Welcome New Members! Introduce Yourself to the Community

[RoseSpitzer]

Community is about getting to know each other. So once you've joined, please share a few things about yourself with other community members. How did you start your social impact journey? What causes are you passionate about? What (or who) inspires you? 

Thank you for sharing your story and being a force for good! 

[Language_Lizard]

Hello everyone! I’m very happy to be involved with Language Lizard in this inspiring community.

Language Lizard provides resources in 50+ languages to help educators, librarians, and parents develop literacy skills among language learners, build inclusive classrooms, and celebrate cultural diversity. We are currently working to publish Dari/English and Pashto/English books that will welcome Afghan refugees as they settle into new lives in the US and abroad. We are inspired by our customers who work tirelessly to support the academic and social development of language learners and immigrant families. In addition to our work with literacy organizations such as Room to Read, we appreciate opportunities to partner with larger companies to have an even greater impact supporting these communities. 

Anneke Forzani

[HitzelTrejo]

Hi Everyone, 

My name is Hitzel. I am the Founder, CEO of CLARITY, a Monteal-based company in Canada.  Bonjour- Hi! 😛

I am excited and joyful to pertain to a community of organizations convinced that to grow, we must align to our values and support each other when there are many uncertainties around us.

We in CLARITY are a people-focused professional business service. We offer certified coaching services to clients who undergo mental confusion, emotional turmoil and energy loss.  We understand that to shift perspectives, our clients need to be ready to do the developmental work (i,e., expand their awareness and evolve in their professional and personal life). Our social impact mission is to democratize high-end professional coaching to everyone everywhere, focusing on the following beneficiaries: Youth, women, immigrants, persons with disabilities, black and indigenous individuals and communities. 

Today, we support women through the gender equality initiative who need to sustain their families. We keep our work with UN Sustainable Development Goals, #3 -Good health and well-being, #4 Quality Education, # 5 Gender Equality, #17Partnership for the goals.  

If you want to know more about what drives our social mission, I would be pleased to chat with you. 

We are here to serve with our competencies, skills, and most importantly, share what we have learned in our social impact journey. 

Cheers from CLARITY!

[InesGarcia]

Welcome Gabriela, great to read about your efforts/ Question, why is the impact report gated?

[Gabrielacrego]

Hi everyone, 

I’m a super fan of Pledge 1%, and congrats to the team for this amazing community platform 🙂

I’m Gabriela from Brazil, responsible for the social impact arm at Rock Content - a global leading digital marketing startup.

I started my social impact journey while at university, when some friends and I co created a social impact league to use the students and professors know-how to create innovative solutions for social challenges. Since that I decided to build my journey on thinking about long-term solutions to improve the state of the world, so I founded a nonprofit and after a few years I changed my career to corporate social impact. I believe that how companies face social challenges can have a huge positive impact on the world, so I am completely fascinated about the philosophy behind Pledge 1% moviment, and super honored to represent Rock Content here. 

Rock.org has a focus on education and employability, and we believe that we can enable growth opportunities for everyone who wants to have the skills they need to enter the job market.

We have formalized time and equity pledge! We also encourage our team (Rockers)to become changemakers in the community by using their working hours to volunteer.

Here is our 2020 report. 

It’s amazing to be here and I hope to connect with you 🙂

Best,

Gabriela Crego

[Sameerpeace]

Love to be here at Pledge 1%!

SO excited about how the community here evolves and helps one another to have a greater impact.

I'm the co-founder and CEO at "Social Champ". Social Champ is the next generation's simplest social media management tool, helping users to publish, analyze content, and engage with their audience - all from one place. 

I've learned lessons in my previous 3 startups (startups that didn' work out); “GameOChat”, “Educating Dreams” and “RemindZapp”, and share it with others. I have spoken at many events organized by TEDx, Microsoft, Nokia, IEEE, USAID, etc. in numerous universities, podcasts, and webinars saving young and fresh entrepreneurs from making the same mistakes I made. I influence young minds with workshops regarding Technical Coding, Motivational Talks, and Social Media Training.

By degree I'm a  Computer Science graduate. I've also been awarded as the Former Nokia Developer Champion, Microsoft Certified Professional & Specialist, Microsoft Community Speaker, and former Microsoft Student Partner. Currently, I'm also “Facebook Developer Circle Lead: Karachi”.

With all these awards, I wish to play an important role in pledge 1% community work as I've been doing in empowering others with social media tools (social champ), training on digital media, and software consultancy evangelism in local communities.

Feel free to reach me out and we can explore opportunities to work together.

[Ingrid_IndexEng]

Hi, I'm Ingrid from New Zealand.

Our Mechanical Engineering Design Consultancy donates 1% of our consultancy fees to charity.  We have chosen three charities: one within the Social needs sector (lunch in schools), one within the environmental sector (endangered plants and birds/animals), and one being a local need (rescuing people who have accidents mountainbiking in the local forest) . 

We are happy to do this, as we are the type of business that can't easily make product donations (hey, you can win a free seismic analysis of your boiler, anyone interested?...), but donating 1% of our annual consultancy fees is easy!

