New Relic
As a leader in observability, New Relic empowers engineers with data to plan, build, deploy, and run great software. New Relic delivers the only unified data platform for all telemetry paired with powerful full-stack analysis tools to help engineers do their best work with data, not opinions. www.newrelic.com
https://newrelic.com/social-impact
Through Social Impact at New Relic, we aim to enable our employees to share their skills, time and resources with intention. With that in mind, this Giving Tuesday we’re kicking off our 2nd annual 21 Days of Goodness campaign – an initiative built to create opportunities for employees to connect with each other through giving back in a variety of ways.
- Week 1: We kick off the campaign “treasure hunt” style with a week dedicated to giving, surprising employees with varying levels of Giving Rewards (funds they can donate to charity), leveraging the power of sharing to inspire each other to support causes we care about.
- Week 2: From there, week two is all about learning, and we spend time gamifying getting to know our social impact tools so employees are more aware of all the ways they can give back year round.
- Week 3: 21 Days culminates in week three with our Global Day of Service, a day where we close down our offices and encourage employees to partner up with a local organization or do something close to their own hearts for the day in service to their community.
Last year we raised nearly $70k across the campaign and saw more than 4500 volunteer hours tracked around the world in just one day, and in 2022 we’re looking to grow our efforts! Every year, 21 Days of Goodness is such an incredible reminder of the way Relics around the world care about their communities all 365 days of the year.
LiquiDonate
LiquiDonate works with businesses to help seamlessly donate their unsellable or unusable goods to nonprofits and schools nationwide.
LiquiDonate is proud to join the pledge 1% community, through a commitment of time, equity, and product.
LiquiDonate provides retailers with a sustainable solution for handling the costly and cumbersome reverse logistics flow of returns and excess inventory. Specifically LiquiDonate helps retailers donate such goods to nonprofit organizations, schools, and community groups nationwide. LiquiDonate’s tech-based solution for landfill diversion uses their Donation as a Service API (DaaS) and matching algorithm, to save retailers significant capital while providing them with an opportunity to have a direct social impact within their community. Recipients receive free goods, allowing them to spend their donation dollars on other programmatic costs.
Founded by two ex-Postmates employees – Diz Petit who led the sustainability and social impact efforts at Postmates, and Chai Nadig who built tech for good products at Postmates – were inspired by a notion that there was immense room for improvement within a system that produces 6 billion pounds of waste every year. 80% of retail returns end up in landfills, while the other 20% goes into a costly, inefficient, and often wasteful liquidation process.
“Our goal is to do some of the most extreme landfill diversion in the world through LiquiDonate, while increasing the accessibility of quality items for nonprofits who need them the most.” -Diz Petit, LiquiDonate Founder & CEO.
LiquiDonate’s scalable API is being built to handle millions of item donations from enterprise retailers, and instantaneously match them to nonprofits.
A solution like LiquiDonate, which helps retailers meet their sustainability goals, is required now more than ever. Driving factors include an increased interest and requirement for ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting, a growing consumer demand for companies to move in a sustainable direction, as well as a brightening spotlight on Retail’s ‘Dark Side,’ as reported by the New York Times.
In line with Pledge 1% initiatives, it was important to both the founders and early employees to establish a company culture that values and creates opportunities to give back to our local communities. With hopes to inspire joining the movement of tech for good within the tech space, LiquiDonate employees are given 24 hours of paid volunteer time to spend in their communities as they see fit to make the biggest impact on issues they care about. LiquiDonate prioritizes efforts to volunteer together at every company offsite as part of team building and giving back, as they did recently with Project Open Hand in San Francisco. LiquiDonate also plans to create the largest, accessible database of nonprofits to bridge the gap between givers and nonprofits.
Nonprofits are invited to register at www.liquidonate.com/register-a-nonprofit
Retailers are invited to request a demo at www.liquidonate.com/retail
Zuora
Zuora provides a leading monetization platform for recurring revenue businesses across all industries, enabling companies to unlock customer-centric business models. After starting with Zuora Billing in 2007, Zuora’s award-winning multi-product portfolio now includes Zuora Revenue, Zuora Collect, and Zephr, a Zuora Company. Zuora serves as an intelligent hub that monetizes and orchestrates the complete quote to cash and revenue recognition process at scale.
