By Laura Schreier, Sr. Content Marketing Manager, ALM Works
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.
So many people are hurting as a result of this pandemic. If you want to help, where do you even start? We spent the month of March watching as the seriousness of the pandemic started to hit home. The shutdowns began, and everyone got a crash course in epidemiology. It was overwhelming. It’s still overwhelming.
We wanted to donate our Pledge 1% money where it could do the most good. In these early days of the crisis, we decided to go to those directly fighting COVID-19: hospitals right in our own backyard. ALM Works put all of our yearly donations into hospitals near our two office locations: Half went to Newton-Wellesley Hospital here in Massachusetts, and half to St. Petersburg “City Hospital No. 15” in Russia.
Hospitals desperately needed to increase capacity to handle a surge in patients. The hospital in St. Petersburg needed to be outfitted with equipment and beds for COVID-19 patients, and Newton-Wellesley is actively involved in treatment and — just as importantly — prevention of further spread.
A thank-you letter from Newton-Wellesley noted that our donation aids virus sufferers as well as prevention measures. “Community hospitals are at the epicenter of controlling the spread of COVID-19,” the letter noted, adding that our donation came during a critical time in controlling the outbreak.
It’s become a cliche to talk about healthcare workers as the “front lines” of the fight, but they really are shouldering huge burdens right now, caring for desperately ill people while putting themselves at risk. We want to give them all the support they need.
This crisis will take a long time to overcome, and the economic ramifications are going to be severe for people all around the world. In addition to our Pledge 1% donation, the company also offered to match any employee’s personal donation to any organization related to the crisis. As individuals, we can’t control this pandemic — but as a community, we’ll do what we can to help each other through.
By Melynnie Rizvi
At SurveyMonkey, our goal has always been to make the communities where we live and work better, safer, and healthier. And as a survey company, we’re uniquely suited to help. Throughout the crisis, we’ve poured resources into not only supporting our employees and customers, but also helping build a better world at large.
Here are the ways that we’re looking out for our users, our employees, and everyone else who’s been affected by these tumultuous times.
Providing Free Public Resources for Organizations of Every Size
Every company and organization has been affected by the virus. Many are suddenly and urgently coping with less revenue, while also trying to keep business operations going in a quarantining world.
SurveyMonkey launched new, free survey templates designed by our in-house survey experts to help business leaders and individual managers stay connected. Our Coronavirus Leadership Check-In template enables executives and small business owners to assess employees’ wellbeing and address potential challenges, our Work From Home template enables individual managers to check up on employees at a regular cadence, and our B2B customer pulse survey enables users to check on customers.
SurveyMonkey is also constantly publishing new research about social sentiments around the coronavirus, including the number of people quarantining, top concerns, changes in buying habits and more. Since February, we’ve polled more than 600,000 people across the U.S., U.K., and Canada. We publish this data weekly to help bring more clarity about these world changes to our customers and other readers.
Supporting our Nonprofit Partners
SurveyMonkey is currently offering extreme discounts to nonprofits, educators, and students to enable them to continue their important work and enable remote education.
And the work that we’re seeing from nonprofits truly is inspirational. Here are a few examples: the American Red Cross is using SurveyMonkey technology to recruit blood donors who have already recovered from the virus (and therefore have coronavirus-fighting antibodies in their blood), so that sick people can recover more effectively. Meanwhile, the Boys and Girls Club of San Mateo uses SurveyMonkey to check in on community needs, and created a food distribution station for needy families as a result of their research.
We’re also promoting broader use of SurveyMonkey Contribute, a platform that enables people to take surveys in exchange for a SurveyMonkey-sponsored donation to a nonprofit of their choice. For every survey taken, SurveyMonkey donates 50 cents, many of which—like Doctors without Borders and American Red Cross.—are directly supporting virus relief efforts. Our hope is that people can use SurveyMonkey Contribute to help support positive change, even if they can’t afford to give money themselves during this time. Historically, the platform has raised over 15 million dollars for worthy causes.
Enabling Healthcare Breakthroughs and Other Research
Some of SurveyMonkey’s most exciting work right now comes from partnerships with healthcare and other public health organizations.
COVID Near You is an organization that is tracking symptoms across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, helping communities understand whether they are at risk and how the virus works. It provides real-time public health updates using survey data. Almost 600,000 people have made reports to the site in order to help spread awareness.
