Greg Meyers writes, "As you can tell by the headline of the bog post, I am a little dumbfounded by the lack of participation of high tech companies who have shaped what the Internet is today. After doing a little research, I have found two highly respectable companies who have created separate foundations and completely dedicated their resources and donated their profits to helping Nonprofits advertise, fund raise, spread advocacy, and increase participation Online."
5 Comments
5 Comments
Comments
I take slight issue with this post as I don’t think it is entirely correct. Lots of things happen in the background without public acknowledgement. In my experience and observation, the high-tech world has given billions to charities around the world. From the small scale donations made by individuals to corporate events aimed at raising cash for charitable organizations and non-profits, technology firms and the folks who work at them have gone far beyond other sectors in our economy to do good works in their communities. Many of the fortunate ones who benefitted from extraordinary wealth-making stock options have gone on to dedicate their lives to non-profit work. Charity, they say, begins at home...Here in the tiny techno-outport of Victoria BC, there is a charity event almost every week sponsored or organized by someone in our tech-community. For example, Metamend and Enquisite organize a series of annual hockey tournaments, the procedes from which raised over $30K for the local food bank in 2007. We’re only one of dozens of firms donating our time and energies to such endevours. (note: We’re Canadian and would play hockey all day and night if we could but that’s not the point) We also take part in virtually every other high-tech charitable event held on the southern part of our island. It also happens around the world...I am fairly certain our experience on Vancouver Island is NOT unique. As a matter of fact, I know of a number of search marketing organizations such as the Internet Marketers of New York and Best of the Web who organize charitable events at major conferences and gatherings in the search community. Lastly, I would like to point out organizations such as the Google Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, both of which sprang from the high-tech world. While they might not (or might, I haven’t researched), have specific divisions dedicated to chartiable works, HP, Dell, eBay, Yahoo!, and even tiny Ask.com all give monies to chartiable organizations through-out the year. I’m certain others do as well. I do applaud Greg for thinking about non-profits and charitable works, especially when many of us are blessed with abundence from our amazing careers and higher than average incomes. I also don’t want to see the efforts of tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of community minded colleagues go unrecognized or unnoticed.
Jim, thank you very much for the comment. My point is that I am sure there many corporations that have made enormous contributions and have been very generous with their philanthropy. My point is that there seems to be a lack of helping these charities online help themselves. What I mean is, money is great. But, instead of $100k in a single donation, how about offering $1000/month of a service for all charities to help them online. Give them a break on the fees, give them free PPC Ad spend, help them throughout their day-to-day. In my eyes, I think that goes much further than a single donation.Again, great comments Jim. I appreciate the conversation about this.
One of the things we did at SEOmoz was to take on a client for charity - the Seattle Children’s Hospital. It’s been a great experience and since we’re still in the burn phase of taking VC, doesn’t draw from our much needed funds, but still provides an outlet for donation. Obviously, we’re doing SEO consulting work, though, as PPC isn’t in our realm of expertise.
Hey Rand thanks for commenting on this post and I think that is a great story and deserves more good PR.
I think it’s worthy of discussion, but unlike Google, a lot of us don’t send out a press release every time we do something pro bono.