It would be great if the concept of Pledge 1% could spread and be adopted by many businesses across the world: it would make the world a better place.

[melissablee]

Hi Hitzel! Let's catch up! I'll message you to find a time. I'm based in Adelaide, Australia.

Speak soon 🙂

[HitzelTrejo]

Hi Lauren, 

A pleasure to meet you. 

Bonjour-Hi! from Montreal, Canada.  I would like to know more about your program. 

Does the skill volunteering program apply to the non-profit sector? 

Hitzel

[HitzelTrejo]

Hi Melissa,

I like the mission of your organization and would love to know more.

Would you be interested in setting a zoom call with me? 

We are CLARITY Initiative, a Montreal-based certified coaching organization. We support individuals and capacity builders to lead in their mission and goals. So if this is, to some extent, interesting and aligns with your organization, I would love to discuss it with you. 

With kind regards, Hitzel 

[j_castle]

Hi Rose (and everyone!),

Thrilling to see this community come to life. I've been engaged with Pledge 1% for a number of years at different companies and most recently in 2020, we kicked off our Pledge 1% partnership at Atrium. (I lead marketing at Atrium; we're a fantastic technology consulting services company in the Salesforce/greater data science ecosystem. 😉)

I'm most passionate about skills sharing and volunteerism where education and hunger are concerned. I'm interested in many of the initiatives and opportunities being talked about here and I'd love to learn more about ways Atrium (and I personally!) could partner further to help nonprofits fuel their missions with our time and talent.

Glad to be here with you all.

[KatieB]

Hi there Pledge 1% tribe!

I'm the Governance and Grants Manager for the Atlassian Foundation, and based in Sydney, Australia. 

The Foundation has been setup as the vehicle for Atlassian to make charitable donations, invest in social impact enterprises, and carry out charitable work, in Australia and worldwide. My role is focussed on the governance and compliance of our two charitable entities: Atlassian Foundation Australia - an Australian Private Ancillary Fund; and Atlassian Foundation International Ltd - an Australian Public Benevolent Institute.

We are focussed on education, and excited when technology can be used to provide education opportunities on a global scale for young people experiencing disadvantage.

Recently, the Atlassian Foundation passed $50 million in aggregate donations, all made possible because of Scott and Mike’s 1% pledge. In addition their pledge has resulted in the Atlassian Foundation having an asset base in excess of $200m. All resources of the Atlassian Foundation are used for social impact around the world.

I'm really looking forward to see what this community can achieve together through sharing knowledge and collaboration!

[LaurenBlack]

Hi Rose and Pledge 1% Community 👋

I am part of the Foundation team at Atlassian specialising in social impact. Our programs involve inspiring and providing opportunities for our employees to give back through volunteering and giving and pledging their own “1% time” in an initiative called WePledge. We have over 8500 employees globally (and growing) and 79% of them volunteered in FY21.

I’m looking forward to conversations with the community about operationalising the “1% time” and “1% product” pledges. I’m based in Sydney, Australia and manage global and regional programs, focusing on skilled volunteering.

[melissablee]

Rose - thank you so much for creating this amazing Pledge 1% community platform!

Atlassian is honoured to be a founding member of Pledge 1%. Our Founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar Pledged 1% of time, equity, product and profit from the very start, almost 20 years ago. Their rationale was to create a company that did well by doing good. I remember talking to Scott about it a decade ago now and he said that the decision to donate 1% to the Foundation was one of the best he’s ever made, and that donating 1% of nothing was a pretty easy decision to make! The sooner we can encourage others to do it, the better.

Giving back is part of Atlassian’s DNA. The Atlassian Foundation was formally established in Australia in 2008 as a charitable entity to support Atlassian’s philanthropic giving and volunteering. Today the Foundation operates as an Australian Private Ancillary Fund and an Australian Public Benevolent Institution, Atlassian Foundation International Ltd (AFIL). AFIL allows us to provide aid to communities that are disadvantaged or in poverty by collaborating with non-government, community-based, local organisations globally.

The Atlassian Foundation has a focus on education as we believe it is key to breaking the cycle of poverty. By 2030, over half of the world's young people won't have the skills they need to thrive in work and life. The world's poorest children are the most likely to be left behind. Through the use of technology and innovation, leapfrogging is possible. We're partnering with innovators looking to accelerate learning for the world's poorest young people to ensure everyone has the skills they need for a fast-changing world.

In addition to our focus on global education, we mobilise Atlassian staff to volunteer in their local communities and participate in social impact campaigns that they care about. Atlassians can use 5 days ‘foundation leave’ each year to volunteer. The volunteers and relationships with local community organisations are managed by our 'Foundation Councils' - a collective of Atlassians around the globe who are supported by the Foundation to “be the change they seek”. 

Atlassian’s eco-system of giving lives deep in our bones. We want to inspire and help other companies join us all and become Pledgies too 🙂 We're all about teamwork at Atlassian, and this is a great team!

