2023 was a year of transition at DigitalOcean. Following the incredible momentum from the launch year in 2022, the challenging economic environment in 2023 impacted the opportunity to scale investments for DO Impact. However, this change also allowed us to bring sustained and clearer focus to our priority areas. Here’s a recap of progress and highlights from the second official year of DO Impact:
Giving $500K+ in cash grants and employee-driven donations to 725 organizations
DigitalOcean remained committed to its philanthropy and Pledge 1% commitment through corporate giving and employee-driven donations. Between cash grants, employee resource group (ERG)-driven donations, employee donation credits, and matching employee contributions, DigitalOcean gave over $500K+ to more than 725 organizations in 2023. These dollars were split across:
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Initiative on Inclusive Entrepreneurship: DO Impact is launching a new philanthropic initiative to support underrepresented entrepreneurs across the globe. In late 2023, we partnered with Beaconhouse National University (BNU) to direct our initial investments to civil society organizations that are driving women’s entrepreneurship in Pakistan. Please follow our blog to hear more about this initiative soon!
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ERG grants: Our employee resource groups identified three nonprofit organizations important to their causes supporting women, early career professionals, and the LGBTQIA+ community. ERGs identified and directed donations to StartOut, Django Girls and Maria’s Scholars, which are all working to expand access to opportunity for underrepresented communities through education and entrepreneurship.
Activating Sharks to give back to communities
In 2023, we hosted our first-ever DO Day of Service to activate DigitalOcean employees to volunteer remotely and in person across the globe. We also continued to activate employees through our employee gift match program, which is part of our employee benefits package. Below are a few highlights:
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Sharks came together on August 18 in Bangalore, Denver, Karachi, New York and remotely to donate 410 hours of service, valued at $14K+, to our partner nonprofits, like Denver Urban Gardens, Stand Up India Foundation, Denver Urban Gardens, Dar-ul-Sukun, Bowery Mission and Be My Eyes.
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Employees leveraged our generous BrightFunds gift match benefit to support nonprofits all over the world. Collectively, Sharks directed more than $245K+ of company matching dollars to 719 organizations. In total, $434K was donated to nonprofits through our company matching dollars and employee direct donations.
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We continued to activate employees through various funds on our giving platform to allow employees to respond to humanitarian crises and environmental disasters throughout the year.
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We had a 30% participation rate for 2023 across our employee giving & volunteering programs.
Expanding our support for nonprofits with $610K in free cloud infrastructure
We re-launched our previous program, Hollie’s Hub for Good, in 2023 with a new name and expanded benefits. DO for Nonprofits and Social Enterprises now provides $2,500 in one-time credits for DigitalOcean’s cloud computing solutions to nonprofits and social enterprises around the world. Since the new program launched in August, we’ve added 240+ nonprofits to the DigitalOcean platform, and provided over $610K in free credits in 2023.
We also continued to highlight how cloud computing at DigitalOcean has expanded the capacity of nonprofits in our program. DigitalOcean’s capabilities of simplicity, cost effectiveness, reliability, and community resources align well with the needs of time- and resources-strapped nonprofits and social enterprises. We worked with Ersilia, a tech nonprofit working to leverage machine learning to address gaps in medical research in under-resourced countries. With the help of employee volunteers, we helped to use App Platform to quickly deploy their solutions for a research institute in Cameroon. In addition, we worked with BASAibu, a nonprofit that works to foster communities in Indonesia with a multilingual wiki that has reached 4M people to date. BASAibu uses DigitalOcean Droplets for VPS hosting, Volumes Block Storage, and Snapshots backups to host their wiki and forums.
Continued engagement with ecosystem partners
We continued our engagement with amazing partners like Fast Forward, helping catalyze and extend our reach to more tech-driven nonprofits worldwide. We also joined our Pledge 1% community at Nasdaq to celebrate Giving Tuesday.
What to watch for in 2024
As we move full steam ahead into this new year, we’re excited to focus even more on several areas, including:
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Launching projects to drive inclusive entrepreneurship in Pakistan in partnership with BNU, and our nonprofit (civil society) partners, as well as exploring additional geos for future investments
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Scaling our nonprofit product donation program so nonprofits can build their capabilities in cloud empowerment with DigitalOcean products, services, and community.
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Expanding our storytelling of our nonprofit customers to highlight their good work, and how DigitalOcean’s contributions support them through written stories, videos and social media.
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Hosting our second DO Day of Service to activate employees to volunteer remotely and in their communities. We will also support our ERGs to identify additional partners that are expanding access to opportunity for their communities, as well as develop opportunities for them to mentor underrepresented entrepreneurs and students.
There is so much more to come. Stay tuned for more impact updates in the coming months!