Zuora is proud to be a Pledge 1% Builder. We took the pledge in 2017 before we went public and committed to give back 1% of our equity and employee time to our communities. In 2019, we launched Zuora.org, which is part of our company and not a separate entity, to propel our pledge to action. Since 2019, we have committed $4 million worth of our Class A common stock to our Donor Advised Fund through the Tides Foundation. These funds are used to make grants to nonprofits around the world and support our employee giving and volunteering programs each year.
Fighting Climate change and preserving the planet through the Subscription Economy
To maximize its resources and have the greatest impact possible, Zuora has focused on building deep multi-faceted relationships with nonprofit partners that are aligned to the core of its business and provide opportunities for its employees to engage. This year, Zuora gave Village Capital, the largest supporter of impact-driven seed-stage entrepreneurs in the world, a $409,454 grant to support one of their accelerator programs. After conducting a deep landscape analysis, Zuora and Village Capital launched Sustainability Subscribed and selected a cohort of 9 startups, out of dozens, who were all focused on solving climate change using recurring revenue business models.
Sustainability Subscribed was focused on supporting startups with diverse backgrounds.
- 40% of the cohort was headquartered outside of US tech hubs (NY, CA, and MA)
- 40% have a BIPOC member of the founding team or C-Suite
- 70% have a female member of the founding team or C-Suite
The startups were focused on things like:
♻️ Reducing plastic waste
Micro-climate forecasting to improve local agriculture yields
Reducing food waste
High tech soil carbon verification
✅ More effective deployment of green building incentives
Establishing a carbon savings account via HSA/FSA like structures
An O/S for charging platforms
Increasing textile reuse/recycling
⚡ Turning any lamppost into an electric charging station
During the 4-month accelerator, which was laser-focused on investment readiness, the founders had the opportunity to work with mentors, industry experts, investors, and ecosystem partners to develop the networks they need to scale their impact. Over 20 Zuora employees were engaged on the Advisory Board, as mentors, and/or as workshop leaders.
The final 2.5 day Program Summit was held at Zuora’s HQ in Redwood City. Tien Tzuo, Zuora’s Founder & CEO, joined Allie Burns, Village Capital’s CEO, for a fireside chat where he reflected on Zuora’s journey and shared advice with the founders. The event concluded with the 9 participant startups evaluating each other through an investor lens, using eight specific investment criteria that leverage Village Capital’s venture investment levels. Benchmark Labs and Voltpost were ranked “most investment ready” and each received $50,000 in grant funding from Zuora. The two companies are focused on the following:
- Benchmark Labs (San Diego, CA) the first and only solution to provide real hyper local forecasting, improving local agriculture yields and reducing the need for irrigation pumping.
- Voltpost (New York, NY) is retrofitting lamp posts into electric vehicle charging stations to democratize charging access, which is the primary barrier to transitioning to an electric car.
This is just the beginning for Zuora and Village Capital’s partnership!
Let’s here what it was like to participate as a mentor from Zuora employees:
“I was impressed with the passion of the entrepreneurs to make a true difference in climate change. The technology was also very interesting. Thanks to Village Cap and Zuora for supporting ZEOs to partner with these startups.” – Ronak Majmudar, Head of GTM Initiatives
“It was a wonderful experience to connect with startups with outstanding sustainability subscribed visions blended with advanced AI technology. Very proud to know that Zuora plays a significant role in contributing to and supporting this program and startups.” – Darius Jones, Director, Corporate Strategy & Operations
Toast
Toast [NYSE: TOST] is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant community. Toast provides a single platform of software as a service, or SaaS; products and financial technology solutions that give restaurants everything they need to run their business across point of sale; operations; digital ordering and delivery; marketing and loyalty; and team management.
https://toast.org/ or http://toasttab.com/
Inaugural Impact Grants from Toast.org will fund nonprofits working to create an impactful and inclusive restaurant community and to address food security in communities around the world.
