Shaping the Future of Corporate Impact
Ten years ago, Pledge 1% launched with a simple idea: that companies could embed social impact into their business by pledging a percentage of their time, product, profit, and/or equity. What began as an idea led by a handful of visionary founders has grown into a movement with more than 19,000 companies worldwide, unlocking over $3 billion in new philanthropic capital.
The world has changed dramatically in the last decade, and so have the tools available to us. Corporate impact is once again at an inflection point—driven by technological disruption, shifting stakeholder expectations, and global challenges—and Pledge 1% is taking bold steps to help shape its next phase, harnessing innovation, augmenting our collective impact strategy, and advancing the movement worldwide.
Today, on Giving Tuesday, we set the stage for the future of Pledge 1% and the evolution of corporate impact.
AI – Aligning Innovation with Impact
As Artificial Intelligence transforms business models, jobs, and systems of value, we embark on a new chapter for our community—and for how we think about impact itself. Traditional philanthropy alone is not enough.
AI innovations unlock opportunities to accelerate and amplify social impact. Companies are already beginning to apply AI to address challenges like education, health, economic opportunity, and more. Many others are beginning to build their AI impact roadmap.
Having built an ecosystem of successful companies committed to corporate impact over the last decade, Pledge 1% is uniquely positioned to help businesses reimagine what responsible leadership looks like in the AI era.
Going forward, we envision:
- Mobilizing new innovative assets, helping companies contribute knowledge, data and learning, compute, and AI tools as part of their product pledge and overall commitment
- Building shared learning, surfacing member AI impact innovations and initiatives—and translating their insights into practical resources
- Co-creating responsible AI guidance with members, partners, and experts to define and spread effective practices and stay ahead of evolving expectations
- Integrating AI to scale Pledge 1% operations, leveraging AI tools to enhance member engagement and resources, starting with an agent for new members to accelerate their onboarding
Each company’s AI path will look different, shaped by its mission, culture, and community, but what is common is our community’s commitment to learning together and aligning innovation with impact—so that every advancement, product, and decision can reflect both business and human value.
Growing the Movement Globally
With a strong foundation in Silicon Valley, the Pledge 1% movement has reached thousands of companies worldwide. Our next step is strategic global expansion through a regional focus, beginning with a dedicated team in Australia—the fastest-growing region outside the US.
By combining the scale of a global movement with the power of local leadership, resources, and community, Pledge 1% can develop a deeper understanding of how businesses are run regionally, and tailor messaging, programs, and partnerships for each region.
Through this model, Pledge 1% is building a blueprint for embedding impact into regional business norms everywhere and connecting insights from each region to strengthen collective effectiveness.
The Future of Corporate Impact is Collective
Pledge 1% as an organization grew out of a conviction that business can be a powerful platform for social impact—and a realization that when we bring companies together behind this conviction, we become a force multiplier for creating impact. As we look to the future, we aim to unlock the full power of our collective by serving as a catalyst of shared ideas and action and forging new partnerships key to transforming the norm.
Our community has the power to align, mobilize, and scale impact in ways no single company can do alone. Acting collectively lets us accelerate breakthrough solutions, create momentum, and extend our reach far beyond what any organization could achieve independently. As part of expanding that reach and scale going forward, we will collaborate more deeply with impact-focused institutions that help direct our collective energy toward the highest-leverage opportunities.
Turning that collective scale into real shifts in business norms starts with building partnerships with the ecosystems that shape company formation—accelerators and startup platforms in addition to our Boardroom Allies investor community. These partnerships help ensure that embedding impact becomes standard from day one.
Ten years ago, Pledge 1% set out to change the way companies think about philanthropy and business. Today, that vision has become a global movement—unlocking billions in new resources and proving that impact can scale alongside innovation. As we enter the next phase of our journey, we are embracing AI, global growth through regional understanding, and the collective power of our community to ensure that giving back becomes a universal business norm.
The tools may evolve, but our mission is constant: to empower every company, everywhere, to be a force for good.
