Our Commitment to Pledge 1%
It is hard to articulate how proud I am to be writing this blog post.
Easy Agile has just made its first financial contribution of 1% profit to Room to Read as a part of our Pledge 1% commitment!
Room to Read is a cause that Dave, my co-founder, and I have been extremely passionate about, even before Easy Agile was conceived.
Our Journey with Pledge 1%
Our journey with the Pledge 1% commitment began all the way back in 2007 when I joined the Atlassian team.
It was then that I learnt of Atlassian’s 1% commitment. For Atlassian this meant committing 1% of equity and profit into the Atlassian Foundation, plus 1% of employee time and 1% of products.
For employees this meant every quarter we could take one day and direct it towards a community initiative of our choosing. I participated in a number of activities including serving meals at the Matthew Talbot Hostel and organising an Atlassian team to participate in the Cancer Council Relay For Life at Macquarie University. We raised $30k for the Cancer Council in 2009, which I was pretty excited about.
It was shortly after the Relay for Life in 2009 that Mike and Scott, the Atlassian founders, challenged all employees to think bigger. Stop trading one hour of our time for one hour of impact. Find a way to be multipliers.
Mike and Scott reinforced this concept again in 2015 by establishing Pledge 1% along with Salesforce. Pledge 1% is building a movement of corporate philanthropy and has become a call-to-action for all companies around the globe to be good citizens within their local communities.
As part of our journey at Atlassian Dave and I saw the benefits of the 1% pledge first-hand. We have now made a similar commitment: Easy Agile will participate in the Pledge 1% initiative.
Room To Read
Room to Read is a charity the Atlassian Foundation has been supporting for a number of years. Room to Read was established to help low-income communities become their own multipliers by:
- Building libraries alongside schools, filled with books in local language, so that children can get an education
- Providing scholarships to girls, improving long term community growth and health; and
- Providing schools to house the increasing number of children staying in education longer as a result of their scholarships
By focusing on literacy and gender equality in education, generations of young girls are becoming multipliers, increasing the quality of education in their own communities, lowering fertility rates and encouraging women to have careers.
The choice to contribute to Room to Read was also a very personal one for Dave and I as we both have daughters. Dave even has two!
So, wanting to make sure our own daughters had great opportunities in life we figured the same should be available for every young girl. Hence Room to Read.
Our 1% Pledge
Today, Easy Agile have made a commitment to pledge
- 1% Profit
- 1% Time
- 1% Product (50 community licenses granted in FY17)
Our journey so far with Pledge 1% is something we are extremely proud of. Our commitment forms the basis of who we are as a company, and we sincerely urge other companies to jump on-board and make their own pledge!
If you would like to learn more;
Keen to help us pledge 1%? We’re hiring.