BOSTON, MA – Nov. 29, 2022 – Toast (NYSE: TOST), the all-in-one digital platform built for restaurants, today announced $1.25 million in grants from Toast.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, to nonprofit organizations striving to enrich the food experience for all by addressing critical issues in the food system. This global grantmaking includes more than $1 million from the company’s inaugural round of Impact Grants to 22 nonprofit organizations and $200,000 to organizations supported by 40 Toast.org local volunteer committees across the globe as a part of its end-of-year Season of Giving.
“We are excited to put our Pledge 1% commitment into action with this first round of Toast.org Impact Grants. The selected grantees are best-in-class at creating tremendous change in the food system, and we are delighted that Toast.org’s capital and expertise can help to accelerate their impact,” said Chris Comparato, CEO of Toast.
The grantees announced today were selected for their standout work in one or more of these focus areas:
- Supporting underrepresented restaurateurs
- Creating opportunities through culinary training
- Helping restaurant workers
- Combating food insecurity and increasing access to healthier foods
“Toast.org is focused on creating a healthier, more sustainable and equitable world where people have enough nutritious and culturally relevant food to eat, where restaurant workers earn a living wage, where surplus food isn’t wasted, and where a diverse and inclusive restaurant community provides opportunity and generates impact,” said Amy Skeeters-Behrens, Vice President of Social Impact at Toast.
Criteria for selection also included innovation; level of impact; commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion; relevance to the restaurant community; and the opportunity for meaningful employee engagement.
“We are thrilled that Toast.org has committed to supporting C-CAP with a very generous grant. It will enable us to provide students with the tools they need for success and fuels our shared mission to improve the food landscape for generations to come,” said Marcus Samuelsson, Co-Chair of the C-CAP Board of Directors.
The 2022 Toast.org Impact Grantees include 22 organizations in three countries:
Grantee | Operating area |
Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) | U.S. |
US | |
Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
New York City, New York, U.S. | |
San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S. | |
Ireland | |
Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
US | |
New York City, New York, U.S. | |
Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | |
San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S. | |
Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | |
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. | |
North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) | U.S. |
Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. | |
Los Angeles, California, U.S. | |
U.S. | |
Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
Sri Sathya Sai Annapoorna Trust | India |
Kentucky, U.S. |
Learn more about our efforts to enrich the food experience for all and opportunities to partner with us at Toast.org.
Givewith
Givewith’s SaaS technology enables businesses and organizations to embed social impact funding into both sales proposals and procurement transactions. Leveraging the abundance of the global economy, we’ve developed new funding pathways to address the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.
An estimated 35 million adults participated in Giving Tuesday 2021, raising an estimated $2.7 billion––a 9 percent increase over 2020. This news is worth celebrating, but given the scale of our global challenges, wouldn’t it be great to find an easy and sustainable way to scale our ambition beyond a single day dedicated to fundraising and volunteering?
What if every day was Giving Tuesday?
At Givewith, we transform daily operations to include social impact. Givewith SaaS solutions enable businesses and organizations to embed social impact funding into both sales proposals and procurement transactions. Leveraging the abundance of the global economy, Givewith introduces new funding pathways to address the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.
This Giving Tuesday, we would like to celebrate Techbridge Girls, one of the many powerful organizations in our Social Impact Network, and highlight the impact that resulted from funding generated through the business transaction between Givewith and Accenture.
Oakland, CA based Techbridge Girls equips girls from high poverty communities to pursue STEM careers with the goal to achieve economic mobility. To achieve this goal, Techbridge Girls re-engineers the way BIPOC girls from marginalized communities experience STEM. By catalyzing out-of-school time (OST) STEM educators and STEM professionals into equity educators and advocates through training and curricula that promote access, belonging and persistence, Techbridge re-engineers STEM education so girls are inspired and prepared to persist toward their STEM aspirations.
