Boardroom Allies: Unlocking billions in corporate philanthropy

[Chris_Apple]

In June, 2021, Pledge 1% ,  announced the launch of Boardroom Allies, a group of top venture capitalists (VCs) who have committed to unlocking $5 billion in new philanthropy over the next five years by partnering with Pledge 1% to advise their portfolio companies on how to set aside equity for social impact prior to their liquidity events. Amidst a heightened focus on the role businesses play in fostering societal change, Boardroom Allies will play a pivotal role in ushering in a new era of corporate giving.

“This past year, we’ve seen more companies demonstrate that they have an important role to play in tackling the toughest challenges of our time. Shareholder, employee, and customer expectations are changing. It’s exciting to see business leaders step up to meet this moment by leveraging their assets to address pressing social, environmental, and racial justice issues. Doing so is not only the right thing to do; it’s also a business imperative,” said Laela Sturdy, General Partner at CapitalG and Board Member of UiPath.

With the support of Pledge 1%, many of the most successful exits of the last year, including Coinbase, Digital Ocean, Olo, UiPath, and Unity Technologies have committed equity for good on the road to their IPOs, joining industry leaders driving the Pledge 1% movement such as Atlassian, DocuSign, Twilio, Okta, Salesforce, Slack, PagerDuty, Upwork, and Zuora. Many top pre-IPO companies such as Canva, Guild Education, Crunchbase, and Puppet have also made the commitment. Collectively, their equity pledges have already ignited billions of dollars in social impact funds. 

Recognizing that standards and best practices optimized by company stage were required to streamline the equity pledge process, Pledge 1% developed a step-by-step guide for companies to formalize equity pledges: the CEO Playbook and a Companion Guide for CFOs and GCs. A key strategy outlined in the CEO Equity Playbook is finding and leveraging a boardroom ally to serve as a thought partner to the CEO as he/she navigates equity model selection, timing, and building a coalition of board support.  

As the Pledge 1% team accelerated efforts to help venture-backed companies set aside equity prior to their liquidity events, VC board members became not only powerful partners in helping CEOs, but also catalysts of the movement, encouraging other portfolio companies to formalize equity pledges as well.  Thus, Boardroom Allies was born as a vehicle for VCs to advocate for change. 

“Working with Pledge 1% to make an equity commitment makes sense on many levels,” said Seth Levine, Partner at Foundry Group. “Setting aside pre-IPO stock for social impact should be a standard business practice to strengthen employee engagement and build purpose into a company’s DNA. As a founding Boardroom Ally, I encourage other VCs to join this coalition and CEOs to reach out to Pledge 1% and their board members for the support to make this a reality.” 

Pledge 1% is honored to partner with the following Boardroom Allies founding members:

*Directly advised/supported and/or currently supporting portfolio company to set aside equity

