Our work at the Kapor Center is all about building community, giving back, and helping to make Oakland the city where tech is done right. Given how tough 2017 has been, our employees came together and decided to really focus on ways we could empower even more community initiatives and nonprofits to do great things through our collective giving during the month of November.
We are extremely lucky to have a lots of internal initiatives that cultivate a culture of giving for our employees all year long.
Quarterly Staff Nominated Grants
Each quarter employees nominate their favorite local non-profits to be eligible for two grants in the amount of $2,500 each.
Past winners have included:
- Downtown Oakland Association
- Humane Borders
- International Association for Human Values
- Tech Exposure & Access through Mentoring (TEAM), Inc.
- Techtonica
- Youth Radio
Charitable Gift Matching
Our charitable gift matching program is another such initiative. The Kapor Center matches individual contributions (up to $1,000, per employee). This immediately doubles our individual impact and creates real change for organizations.
We ran a campaign all month to really drive up our internal contributions with an end goal of reaching 200 submissions (in any amount) over 3 weeks. We had a lot of fun and got to share incredible organizations internally, all while raising funds to help spur positive change in our community. We’re excited to share the ever-changing results:
101 Total contributions
67% staff participation
~12K contributed
~18K Matched
30K Total put out into the world…and more to come!
In addition to all the funds we’ve matched, we are also creating a community pool of any funds that employees did not have matched and are awarding it to mission-aligned organizations at the end of the year.
We’re hopeful that our spirit of giving is contagious and inspires all of you to give what you can. Since today is #GivingTuesday, we wanted to share some of our favorite organizations where you can donate today.
5 Staff Picks for Giving:
The Level Playing Field Institute is addressing an important issue that affects underrepresented people of color in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Since 2001, LPFI has been developing the STEM talent pipeline in underrepresented communities and improving educational systems.
The UndocuFund provides direct funding to undocumented families in Sonoma County impacted by the fires to help them recover and rebuild.
Black & Brown Founders was created to change the notion that venture capital funding is required to build a successful company, especially in tech.
AI4ALL is a nonprofit working to increase diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence. We create pipelines for underrepresented talent through education and mentorship programs around the U.S. and Canada that give high school students early exposure to AI for social good.
The Indivisible Project has a mission to cultivate and lift up a grassroots movement of local groups to defeat the Trump agenda, elect progressive leaders, and realize bold progressive policies.
Honorable mention:
Muttville’s mission is to change the way the world thinks about and treats older dogs and to create better lives for them through rescue, foster, adoption, hospice, education, and advocacy. They reach out to senior and special needs rescue dogs; find suitable homes for those dogs that are adoptable; and offer end of life care for those that are not.