their full approach here.
Unbounce has also been offering their Essential Plan for free to all not-for-profit, healthcare, education, and government organizations as their mission-critical services are needed now more than ever.
Lastly, they built and curated a set of resources to help small businesses pivot online and ramp up their digital marketing:
- This Small Business Care Package is a landing page of curated initiatives, credits, and funding opportunities from tools and platforms aiming to help small businesses get online quickly and optimize their marketing.
- This blog post that outlines tips for traditionally brick and mortar small businesses to transition online in a manageable way.
- “20 Best B2B Landing Page Examples” for best practices/page inspiration for those new to this, and “13 Best Landing Page Examples of 2019” for even more ideas.
- This introduction to what a landing page is for PPC, and how to use one.
- This list of best practices for those trying to figure out how to write copy for their first Google Ad.
In the spirit of giving what they’re good at, Unbounce will be donating time and expertise on May 5th to its nonprofit customers by offering free one-on-one strategy sessions for their landing pages. Nonprofits are being hit especially hard during this crisis, and Unbounce’s expertise in conversion optimization will help these organizations to ensure their pages are as effective as possible in converting donor/volunteer traffic on their pages.
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 Makers to the Rescue documentary project captures the spirit and shares the stories of the open source medical supplies movement. By highlighting the efforts of organizations and individuals’ response to supply critical personal protective equipment (PPE) to first-line defenders in the COVID-19 pandemic we hope to inspire others to take action, to celebrate the work already done and remember we’re all in this together.
As COVID-19 gained a foothold in the U.S., we found our healthcare systems, and society, woefully underprepared to prevent the spread using vital personal protective equipment.
An intrepid network of volunteers and small-business owners mobilized, almost overnight, to pivot their studios, shops and community spaces into a crowd-sourced supply chain to rapidly develop, produce and distribute vital equipment for the Americans on the front lines of this epidemic.
Despite the hardships the pandemic has placed upon their personal lives and livelihoods, the artists, the makers, and the misfits answered the call.
Small businesses abandoned their lucrative primary-business models and joined forces with their competitors to ramp up PPE production. Non-profit makerspaces developed hygienic, volunteer-powered assembly lines. Regular people volunteered their own homes, vehicles, and hands, to manufacture and deliver face shields, masks, head coverings and other PPE.
Their stories will be told in Makers to the Rescue.
And, just as the production of the PPE is being crowdsourced, this documentary is too. Using a variety of self-shot and remotely shot footage, we follow this motley crew’s journey to deliver life-saving supplies to healthcare workers around the country.
Whether you donate to this film or to an open source PPE project, this #GivingTuesdayNow we encourage you to get involved in efforts to support the medical community.
Follow us and the Makers on our social media channels:
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.