Kent Radford, DISCO Co-Founder and Executive Sponsor of DISCO Cares, recently shared these words that resonated with me:
“2020 proved to be a challenging year. We are very proud of Discovians for looking past their own situations and helping those less fortunate in this time of extreme need. It would have been easy, and completely understandable, to do nothing. It is amazing that our Discovians were able to pivot to other ways of helping when our ability to help in person was severely limited due to COVID-19 and the accompanying government restrictions.”
Our DISCO Cares mission is simple, to help is human. Our Discovians continue to carry out this mission in our focus areas:
- Investing in STEM education for the next generation in underserved communities
- Supporting local families in need
- Nurturing Discovians’ passion in charitable causes
As we kick off the new year, I would like to highlight some of the defining moments of DISCO Cares in 2020.
Our impact: By the numbers
We track the following four metrics in our impact report: employee participation, executive participation, volunteer hours and overall contributions (in-kind and monetary). Here are our 2019 metrics:
- Employee Participation: 61%
- Executive Participation: 100%
- Volunteer Hours: 1337
- Overall Contributions: $83,163
Every year our goal is to increase these metrics. There are stories behind each of these metrics and they are the foundation of DISCO Cares. Here are our 2020 metrics:
- Employee Participation: 67%
- Executive Participation: 100%
- Volunteer Hours: 262.5
- Overall Contributions: $104,175
67% of our Discovians participated in a DISCO Cares event in 2020, which is over 200 individuals.
Our impact: Reducing food insecurity
We have been a partner of the Central Texas Food Bank since we relocated to Austin in 2018. Due to COVID-19, food insecurity has been significantly increasing. In the greater Austin area alone, households who accessed the food bank for the first time increased over 220%. Our commitment to help these families is for both monetary and volunteering purposes. In 2020, we provided over 10,000 meals and put in over 130 hours of volunteering at the warehouse.
Also, a big shout out to the Central Texas Food Bank for their inaugural 2020 Corporate Challenge, which the DISCO Cares team helped bring to life. We were one of 18 companies that participated and are impressed with the results below.
“During the Corporate Challenge, Austin-area businesses raised funds in a friendly-competition with the shared goal to create as many meals possible with the Central Texas Food Bank. In its inaugural year, the Corporate Challenge raised $111,145 to create over half a million meals for Central Texan neighbors. The 18 participating companies really stepped up to the challenge! We are blown away by how much the staff of these companies care about our mission to fight hunger, especially DISCO. All year round, team members of DISCO support the Food Bank with time and donations. We are so grateful for your leadership in corporate engagement with nonprofits!”
- Tara Sinicropi, Community Engagement Specialist
I encourage everyone reading this to look into helping your local community food bank, as they are becoming more essential than ever. According to the United Nations World Food Program, the global pandemic has the chance to double the number of people experiencing acute food insecurity, from 135 million in 2019 to 265 million in 2020. If you have any questions on how to get involved, please reach out to me.
Our impact: The next generation
In 2020, we continued our long-term partnership with Code2College and Start-Up Kids Club. The mission of Code2College is to dramatically increase the number of minority and low-income high school students who enter and excel in STEM undergraduate majors and careers. The mission of Start-Up Kids Club is to ensure that all children are afforded the opportunity to succeed at life beyond the classroom. For the year, we logged over 70 mentorship hours and provided north of $15,000 in monetary donations to our next generation. We especially enjoyed having Kent Radford, provide a motivational speech to the finalists at the Annual Pitch Yea Competition.
Our impact: Nurturing the passions of our Discovians
2020 was our first year participating in Amplify Austin (Austin’s Day of Giving), put on by I Live Here I Give Here™, a nonprofit on a mission to make Central Texas the most generous community in the nation. We believe that we can build a more united, more prosperous environment for all when we give together as a community. During the 24 hour period, 89 Discovians made 160 donations across 99 organizations to tally over $13,500.
As equality and justice took center stage during the summer, our CEO Kiwi Camara offered to match employee donations to a nonprofit of their choice with his own donation to Code2College. Our team banded together with donations to over 200 organizations, and met the full match from Kiwi.
On the heels of our CEO’s generosity, the SDR managers launched a “to help is human” competition. Each manager pledged to donate $5 for every meeting booked and an additional $5 for every 60 activities logged out of their respective SDR team budget.
Our impact: We are just getting started
October 13th was the third birthday of DISCO Cares — and to celebrate, we created a montage of our impact over the last three years. Powered by employees and supported by leadership, our work is not done. We are just getting started.
Our wish for 2021 is to see more companies deploy resources to social impact, CSR, or add a philanthropic arm to their organization. As always, we’re happy to provide insights on what we find and what we have learned over the last three years — just reach out to discocares@csdisco.com!