Another powerful new partnership is with the state of Rhode Island, which is using SurveyMonkey to check in on people who tested positive, track changes in symptoms, identify problem areas where illness is spreading, and research possible solutions.
Taking Care of Our Troop
The health and safety of our employees (affectionately known as our Troop) remains a top priority at SurveyMonkey. That’s why SurveyMonkey was among the first companies to implement a work-from-home policy in early March 2020, helping establish the norm that is attributed to saving lives in California before the state safer-at-home order was in place.
During this time of instability, SurveyMonkey has strengthened our commitment to protect our employees. Our CEO, Zander Lurie, took a public pledge to do no layoffs for 90 days starting April 1, and we are committed to paying hourly workers and contractors their regular wages, despite a decreased need for services.
As we began remote work, one of our first steps was to check in with our Troop to understand their concerns and the support tools that would help them navigate this new landscape, using our leadership check in template. Based on their feedback, and in recognition of the challenges associated with caregiving and homeschooling, we provided all employees with a stipend to set up a comfortable and effective remote workspaces and help support childcare, dependent care, educational learning subscriptions, and more. We also added emergency paid sick leave for any employee who is personally affected by the virus, so that they won’t be depleting any sick days.
We sent our Employee Resource and Social Impact Groups (ERG & DIGs) the guidance and resources they need to host virtual events and Community Chats to maintain connection, collaboration and morale during this time of physical distancing. These groups are also tackling the new challenges facing individual communities at this time, including xenophobia and racism against the Asian American community, the disproportionate health and economic impact the virus is having on the African American and Latinx communities, and the mental health impact of this new world order.
Additional Advocacy
In addition to our CEO’s pledge not to do any layoffs for 90 days, SurveyMonkey has been involved in other social initiatives that aim to support our communities through this crisis.
To support small businesses that are particularly vulnerable during this time, SurveyMonkey joined the #OpenWeStand Coalition of more than 30 companies to help small businesses sustain during and recover after from the financial impact of COVID-19.
Before becoming law on March 18, 2020, SurveyMonkey advocated for the passage of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which provides funding for free coronavirus testing, 14-day paid leave for American workers affected by the pandemic, and increased funding for food stamps.
Like everyone else, SurveyMonkey has had its share of challenges in a rapidly changing world. But we truly believe that we can work together to make a positive impact, and we commit to continue working toward that impact in whatever ways we can.
By Lauren Coberly, Box.org
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.
A January meeting at the Health Emergency Operations Center in Democratic Republic of the Congo. The center was established in 2017 with support from PATH and is now being used to coordinate the country’s COVID-19 response. Photo: PATH
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.
A letter from our CEO:
Hello from Houston. Our city has been on lockdown since mid-March and the Endiem team watched as the world and economy responded to the pandemic.
There are few things we cannot control just now – but we can control how we choose to contribute during this uncertain time. At Endiem, we are choosing to contribute with intention.
This means taking care of our community, which not only includes everyone in the extended Endiem family but also our beloved Houston area as a whole. That’s why we are thrilled to be part of the #GivingTuesdayNow movement.
In response to the CO-VID crisis, Endiem doubled its monthly donations to local non-profit Kid’s Meals, which feeds thousands of pre-school children in Houston every day. With schools closed many kids have lost the two regular meals they depended on each day. Kid’s Meals stepped up to fill that void by packaging and delivering thousands of extra nutritious sack lunches to homes to make sure Houston’s kids are fed. Endiem’s stepped up to provide extra funding for those lunches and snacks.
Throughout the year the Endiem team is granted paid Volunteer Time Off (VTO). Last week, Advantage by Endiem analyst Laura Martin used her VTO to bag lunches at Kid’s Meals. And off of our team members have been given an extra half-day of VTO this week in solidarity with #GivingTuesdayNow.
“At Endiem we believe in deeds, not words. Our community is suffering and we must act. The need is now so we’re taking action to help however we can – with cash, with time, and with hands-on volunteering,” says Geraldine Gray, Endiem’s CEO.
We’re creating an environment where compassion and flexibility rule while fulfilling customer needs and keeping in mind that everyone’s struggling with new routines and, for some, unsure futures.
Every Thursday we hold an “open mic” session that welcomes employees, partners, and clients to Zoom into as a space to be human and vulnerable during this crisis. Yes, we talk about our feelings. The feedback regarding these sessions has been phenomenal – we laugh, we pray, we send good thoughts, we sometimes shed a tear but we always end on a hopeful note.