In 2022, as a result of a Givewith-Accenture business transaction, $10,000 in new funding was generated for Techbridge Girls, which led to the following outcomes:
- an estimated 207 Girls participated in programming where they were taught STEM skills, and
- 85% girls express an increased knowledge of STEM-related jobs–all this resulting from one business transaction
Allowing the ideas behind Giving Tuesday to permeate into the way that companies conduct business daily is the fastest and most effective way to meet the world’s need for social, environmental, and economic transformation.
To learn more, visit givewith.com
Smart WFM
Smart WFM is a global human capital management (HCM) consultancy specialising in digital transformation. The company’s service offerings include advisory, implementation and support. Smart WFM’s framework is defined in The Digital Workforce, a book written by founder and CEO, Jarrod McGrath.
I have been a supporter of Pledge 1% since day one of starting Smart WFM, always with a view to supporting causes that matter to myself, my family and our diverse team across the world.
In Australia, we have placed a huge focus on supporting Indigenous causes, particularly Indigenous literature – this is the key to better communication, collaboration, and education between all people who call Australia home.
As well as the commitment to give 1% of our profits to these causes, we support in other ways including through our sponsorship of the Australian Business Book Awards, with all proceeds going towards the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, an organisation close to my family’s heart.
We’ve also supported the launch of Yellamundie, Voices & Faces of First Nations People in Sydney with all profits going towards Redfern Jarjum College, whose mission is to educate urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are not participating or coping in mainstream education.
I’m very proud to be part of Pledge 1% and are always looking at new ways to evolve how we do good in the world and involve more people and organisations to come with us on this journey. We all gain by giving and I firmly believe successful organisations now and into the future will be the ones that put initiatives like this at the core of what they do.
On this #GivingTuesday, I would like to thank Pledge 1% for being a force for good in this world we all call home.
Cruise
It’s been nearly 2 years since Cruise first joined Pledge 1% to formalize our commitment to local communities via our dedicated social impact program, Cruise for Good. We couldn’t be more excited about the progress we have made so far – and the road ahead!
At Cruise, we strive to ensure our fleet of zero-emission, self-driving vehicles address real community needs by working closely with trusted local partners. Since the onset of the pandemic, Cruise for Good has responded to skyrocketing food insecurity by delivering more than 2.3 million meals to low-income communities in San Francisco through partnerships with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and SF New Deal.
When broken down, 2,300,000 meals equates to 142,000+ deliveries, more than 80% of which are delivered to zip codes below the poverty line. Moreover, every meal delivered by Cruise’s zero-emission fleet is powered 100% by renewable energy, offsetting more than 103 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Tanis Crosby, executive director of the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank – who recently had the chance to take a fully driverless ride in one of our vehicles – articulated the thought that kickstarted it all: “How can we solve problems together and leverage technology to deliver equitable service at scale?’”
This question gets at the core of how we approach Cruise for Good.
As we continue to scale our business and enter new markets, our Pledge 1% commitment is a guiding light in how we serve local communities. We emphatically encourage others to join the Pledge 1% movement and leverage their unique assets to be a force for good. Together, we can provide equitable access to much-needed resources for communities across the country.
Splunk
Since the technology boom of the internet, email, smartphones and the cloud, we spend a lot of time discussing how technology drives growth for businesses, organizations and individuals. Unfortunately, the advantages of technology aren’t evenly distributed. The concept of the digital divide arose in the 1990s to highlight the disparity between the technology haves and have-nots. Now we must also address the data divide, the increasing gap between those who have access to data to support decisions, solve problems and navigate a complex world — and those who do not.
At Splunk our Global Impact mission is to help bridge the data divide, collaborating across sectors and leveraging our strategic partnerships and grants to find actionable solutions for humanity’s greatest challenges.
In FY22, we provided financial grants of over $1 million across our strategic focus areas. In each area, we selected tech-forward, data-powered partners who share our mission and focus on turning data into doing good. We are proud to partner with these organizations as they demonstrate proven success across three strategic impact areas: Field-Building, Workforce Development, and Data to Action and Impact. Below are examples of FY22 grantees in action.
