Photo: Creative Commons' Planet meets Facebook.
Working at a business incubator in San Francisco, I see incredible social innovations springing up from nonprofits, start-ups, and small businesses everyday. But the truth is, the big guys down the road in Silicon Valley are setting a fierce pace by sharing their core technology, for social good.
Here’s what they’re doing to lead the field and how your social enterprise can benefit.
Cheaper Philanthropy?
For decades, corporate leaders have been dabbling in philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, with mixed results. We all know that once Corporation X earns Y amount of money, they ought to launch a foundation and start giving back. Right?
Well, luckily, we now have a strong wave of corporate intrapreneurs that understand the business case for sustainability. Instead of making money from polluting and then giving a few dollars to re-plant trees, corporate leaders are paying attention to planet, people, and profit within their business. However, finding the right recycled paper, solar-powered servers, fair trade makers, and so on, can be daunting!
Certainly companies with a well-rounded corporate social responsibility plan are to be applauded and encouraged. But all of corporate America can take a lesson from high tech leaders such as LinkedIn, eBay, Salesforce.com, and Facebook and start by maximizing their core product (and strength!) to make a positive impact.
Sharing Powerful Tools
LinkedIn is leveraging its professional networking platform to connect professionals (all 160 million of them) with nonprofits and social causes. Meg Garlinghouse, Head of Social Impact for LinkedIn, and her team are working with the companies’ developers and designers to make small platform modifications that have a big impact.
By allowing and encouraging users to list their favorite causes, nonprofits, and pro bono experience, it will be easier for nonprofit leaders to find quality support and easier for corporate hiring managers to find the best employees. Meg’s team has also developed a resource center with free tips and tricks for nonprofits and social enterprises.
- Add your volunteer experience and favorite causes
- Check out LinkedIn’s Learning Center for Nonprofits
eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, boasts more than 100 million active users and $68.6 billion in goods sold in 2011. In addition to running a cutting-edge foundation and engaging top-notch employees committed to green economic development and social entrepreneurship, the company is also empowering a social innovation team to utilize their marketplace as a sales platform for green, socially-responsible, and cause-driven products.
eBay’s Sustainable Commerce and Green Teams united with Patagonia to launch the Common Threads Initiative to resell used gear and keep it out of landfills. The eBay Giving Works provides an easy way for sellers to donate 10-100% of product sales to a charity of their choice. Since their launch in 2003, consumers have responded and Giving Works has sent over $250 million to US nonprofits.
- Sell a product and donate to a cause on eBay using Giving Works
- Buy reused, green, and socially-responsible goods
Salesforce.com, a cloud computing company with a flagship Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product used by over 100,000 customers, has pioneered the 1/1/1 philanthropy model. The aim is to “donate 1% of salesforce.com’s resources to support organizations that are working to make our world a better place.” They work to share the company’s best resources: employee time, product, and equity.
How does this break down?
First of all, employees are offered six paid days a year to volunteer for causes they care about. Secondly, founding equity is given out in the form of grants to youth, technology, and employee-inspired projects. And lastly, the Salesforce CRM, the company’s core product, is donated and/or discounted for nonprofits and mission-driven companies.
Salesforce developed a special nonprofit software package and offers 10 free Enterprise Edition licenses to qualified charitable organizations. Sound like a freemium version? Well, yes. But can you blame them? With over 15,000 nonprofit customers, the company has a tremendous reputation and social organizations, large and small, are flocking to use their software for contact, fundraising, and relationship management. Salesforce.com offers sliding scale pricing for small businesses and a discount to for-profit B Corporations with a strong social and environmental commitment.
Facebook proved its worth in the social sector from the very beginning. The site has been used to share updates, photos, and information during crises such as Joplin Missouri’s recent tornado. It offers a free, easy way to organize, engage, recruit, and educate fans and followers.