Join us as we support #GivingTuesdayNow. We’ll get through this together because we’re in this together and because you know us at Endiem you know that we’re all in. Stay safe, stay well, and stay sane.
Endiem is the largest independent Salesforce consulting partner in Houston. We help organizations discover, design, and build Salesforce solutions that help businesses achieve their goals. Find us on Twitter.
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.
ShoppingGives is a commerce platform that enables conscious brands to streamline their giving process so that they can focus more on doing good and less on how to do it. Right now, brands are putting giving back and social impact at center stage to provide aid to their customers, those on the frontlines, and the global community.
For #GivingTuesdayNow, ShoppingGives has worked with their network of stores, or The Giving Economy as they’re more affectionately known, to raise donation amounts and enable every purchase to make an impact. ShoppingGives’ partner brands are all getting creative with giving back to the community, from featuring COVID-19 focused causes all the way to 5% give back on every purchase.
In addition to flash giving for Giving Tuesday Now, most ShoppingGives partners give back to causes of the customers’ choice. When you shop their Giving Economy, you can select the cause closest to your heart to receive a donation. If you’re stumped for a cause, all retailers have at least one feature that they believe in, and you can always select that! Donations powered by ShoppingGives are made by the brand on the customer’s behalf. When you shop the Giving Economy, you never have to spend more to make a difference.
Join ShoppingGives in making a difference by shopping conscious brands like Huron, Natori, Koio, Kenneth Cole, The Sis Kiss, JR Dunn, and Everyday California. For more sites giving back extra visit ShoppingGives.com or follow @ShoppingGives across all socials.
ShoppingGives has already raised thousands in their effort to provide relief, and they look forward to continuing the trend in this time of abundant need. Happy Giving!
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.
When news broke about the pandemic, Selfless.ly, an all-in-one corporate philanthropy management software startup sprang into action.
“It became clear to us that a lot of resources would be going toward COVID-related issues, however there are many nonprofits that still need support and may not have a mission that relates. We asked – What can we be doing to help these causes stay sustainable?” – Joshua Driver, Cofounder of Selfless.ly.
Selfless.ly reached out to partner with Serve Indiana, a division of the Department of Workforce Development for the State of Indiana, and launched Virtual Giveback. The partnership centralizes nonprofit-focused resources and created a webinar series with subject matter experts to provide information on pressing issues being experienced during this time. In addition to informational sessions, Virtual Giveback provides instruction on self-care techniques and a communication channel for nonprofits to be heard.
“We know these amazing people are pouring from an empty cup, and we need to let them know that someone is here for them.” Said Driver.
After learning more about the current struggles facing the over 60 nonprofits that registered to be a part of the Virtual Giveback program, the team at Selfless.ly began to schedule free consulting sessions on helping nonprofits transition their volunteer opportunities into virtual ones. In addition, Selfless.ly removed the paywall for nonprofits to use their volunteer management system, meaning Selfless.ly is currently free for nonprofits!
Currently, the team at Selfless.ly is volunteering with several nonprofits to help deliver masks to hospitals from the Million Mask Challenge Indy, support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, foster dogs from the Indiana Bulldog Rescue, consult on virtual event management and more.
If you have an hour to volunteer virtually, let us know!
About us– Selfless.ly is based in Indianapolis and is Indiana’s first Domestic Benefit Corporation and Certified B Corp. To learn more visit www.selfless.ly or join the movement here.
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 Rodan + Fields, people are at the heart of our business. As the impact of COVID-19 is felt around the world, we will continue to support relief efforts to do the right thing for the health and safety of our loyal customers, global consultants, home office employees and R+F global communities.
To date, we have protected our people by elevating safety protocols throughout our supply chain, shifted home office employees to work remote, and championed healthcare workers on social with our #RFLove campaign. We have also donated more than 13,000 R+F skincare products to frontline healthcare workers to soothe skin irritation and are now making hand sanitizer for Bay Area hospitals.
We have also expedited $1.5M in payments to our nonprofit partners to help them stay open and adapt their youth programs and are giving more than $420k to the American Red Cross.
Today, for #GivingTuesdayNow we’ll match your donation!
By Matt Gretczko, Senior Vice President & GM, Healthcare Practice | Silverline.
