Avanade people proved once again that they love to give — and to make a genuine human impact in the lives of others. During our holiday season “Giving Campaign,” Avanade asked employees to donate and receive Match Funding for social justice causes and charities. And they did not disappoint. People blew expectations out of the water, donating over $46,000 to 48 nonprofits around the world. With Avanade Match Funding of $40,000, we raised a total of $86,000 for some amazing charities and causes. The donations were made by 817 Avanade employees, all of whom received a personal thank you from our CEO, Pamela Maynard.

We asked our Citizenship Champions to partner with our INSPIRE Employee Network to identify local causes and nonprofits that addressed social injustice within our communities, such as charities that provided food and shelter to those experiencing homelessness. Both teams did not disappoint, identifying organizations large and small that addressed social injustice. They included the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Coalition for the Homeless in New York, and United Way of King County in North America. In Europe, UNICEF was the favorite for several of our champs, with more local charities such as Off Road Kids in Germany and The Trussell Trust in the U.K. being selected. Our team in Australia chose The Smith Family, and in Canada, they selected a total of eight charities and causes to benefit from the drive. Other options for giving included charities in Brazil, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Nordics.

"I am so grateful to have been part in this Giving Campaign here in Austria,” said Guenter Krejci, Citizenship Champion for Austria. “I saw great engagement by so many of my colleagues. I explained the reason behind our campaign and then updated my colleagues every day about the current donations and motivated them to be the first to donate or to reach a certain value at every single day during the campaign and everyone was eager to help. It enabled us to hand over a significant donation check to SOS children village during our (virtual) holiday party."

Corporate Citizenship chose to partner with the Social Justice Committee within the INSPIRE Employee Network. This committee has a focus on bringing awareness to the organization on ongoing issues and social justice causes. Prior to this initiative, the Social Justice team ran a successful Global campaign to "Fill the Fridge," with the goal of fighting hunger and homelessness. This led to a natural sequel for our two teams to collaborate on bringing awareness and driving involvement in the Global "Giving Campaign" drive.

“The Giving Campaign is a great example of when we focus on a cause as an organization, we can do great things to benefit the world around us. Our opportunity to make an impact to hunger and homelessness during a year of economic uncertainty is a testament of our ability to give selflessly.” said Rayfield Johnson, I&D Special Projects Lead for INSPIRE. “A huge thank you goes out to our Avanade Family who were able to give and promote this campaign. As well, we thank our Corporate Citizenship team for choosing to collaborate with the INSPIRE Social Justice team on a truly human focused initiative. We are all #AvanadeProud.”

While $86,000 sounds like a lot of money, it is even more impressive when our charities translated that into impact for us. The donations to UNICEF in France, Belgium and the Netherlands translated into 64,000 polio vaccines for children. Meantime in Switzerland, our donations paid for 7,250 meals for 906 families in need. That’s what you call a genuine human impact.

As 2021 gets underway, we have now turned our focus to volunteering — and are encouraging employees to leverage their volunteer hours to support our nonprofit partners. All Avanade employees are given eight hours of paid time to volunteer and give back to their communities — however, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cap on volunteering was lifted to empower people to do more for the many local charities and causes they wish to support.

Watch this space and we’ll share some of our impact stories with you soon.