Some may argue Facebook got lucky with this good press and usership. But their platform is social by nature and good things happen when we’re allowed to connect to each other. Facebook has attracted use from 89% of all nonprofits (2012 Nonprofit Social Network Report).
Libby Leffler, Facebook’s Strategic Partner Manager noted in a recent Forbes interview, “the goal for our team is simple: provide causes and nonprofit organizations with the tools that they need to best utilize our open platform to engage with supporters and inspire advocacy.”
Facebook’s recent effort to register new organ donors in partnership with Donate Life America was a remarkable win and underlines the company’s ability to make a huge social contribution. They tweaked their platform, started spreading the word on the Facebook Timeline, and will be saving lives for a long time to come.
Moving the Dial
Whether you believe these companies are making change for positive brand management, customer engagement, new market access, or because there’s an army of activists within their ranks - these corporate leaders are making a tremendous impact and redefining corporate philanthropy.
At the same time, many corporate social innovation, social responsibility, and green teams are still understaffed and under-resourced. Each year they need to make a strong business case in order to maintain, if not increase, their internal resources.
These innovators depend on public support and customer feedback, so I encourage you to share their good work as they share theirs.
(Editor's note: Although this piece was written independently, we want to disclose that Salesforce.com donates financial support as well as CRM licenses to Shareable.)
Comments
Ben Teoh wrote on 07.17.12, 5:43pm:
Nice start to a list, but you definitely need to check out all of the TechSoup partners who donate their technology to nonprofits around the world. (http://www.techsoup.org)
We (Connecting Up) partner with TechSoup to bring the donations program to Australian and New Zealand organisations and in the short time the program's been running, we're reaching $200million worth of donated and discounted technology reaching not-for-profits from organisations such as Microsoft, Symantec, SAP, Cisco and more.
TechSoup's partners are doing a fantastic job of supporting nonprofits.
Seth Schneider wrote on 07.17.12, 6:00pm:
Thanks for adding TechSoup and Connecting Up to the mix, Ben. We received several donated software packages from TechSoup at a nonprofit I used to work for.
On a different note, open source software can be beneficial to nonprofits and social enterprises as well. For example, Shareable's website is powered by Drupal, which is an open source content management system (CMS).
Mary Rick wrote on 07.17.12, 7:03pm:
Yes, thanks for bringing in TechSoup and your work at Connecting Up, Ben! I know and love TechSoup, but was unfamiliar with your organization. $200 million worth of donated and discounted technology is incredible!
Do you know which organizations are also customizing their existing technologies to serve non-profit and/or social enterprise needs?
Leif Utne wrote on 07.18.12, 12:12pm:
Great piece, Mary! Recognizing and supporting the work of such green/social intrapreneurs inside the big tech firms is critical, even if many of their efforts seem like little more than putting lipstick on a pig. As you say, it's important to move the dial. I'm hopeful that as more Millenials enter the workforce and climb the leadership ladder, triple-bottom-line thinking will spread organically through large companies, changing these beasts into beauties.
A few additions to your list:
- Google: Among many other initiatives, gives out millions of $ worth of AdWords to nonprofits in the form of Google Grants
- Microsoft: Donates millions of $ in MS Office and other software licenses per year, much of it through the aforementioned http://techsoup.org
- Apple: Deep educational discounts have helped many a college student get access to the best (or at least prettiest) computers on the market. Apple has also made huge strides in greening its products and packaging in recent years.
- SAP: Donates huge amounts of staff time to supporting nonprofits around the globe in the communities where it operates.
- AutoDesk: Is building green design tools and templates into its software for architects, making it easier to calculate energy and water footprints and make improvements. (Thanks to our good friend Dawn Danby.)
All that said, I'd like to build on Seth's point: Open-source software and business models based on sharing -- whether it's source code, research, architectural or product designs, or physical stocks like cars, tools, industrial equipment or office space -- is where the real action is. (That's sort of the whole point of this website, right?)