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 Silverline, our hearts go out to the many individuals, their families, and friends that have been impacted by this virus and all those that have lost their life in this battle. We support our first resp onders, healthcare workers and employees working for essential business. Without them, we would not have been able to fight against, survive and hopefully emerge stronger from this pandemic.
Silverline’s focus in Healthcare and Life Sciences has put us at the front line of ensuring that our customers, the Healthcare ecosystem, and their consumers have the tools, capabilities, and support to rapidly and effectively address the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, we have seen that organizations that have either historically, or recently, made certain technology investments have demonstrated a unique agility to adapt to the immediate needs.
Specifically, Silverline has worked with many healthcare organizations, especially in New York City, to help them react quickly to a changing business models and needs of patients in their community. A few examples of what we have been doing with customers include:
- Largest urgent care in NYC — We’ve leveraged Salesforce marketing cloud to establish COVID-19 specific patient communications both before, during, and after interactions.
- Largest provider in New York State — We already helped them deploy a patient access solution on Salesforce, and due to this infrastructure, in partnership with them they were able to deploy a new patient access application in 24hrs to address massive increases of COVID-19 related triage via inbound calls. Further, we’ve leveraged native chat capabilities for internal communications and external call deflection to focus on the highest priority patient inquiries.
- Largest independent multi-speciality medical group in NY — We’ve leveraged Salesforce marketing cloud to adjust, increase, and extend patient communications to at risk patients, following emergency room visits, and to educate around telehealth capabilities.
- Large Workforce Health Solution Provider – We’ve leveraged Salesforce community capabilities to create a self-service access point for employers to provide tailored, validated, and useful information regarding COVID-19 as well as the opportunity to submit formal inquiries to be followed up on by Health Professionals
Further, as part of our partnership with Salesforce, we were identified as a preferred partner to help organizations leverage their free care response trial offering. We have already successfully deployed this for Truman Medical Center (click here for the full story) in Missouri to track inbound inquiries from patients and consumers, survey their condition and history and route them to the appropriate care setting, while providing collaboration tools for the community at large to receive information on the virus. We continue to have conversations on a weekly basis for other organizations looking to capitalize on this capability as well.
We will continue to support our employees, our clients and Salesforce and our other partners to ensure we can help engage consumers to support their health during this time of crisis.
By Randall Ward, Appfire CEO
“Be Human” is our guiding core value at Appfire. Now, more than ever, our team has been reminded of the importance of remembering that we’re all only human. I have been so inspired and encouraged by our team’s response to this unprecedented time.
Another one of our company values is “Light the way” and I hope that sharing the ways we’ve extended special care both within and outside of Appfire will inspire other organizations to do the same on #GivingTuesdayNow.
Here at Appfire, we’re well-practiced in remote work. As a global team, we were able to quickly pivot to 100% remote several weeks ago thanks to the efforts of our amazing business systems and operations teams. Beyond the technical side of supporting remote work, our HR team also provided resources on managing stress and leveraging the connection between wellbeing and productivity.
Since a global pandemic is no normal work-from-home situation, our team has also adjusted our benefits to include additional paid time off not only for personal and family illness but also simply to care for our children and take a breather on occasion.
Staying connected is essential for people and, as an organization, we know that taking care of both our health and that of our families is the number one priority. So we’ve cut back on business meetings and also introduced other ways for our team to feel connected and supported.
For instance, we’ve instituted daily “family lunches.” These short, 15-minute Zoom calls are completely optional and are often joined by kids and pets. The only rule? No work talk. We even have themed lunches (yes, our team fell “prey” to the Tiger King craze).
Amidst all that’s happening, our Appfire team members have also found ways to extend support to their communities. Sharing updates via our #LivingThePledge Slack channel, our employees have donated to local food banks, dropped off supplies to neighbors in need, and helped fundraise for hospitals.
On the customer side, we know we’re not the only ones adjusting to new difficulties every week. That’s why we offered an extension to our grandfather pricing program so customers can maintain their pricing from 2019. Additionally, as an Atlassian partner, we’re fully supportive of their efforts to offer work-enabling technology for free and we’re continuing to partner with Atlassian to find more ways to support teams that may be struggling.
If there was ever a time for empathy, that time is now. We know our teammates and customers are working under exhausting circumstances, and we want to continue to offer support in creative and considerate ways.No person, and no company, is an island. We exist in a very interconnected ecosystem and during this time, we know that the way forward is together.