Field-Building
The first strategic impact area focuses on organizations that are helping to build the data-for-social-impact field while increasing data science use, adding to the knowledge base and making data more accessible, open and accessible for social change agents.
data.org is a platform for partnerships, bringing together philanthropy, private sector technology, academia and social impact organizations to build the field of data science for social impact. As part of its Resource Library, data.org offers a Data Maturity Assessment for leaders seeking to increase their organizations’ efficiency and effectiveness through the power of data.
Available free of charge, the Data Maturity Assessment helps organizations who don’t have access to the tools or talent to make the most of data but who understand its value. It helps them understand their strengths and limitations and plan a path for growth, as well as connect them with relevant tools and resources to help them right away.
Workforce Development
The second strategic impact area is the workforce development category, and it recognizes grantees who provide technology training and career development resources to underserved populations, giving them the opportunity to build their skills and improve their job prospects.
Generation transforms education to employment systems to prepare, place and support people from underrepresented communities into life-changing careers that would otherwise be inaccessible. They focus on careers in more than 35 professions across growing sectors like technology, customer service and sales, healthcare and green jobs. Generation USA offers free Splunk training and preps students for Splunk certification. Generation has a cohort of more than 70 learners going through its cybersecurity program this spring.We are also glad to have Generation participate in .conf22 as part of the Skills Revolution panel session.
Generation operates in 16 countries. Of the program’s more than 58,000 graduates, 54% are female, 35% have dependents and 93% were unemployed and earning no income when they joined Generation.
The impact is impressive, not only on graduates but also on the people who hire them. Within 90 days of completing the program, 84% of graduates had found a job. The vast majority of their employers (83%) would hire a Generation graduate again, and 84% say that Generation graduates outperform their peers.
Data to Action and Impact
In the third strategic impact area, the grantees in this category make vital data available to assist other organizations tackling some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems.
Fundación Capital has been working to improve the economic and financial lives of people living in social vulnerability around the world. Through alliances with governments and the private sector, they develop solutions based on digital technologies that allow users to train in their own time and space, make better use of their economic opportunities, generate sustainable livelihoods, improve their financial practices and make more informed decisions. An awardee of the data.org Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge, Fundación Capital has helped more than six million people across 18 countries build more sustainable futures for themselves and their families.
The Data for Workforce Nurturing (D4WN) program in Mozambique, in partnership with Mozambican technology company, UX, and US data scientists, Data Elevates, is just one of Fundación Capital’s many initiatives. It uses data mining, visualization techniques and a machine learning-powered recommendation system to deliver real-time labor market insights directly to informal workers — who represent 96% of Mozambique’s workforce — helping them improve their career and personal development. The goals of this initiative include improving the livelihoods of informal workers, increasing their income by 10%, and doubling the participation of women on the platform.
A Huge Challenge With Huge Potential for Change
The data divide is a very real issue that has the potential to exacerbate many of the core problems facing our society. Addressing those problems can help us build a more equitable world for everyone. Spunk is committed to help, and we will continue to update you on our progress with these organizations and others. You can see our full list of FY22 grantees here.
PagerDuty
PagerDuty transforms critical work for modern businesses through our digital operations solutions that enable teams to take the right action when seconds matter and empower our customers to build the future.
Since the PagerDuty.org Fund was established in 2019, PagerDuty.org has distributed more than $3M in funding to organizations working in the areas of time-critical health, just and equitable communities, and climate equity. Over the past few years, we’ve evolved our approach and deepened our partnerships through trust-based practices and providing multi-year, unrestricted funding. We’ve seen how we can unlock additional impact when we invest for the long-term and leverage company-wide assets including our product, technical support, and our brand and voice in addition to philanthropy. Consistent feedback from our partners is that unrestricted multi-year funding is the single most important thing we can do to empower them to prioritize impact and long-term investments in technology.
