Originally published on the Box blog by BRYAN BRECKENRIDGE
Millions of people are suffering unimaginable circumstances around the world, even in the places members of the Box ecosystem live and work. The global social impact sector, especially nonprofits, are more overwhelmed than ever.
For the past four years, Box.org has provided these organizations with the capacity-building resources they need to innovate and fulfill their mission. In addition to offering donated or discounted access to our cloud content management platform, we build nonprofit capacity through employee-led volunteering and giving programs. For example, Thinkof-Us, Year Up, and International Rescue Committee innovate using Box technology, host Box volunteers and partner with Box to elevate their work and garner more support from the expansive Box ecosystem and beyond.
As Box.org has evolved we’ve realized the importance of focusing the bi-directional exchange of value between the Box ecosystem and the social impact sector in a narrower set of social impact areas. In addition to enabling success for all nonprofits leveraging the Box cloud content platform in their work, we’ll now focus more on addressing the needs of organizations working to scale youth well-being, tech sector inclusion and humanitarian aid delivery.
We’ve partnered with over 6,000 social impact [nonprofit] organizations to date and anticipate we’ll serve hundreds of thousands more. Because of these bold aspirations, we feel it’s now time to expand Box.org in three critical ways:
- Creation of the Box.org Fund and a unique funding mechanism supported by philanthropic partner Tides
- A policy offering Box employees (Boxers) 3 paid Box.org Impact Days to build social impact org capacity
- Launch of the Box.org Coaching Corps which will enable Boxers to mentor nonprofits on Box tech
Our expansion of Box.org will empower Boxers, Box tech and the entire Box ecosystem to empower more social impact [nonprofit] organizations and their vital missions. A scaling Box.org means more innovation and mission fulfillment for social impact organizations world-wide, especially organizations focused on youth well-being, tech sector inclusion and humanitarian aid.
Box.org Fund
The Box.org Fund is a donor advised fund housed at Tides Foundation along with Google, Patagonia, Okta, Twilio’s and many other leading organization’s funds. Tides will help Box as we evolve our integrated scalable impact model.
Box will initially fund the Box.org Fund with a transfer of equity and cash, but will also deposit a percentage of the (heavily discounted) services cost that social impact organizations [nonprofits] pay Box on a quarterly basis. All funds re-directed to the Box.org Fund will support grant-making and nonprofit capacity building programs and eventually support Box.org’s social impact investing aspirations. Our approach will be to team closely with Tides to make Box.org grants as unrestricted as possible.
We’re excited to announce this fund and the social intraprise model that fuels it, a model that assures that the more nonprofits succeed with Box cloud content management and invest in it the more resources Box.org can mobilize for nonprofit capacity building. We call this scalable virtuous cycle Biznevolence, the business of scalable well being. We’re excited to see lots of our peers in tech adopt similar corporate social impact models that maximize outcomes for all stakeholders involved.
Box.org Impact Days
For Box, our teaming with nonprofits both local and abroad is a reflection of who we are as company: we habitually give back, and it is a value system that is core to our company culture. Three paid Box.org Impact Days will allow Boxers to do that simply by being a part of Box. These are three days for Boxers to dedicate to social impact work that speaks most to them personally. The Box.org team cant wait to see the programs and capacity-building skilled volunteering and social impact organization support and advocacy these days generate.
Box.org Coaching Corps
We know that the vast majority of social impact organizations doing incredible work don’t have the dedicated IT capacity to maximize the value of the solutions they use. Though Box is extremely easy for nonprofits to deploy and use Box without expert support, we know nonprofits can get more value from the platform with brief coaching sessions with Box experts. Box.org Coaching Corps will help us scale up the number of nonprofits a scaling community of Box expert coaches can serve.
We’re excited to announce that incredible executives will join Box.org’s advisory board. Dylan Smith, CFO and Co-founder of Box Inc. and Erik Arnold, CTO of Microsoft Philanthropies- Tech for Social Impact. Both are passionate about developing scalable capacity-building models. We look forward to their continued thought partnership.
Box.org works hard every day to maximize the way the social impact sector and tech sector maximize positive social impact together. We’re grateful to everyone who has contributed to the expansion of Box.org and the organizations we serve. We look forward to working with all members of our ecosystem to evolve our model. Please learn more about our work at Box.org, start using Box technology in your work and contact us if so inspired.
Finally, we are supporting #GirlScoutsInTech, an effort to prepare more girl leaders for careers in tech. More info here. Please help us support the program here. See the support Box is generating for Girl Scouts here.
