Easy Agile’s Commitment to Pledge 1%

[Pledge 1]

Easy Agile is an Australian based software company, creating agile apps in the Atlassian Marketplace. Their commitment to Pledge 1% began long before the birth of their company in 2015.

Co-Founder’s and Atlassian alumni, Nick Muldoon and Dave Elkan began their journey with Pledge 1% all the way back in 2007.

It was then that they learnt of Atlassian’s 1% commitment. For Atlassian, this meant committing 1% of equity and profit into the Atlassian Foundation, plus 1% of employee time and 1% of products.

As part of Atlassian’s 1% employee time commitment, Nick and Dave would spend 1 day per quarter volunteering in community initiatives of their choosing. From serving meals at the Matthew Talbot Hostel to raising $30K and participating in the Cancer Council Relay for Life at the Macquarie University – Nick and Dave saw the impact of their 1% time commitment firsthand, and the importance of giving back.

Room To Read

During their time at Atlassian, founders Mike and Scott, challenged all employees to think bigger! Stop trading one hour of time for one hour of impact. Find a way to be multipliers.

Atlassian illustrated this movement in their support for Room To Read, a charity established to help low-income communities become their own multipliers by:

• Building libraries alongside schools, filled with books in local language, so that children can get an education
• Providing scholarships to girls, improving long term community growth and health; and
• Providing schools to house the increasing number of children staying in education longer as a result of their scholarships

By focusing on literacy and gender equality in education, generations of young girls are becoming multipliers, increasing the quality of education in their own communities, lowering fertility rates and encouraging women to have careers.

Easy Agile were extremely proud to have made their first Pledge 1% contribution of 1% FY17 profit to Room To Read.

The choice to contribute to Room To Read was very personal for Nick and Dave as they both have daughters (Dave even has 2!). Wanting to ensure their own daughters had great opportunities in life, they think the same should be available for every young girl.

Since Easy Agile’s first contribution to Room To Read, they have thought a lot about how they can continue to be multipliers in their own backyards – Wollongong, NSW Australia.

100 Miles for Mat – 1% for Easy Agile

In Q1 of this financial year, Easy Agile showed their support for a local ultra-marathon runner who said he would be “going for a bit of a trot” to raise awareness and money to fight Motor Neuron Disease. It turned out “a bit of a trot” meant over 100 miles! Mat participated in the Hume and Hovell Ultra marathon finishing 3rd overall in an impressive 23 hours, 44 minutes and 35 seconds!

As a part of their 1% pledge, Easy Agile donated 1% of their quarterly profits to Mat’s cause, more than tripling the amount of money he was able to pass on to Cure MND Charity.

MND (and it’s derivative conditions) is a topic close to home for Mat and a number of the Easy Agile employees, so they were extremely proud of Mat’s accomplishments and their ability to help.

Continuing to impact locally, Easy Agile made their third donation to the Siligong Valley team participating in Movember – growing horribly brilliant moustaches during the month of November to raise money and awareness around men’s health.

A Snapshot into the Future

Easy Agile have some pretty ambitious goals for the next few years, and they are all driven by the desire to be able to make a large impact in their local area of Wollongong, NSW Australia. This goal sits at the core of Easy Agile’s painted pictures, and is centrepiece on the whiteboard that sits in the centre of their workspace.

“Our journey so far with Pledge 1% is something we are extremely proud of. Our commitment forms the basis of who we are as a company, and we sincerely urge others to jump on-board and make their own pledge!” – Nick Muldoon, Product Manager and Co-founder @ Easy Agile

Originally posted: November 28, 2017