[Bret_Peters]

Hi Rose & Everyone! 

On behalf of the team at ADF Solutions, we're excited to be part of the Pledge 1% Community. Our company is focused on community. We are a software company based in Virginia with a now 100% remote workforce in multiple time zones around the world. At ADF we design and develop digital forensic software used by law enforcement and professional investigators dedicated to preventing and solving crimes including child exploitation, human trafficking, fraud, terrorism, etc. 

When we developed the ADF Culture Code, we specifically called out the importance of nurturing relationships and giving back to the communities we serve. Pledge 1% has enabled ADF to specifically focus our intentions toward giving back Time, Product, and.... We look forward to continuing to contribute and to collaborating with other teams around the world that share our mission to make the world a better place. 

Kindest Regards,

Bret Peters

ADF Solutions

[Fernando]

Hi Everyone !

At Kognoz we are thrilled to be part of this great community.  We have been an ISV partner of Salesforce, and  we have learned over the years that our focus and efforts need to be equally spread amongst all stakeholders: customers, employees, and the communities we live. 

Let's keep the good work !

Fernando Israel

[Brandon_Bruce]

Thanks, Rose!

Hi Everybody,

I'm Brandon Bruce. I'm an entrepreneur in Knoxville, Tennessee. My new startup Uncat is joining Pledge 1%. I'm also going to get Pledge 1% set up here in Knoxville and hopefully also throughout Tennessee.

Brandon

[ThomasHeywood]

Hello Everyone! Very excited to be here. My name is Tom from WeEngage Group. We're a specialist headhunting agency supporting the clean tech revolution and companies in HealthTech who are improving lives so we believe 1% to fit perfectly within our values and mission! 

[Matt]

Hi all - excited to see this next evolution of the Pledge 1% community!

My name is Matt Zwiebel and I run Pledge 1% Colorado (formerly the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado), a founding member of the Pledge 1% movement.

Much of my work on a day to day basis is helping new founders and companies in Colorado get acquainted with all things Pledge. From volunteer events to impactful philanthropic opportunities, I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to get creative with our members in figuring out ways to give intentionally and locally. As the innovation economy has grown tremendously over the last few years, I've witnessed some incredible successes from our member companies and am always glad to share some ideas or stories from our community. 

[lpugliano]

Hi everyone! 

Happy to be part of the Pledge 1% Community! My name is Laura and I am Marketing & Content Strategist at the digital solutions provider Candoris, though I'm also very involved in their giving partnerships. My personal background includes fair trade volunteer work and working for nonprofits such as international mission organizations and refugee resettlement agencies. I'm inspired by people who have dedicated their lives to the poor (St. Teresa of Calcutta) and entrepreneurs who use their businesses for good to positively impact others around the globe (Candoris founder Stephan Van Der Ploog, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, etc). I've always been passionate about mission and giving back, and have loved this part of my work with Candoris. 

It's a delicate dance to talk about giving back and corporate philanthropy without desiring or seeming to be braggadocious, but I've loved the challenge! I instituted the Candoris Sine Cera Report a few years ago in efforts to showcase the good that the company was enabled to do by its team members, customers, and partners, because I believe that it's important for people to know the 'why' behind the 'how'. Consumers and customers want to do business with companies they believe in and trust; people want to work for companies whose values and driving mission they buy in to. This type of annual report has been positively received internally and externally, and I invite you to view our recent 2020 Sine Cera Report. Maybe you too can develop one for your organization! 

It's great to be here & meet you all!

[InesGarcia]

👋 y'all! Ines Garcia here

Member of the Pledge 1% since 2018, I work for myself.

I spend my time helping organisations to build a sustainable future, to have a positive and better impact through their products and efforts, on wellbeing, communities and the planet we live in. Most often in the Agile and Salesforce arena. 

An author on the making (something else is coming up soon) https://tiny.cc/authorinesgarcia

Latest Impact report: https://getagile.co.uk/impact-2020/

[Harry-NJ]

Rose,

I am SO excited that Pledge-1% is creating this community platform.  I think this is a great addition for you.

I have been a big believer in the idea promoted by Mark Benioff that a business should be about more than just making money for its shareholders.  The simplicity of the 1% Pledge and its tremendous potential have always interested me.

When I started my current venture, SeaFreight Labs, I took the 1% Pledge and have been active in executing my commitment to donate at least 1% of my Product.  My company has provided free crowd-solving services to Habitat for Humanity and World Vision in helping them crowd-source solutions to problems ranging from earthquake and typhoon resilience to improved rural sanitation to malaria prevention to monitoring of chlorine levels in rural piped drinking water systems.  Seeing valuable outcomes has been extremely rewarding and I am grateful to the Pledge-1% organization to have a framework from which to make an impact on these projects.

In addition to what my company can do, I have a dream that we could attract other logistics-oriented companies to join the Pledge-1% movement.  Currently, I am only aware of a couple of other logistics companies (the largest is Flexport) that have taken the 1% Pledge.  I hope this Pledge-1% community helps me to connect with and/or invite others to join us in the movement.