Name	Firm	Equity commitments within firm portfolio
Andrew Braccia*	Accel	Atlassian, Code42, DocuSign, Lookout, PagerDuty, Slack, UiPath
Richard Wong*	Accel	Atlassian, Code42, DocuSign, Lookout, PagerDuty, Slack, UiPath
John O’Farrell*	Andreessen Horowitz	Coinbase, DigitalOcean, Lookout, Okta, PagerDuty, Slack
Ajay Agarwal*	Bain Capital Ventures	AvidXchange, DocuSign, Gainsight, SendGrid
Enrique Salem*	Bain Capital Ventures	AvidXchange, DocuSign, Gainsight, SendGrid
Matt Harris*	Bain Capital Ventures	AvidXchange, DocuSign, Gainsight, SendGrid
Chelsea Stoner	Battery Ventures	Coinbase, Gainsight, Olo
Neeraj Agrawal*	Battery Ventures	Coinbase, Gainsight, Olo
Roger Lee*	Battery Ventures	Coinbase, Gainsight, Olo
Chetan Puttagunta	Benchmark	Upwork, Yelp, Zuora
Eric Vishria	Benchmark	Upwork, Yelp, Zuora
Miles Grimshaw	Benchmark	Upwork, Yelp, Zuora
Peter Fenton*	Benchmark	Upwork, Yelp, Zuora
Sarah Tavel	Benchmark	Upwork, Yelp, Zuora
Byron Deeter*	Bessemer Venture Partners	Auth0, Canva, Gainsight, Guild Education, PagerDuty, SendGrid, Twilio, Vlocity, Yelp
Ethan Kurzweil*	Bessemer Venture Partners	Auth0, Canva, Gainsight, Guild Education, PagerDuty, SendGrid, Twilio, Vlocity, Yelp
Kent Bennett*	Bessemer Venture Partners	Auth0, Canva, Gainsight, Guild Education, PagerDuty, SendGrid, Twilio, Vlocity, Yelp
Niki Scevak*	Blackbird Ventures	Canva
Laela Sturdy*	CapitalG	UiPath
Aileen Lee	Cowboy Ventures	Crunchbase, Guild Education
Seth Miller	Fearless Ventures	Not publicly disclosed
Mike Jung	Founders Circle Capital	Auth0, DocuSign, Gainsight, Twilio
Brad Feld*	Foundry Group	AvidXchange; Crucible Acquisition Corp. I, II, and III; Rally Software; SendGrid
Ryan Mcintyre*	Foundry Group	AvidXchange; Crucible Acquisition Corp. I, II, and III; Rally Software; SendGrid
Seth Levine*	Foundry Group	AvidXchange; Crucible Acquisition Corp. I, II, and III; Rally Software; SendGrid
Philipp Stauffer*	FYRFLY Venture Partners	SendGrid, Twilio, Altoida, Mobi, Beekeeper
Julie Maples*	FYRFLY Venture Partners	SendGrid, Twilio, Altoida, Mobi, Beekeeper
Kim Moore	Glynn Capital	DocuSign, Okta, Slack, Zuora
Jackie Glynn	Glynn Capital	DocuSign, Okta, Slack, Zuora
David Glynn	Glynn Capital	DocuSign, Okta, Slack, Zuora
Doug Pepper*	ICONIQ Capital	DocuSign, Guild Education, Pluralsight, Skilljar
Alda Leu Dennis	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Andrew Lee	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Brett Gibson	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Garry Tan*	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Jen Wolf	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Kim Mai-Cutler	Initialized Capital	Coinbase
Somesh Dash	Institutional Venture Partners	Coinbase, Slack, UiPath
Pete Solvik*	Jackson Square Ventures	DocuSign, Upwork
Rajeev Batra*	Mayfield Fund	Crunchbase, Skilljar, SmartRecruiters
Rishi Garg	Mayfield Fund	Crunchbase, Skilljar, SmartRecruiters
Tim Chang	Mayfield Fund	Crunchbase, Skilljar, SmartRecruiters
Peter Sonsini	New Enterprise Associates	Code42, Salesforce, Upwork
Rick Yang	New Enterprise Associates	Code42, Salesforce, Upwork
Dave Zilberman	Norwest Venture Partners	Not publicly disclosed
Tim Connors*	PivotNorth Capital	Cloud Apartments, Stremium
Jeff Brody	Redpoint	Guild Education, Twilio, Zuora
Scott Raney*	Redpoint	Guild Education, Twilio, Zuora
Alex Kayyal	Salesforce Ventures	Auth0, Crunchbase, DocuSign, Gainsight, Guild Education, Twilio, Vlocity, SmartRecruiters
John Somorjai*	Salesforce Ventures	Auth0, Crunchbase, DocuSign, Gainsight, Guild Education, Twilio, Vlocity, SmartRecruiters
Matthew Garratt*	Salesforce Ventures	Auth0, Crunchbase, DocuSign, Gainsight, Guild Education, Twilio, Vlocity, SmartRecruiters
Ron Conway*	SV Angel	Coinbase, Crunchbase, Lookout, Okta, PagerDuty, Slack, Twilio, Upwork, Weebly
David Yuan*	Tidemark	Not publicly disclosed
David Cohen*	Techstars	DigitalOcean, SendGrid, Twilio
Jason Seats	Techstars	DigitalOcean, SendGrid, Twilio
Nicole Glaros	Techstars	DigitalOcean, SendGrid, Twilio
David Pakman	Venrock	Not publicly disclosed

To learn more about how to set aside social impact at your company or join this alliance of top VCs as a Boardroom Ally, email allies@pledge1percent.org or visit pledge1percent.org.