Technical companies are finding creative ways to give back

Charity campaigns include everything from rescuing homeless dogs and planting trees to financing eye operations and donating technical skills.

With the Philanthropy Cloud from Salesforce, employees can give something back more easily
Discover how Salesforce AI’s Philanthropy Cloud uses to provide 1.5 million ways for employees to participate in corporate philanthropy.

WELL employees chose mandarin oranges for a food bank in Santa Barbara. Aadya employees bought Healthy Roots dolls for children in Detroit from a startup toy company. Omintracs employees place wreaths on the graves of military veterans on Wreath’s Across America Day on December 14.

From November and up to and including this month, technology companies mark the holiday season with donations, financial contributions and volunteer projects.

Salesforce has some of the biggest global ambitions to make a difference. At Dreamforce, Salesforce started a Year of Action for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – 17 global goals that measure collective progress against the world’s greatest challenges.

In the coming year, Salesforce will donate $ 17 million to promote the SDGs through grants to its non-profit partners and company matches for employee donations.

According to Deloitte, millennials, baby boomers, pensioners and Gen Xers want to support social work in the business sector, which can offer a competitive edge.

Technology companies can strengthen local communities and build more loyal staff by setting up meaningful social impact programs. Here are a few of the ways employees and executives return this season.

Unique volunteer projects

Many companies stick to holiday projects such as food and toys. Others find ways to support people and animals in need.

The cyber security company ReliaQuest sponsors Bike Build, an event that assembles bicycles for foster children in Tampa. The non-profit ondikes organizes the annual event to provide children with their very first bike. ReliaQuest employees also help with the event.

Sigstr employees support a dog rescue group with the “Dogs First, Sigstr Second” campaign. Justin Keller, vice president of marketing for the email signature marketing platform, said team members meet customers on a target account list and that the company makes a donation to save a homeless dog on behalf of the employee.

Software development company Chetu last month supported an initiative for planting trees in India. Team members have registered with Mission 100 Crore Tree Plantation to add trees in a region with poor air quality.

Chetu said his employees donated more than 30 hours to the initiative last month and would continue to invest in this initiative in the future.

Donate technical expertise

Many companies use their specific technical skills to support causes.

DataRobot, an artificial intelligence company, has an AI for Good program that works with educational institutions, hospitals and environmental non-profit organizations.

The company shares technology, time and resources with the organizations to ensure that their machine learning applications generate real, long-term value.

Legacybox will help Southern California families keep memories of the festive season and throughout the year by donating $ 100,000 in digitization packages to residents of communities at risk of forest fires.
Residents can convert slides, films and audio recordings to a digital format as a download, on a zip drive or a DVD.
Ada, a marketing automation company, worked with a technically centered non-profit to develop the Chalmers chatbot designed for the homeless community of Toronto. This service offers 24/7 access to information about where you can get free meals and clothing, as well as open shelter.

“At Ada, we are inspired by our namesake Ada Lovelace, whose legacy reminds us to challenge standards and bring new thinking to solve major social problems,” said Ruth Zive, Ada’s head of marketing.

The digital banking company Quontic focuses on homelessness in the Dominican Republic.

The company sends a group of 35 employees to the island for four days to build two houses for two homeless families. Quontic CIO Patrick Sells said that service project is in line with the company’s corporate mission to provide mortgages to low-income families and immigrants.
“This trip will also serve as a time to do team building and business strategy work, but above all we all remember the critical work we do every day in our offices to help families the way we served on the trip,” he said.

SE2 volunteers help maintain the website for the United Way of Greater Topeka Christmas Bureau, a non-profit organization that brings donor families into contact with people in need during the holidays.

In 2011, SE2 built a responsive web application to address the administrative processes that the community needed.

Nowadays the United Way uses the web-based system for scanning and indexing paper applications, recording adoption / adopted data, match families and sharing information between all parties involved.

SE2 employees make improvements to the system every year and also provide volunteer work time.

“This was a great opportunity for us to support the United Way Christmas Bureau in recent years using our skills to simplify and automate the family adoption process,” said Ambrish Patel, an enterprise architect at SE2.

Supporting causes of employees

Many companies match donations of time and money made by employees through the Pledge 1% initiative. Led by Salesforce, this initiative builds corporate philanthropy by asking companies to make annual donations of 1% of the product, equity, profit or time to charitable organizations.

The cloud communication platform Twilio is a Pledge 1% company. To date, 232 Twilio employees have donated to or signed up for the Pledge 1% program, resulting in $ 56,333.00 in donations to 145 charities.

“Through our 1% Pledge initiative, we align employee donations and volunteer time with non-profit organizations of their choice, and add an extra boost between November 18 and December 18,” said Erin Reilly, chief social impact officer of the company.

Media Math is also a member of the Pledge 1% movement. The company’s philanthropic division focuses on the 13% of people living on less than $ 2 a day through a Campaigns Count project.

“For every 20 campaigns on our platform, MediaMath.org finances a vision-saving operation for people who are visually impaired or whose blindness can be treated,” said Michael Quinn, founder and director of the advertising technology company.

In September, the company reached a milestone: financing operations for 5,000 people in some of the poorest regions in the world.

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Every year on national wreaths across America, Wreaths across America coordinates wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as at more than 1,600 additional locations in all 50 US states, at sea and abroad.

Image: wreaths throughout America