Based on these learnings, partner conversations, and our continued commitment to mobilize our resources for good, we are launching our newest funding program — Impact Labs. The goal of Impact Labs is to help tech-forward organizations in our focus areas of time-critical health and climate equity amplify their impact with full-spectrum support — providing unrestricted funding, product credits and discounts, technical pro bono support, story telling, and voice amplification to four organizations over a 24-month period.
Practicing trust-based philanthropy
At PagerDuty.org, we have been on a journey to embody trust-based practices across all of our work to guide how we build nurturing, transparent relationships and share power with our partners. We understand that mission-driven organizations are the experts because they are the most proximate to, and therefore best positioned to solve, the challenges they are focused on. We view our role as an amplifier and seek to design programs that center around the needs of our social impact partners.
We designed Impact Labs with an eye toward transparency and equity by sharing our selection criteria with interested organizations and structuring our outreach and discovery process to lessen the fundraising burden for our partners. To ensure diverse perspectives were considered, shortlisted organizations were reviewed by a PagerDuty Advisory Council comprising PagerDuty.org team members as well as teammates from across the company.
Impact Labs partners
Today, I’m delighted to announce our inaugural cohort of Impact Labs partners — an inspiring group of organizations with missions rooted in time-critical health and climate equity. Each of these organizations will receive $200,000 in unrestricted funding, product credits and discounts, technical pro bono support, and storytelling and voice amplification over the next 24 months. These organizations and their leaders represent our commitment to bring a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens to our philanthropic giving and channel funds where there are massive funding gaps. For example, 58% of BIPOC-led organizations received corporate funding in 2021, compared with 71% of white-led organizations. Further, there is a $2.7 billion funding gap between BIPOC-led and white-led environmental organizations.
We are excited to embark on a long-term partnership with our new Impact Labs partners.
Intelehealth connects last-mile communities with uninterrupted healthcare by providing telemedicine software and digital infrastructure to government health facilities and nongovernmental organizations that provide healthcare in low and middle income countries. Intelehealth’s current work is focused on India and Kyrgyzstan, and they are expanding to additional low- and middle-income countries. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Intelehealth to improve their platform on scalability, usability and user experience, data use, clinical decision support, interoperability, privacy, and security.
NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health advocacy organization and the NAMI HelpLine is a cornerstone of their work, touching 100,000 lives every year. NAMI’s programs reach people across the United States through 600 local Affiliates and 49 State Organizations. NAMI recently onboarded as a PagerDuty.org impact customer to enhance their incident notification workflows as they scale their HelpLine. Participating in Impact Labs will help NAMI develop culturally resonant Spanish translations of Helpline resources, recruit volunteers for Spanish HelpLine support, and expand HelpLine hours by an additional 24 hours/week.
Replate is reducing food waste, a major contributor to climate change, by leveraging technology, and improving access to nutritious food by redistributing surplus food to community organizations that serve people experiencing food insecurity. Replate has programs across the United States and Canada. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Replate to scale their impact by expanding their network of food donor businesses and integrating onto the PagerDuty platform to synchronize data across their digital systems to conduct more seamless food recovery.
Sibel Health has developed and is scaling an FDA-cleared wearable monitoring tool to reduce health inequities and drive improved outcomes for pregnant people and premature neonates by helping medical staff identify and address drivers of maternal and neonatal mortality. Sibel implements programs in 24 countries globally. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Sibel to augment their monitoring tool with additional telehealth features to better serve both underserved populations in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries. By onboarding onto the PagerDuty platform, they envision using our technology to help triage lower acuity technical failures with critical outputs that require immediate clinical attention.
Tracking progress
In the spirit of our trust-based practice, we asked each organization to share organizational metrics that they will track for the duration of the Impact Labs program. In addition to each organization’s self-defined metrics, we will hold ourselves accountable to delivering value through Impact Labs by measuring successful onboarding onto the PagerDuty platform, partner engagement and satisfaction, mid-point technical “health checks”, and publishing partner stories.
As we continue on this journey, we will share our learnings and spotlight our partners and the incredible work they are doing to make this world more equitable.