All of the companies listed so far are based on old, closed, proprietary business models that largely stifle innovation and collective learning. It'll be a great day when a company built entirely on a sharing-based business model makes the Fortune 500.
Seth Schneider wrote on 07.18.12, 12:37pm:
Thanks for this insightful comment, Leif. Automattic (WordPress), Red Hat (Linux), Canonical (Ubuntu) are a few companies that come to mind whose business is based on open source. However I believe that they're all still far away from making the Fortune 500.
Leif Utne wrote on 07.18.12, 1:07pm:
Yup. There's also Acquia (enterprise Drupal) and, of course, the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox, Thunderbird), which is a nonprofit but commands a huge share of the browser market and runs on ~$100 million a year in revenue. IBM and Microsoft have been doing some interesting open-source projects, especially around open government, where cash-strapped public agencies that spend billions each year on proprietary licenses are wising up to the potential savings from switching to open-source. Also, when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, it got OpenOffice.org, which is gaining traction against MS Office. But these efforts are really dabbling at the margins.
Of the companies mentioned so far, Google, with "don't be evil" as its prime directive, may be the best-positioned to be the first completely open-source megacorp. Already, many of its products are open-source. And it has leveraged the open-source model to build massive market share for both the Chrome browser and Android mobile OS.
Mary Rick wrote on 07.18.12, 1:11pm:
Thanks for joining the conversation, Leif! Certainly appreciate the additions to the list. There are so many companies (large and small) doing great work and I agree some that are greenwashing as you suggest.
Personally, I would like to push large companies (consumer and business tech, consumer products, etc) to focus on what they're good at and develop business models that integrate the triple-bottom line. Luckily, this world is getting smaller and smaller and social pressure is nudging the Fortune 500's to make much needed changes.
Agree with your notes on open-source platforms and the incredible benefits. As you know, my work with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies focused on community-based business models that could be easily shared across diverse communities.
But it also seems to me that Facebook's platform, for example, has sparked quite a bit of economic development and, ultimately, free tools and apps for smaller organizations. Now, can they keep social good at top of mind for future developments?
Leif Utne wrote on 07.18.12, 1:20pm:
Mary: I didn't mean to derail the discussion from the topic of your post. I'm also interested in seeing/building a list of big tech companies that are leveraging their services and reach to help scale sustainability and social innovation.
Here's an interesting starting point for such a list: http://www.csrhub.com/search/industry/Software-and-Internet
Mary Rick wrote on 07.18.12, 1:38pm:
No worries at all, Leif. I appreciate the expansion of the conversation. And thank you for the CSRHub link and the recent Autodesk donation news!
I would also like to bring in the folks at Nonprofit Technology Network http://www.nten.org/ and Social Media for Nonprofits http://socialmedia4nonprofits.org/ into the mix.
Both have really great resources and suggestions for using the aforementioned tools.
Ryan Key wrote on 08.19.12, 8:14pm:
One the most valuable tools we use is called Trello. We use it everyday for project management , my clients love it, it's made by Fog Creek Software out of New York. Here are some other Free awesome tools we use.
Seth Schneider wrote on 08.20.12, 4:22pm:
Thanks for sharing your list, Ryan. I used Trello for a while and think it's especially helpful for managing to-do items for software projects.
UK Online Marketing wrote on 08.24.12, 1:39pm:
Not even heard of Trello before. Just looked at it and it looks really good. Thanks for your recommendation.
jones wrote on 09.07.12, 4:38am:
Nice post
Paula Panic Attack Treatment wrote on 09.12.12, 2:58pm:
Corrie Ten Boom (a Dutch evangelist , 1892-1983) once said: “The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.” Two thumbs up to all the aforementioned big tech companies that are donating for social good!
Glad folks are interested in the article! Would love thoughts about a) which tools are the most valuable for your nonprofit and/or social enterprise and b) what's worked for you (corporate leaders in particular) in terms of selling the business case for sustainability and social good.