Zoom’s core value of Care is reflected in our social impact efforts. Read about how we’re caring for our community in our second annual Social Impact Report.
Philanthropy
Our dollars fueling positive impact
2021 Social Impact Report
In this guide
- 01 Zoom Cares Overview - Jumplink to Zoom Cares Overview
- 02 Philanthropy impact - Jumplink to Philanthropy impact
- 03 Product impact - Jumplink to Product impact
- 04 People impact - Jumplink to People impact
- 05 Impact across our company - Jumplink to Impact across our company
- 06 Thank you - Jumplink to Thank you
- 07 Methodology - Jumplink to Methodology
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A message from our CEO
The events of the past few years have highlighted the urgent need for change — to address severe climate disasters, racial violence and injustice, and social unrest, all exacerbated by the rippling effects of a global pandemic.
These dark and difficult times are illuminated by the people and organizations working tirelessly each and every day to care for their communities. Some are on the ground in local neighborhoods, and others are building networks worldwide. They are delivering essential services, helping to improve access to education and mental health care, and providing a safe space for those who need it.
As an Asian American immigrant, I witnessed with great concern the increase in targeted attacks against my community throughout the last year. Hate towards one of us divides all of us. I am personally grateful for the invaluable effort of community organizations and nonprofits. These groups worked day in and day out to help ensure the safety and success of communities like mine and other marginalized individuals around the world during an incredibly trying time.
Zoom Cares, our global social impact arm, extends our company’s core value of Care toward addressing critical and timely issues like the climate crisis, lack of mental health support, and social inequities. We are seizing the opportunity to help support these organizations as they build a future that is more just, more equitable, and more caring.
Our latest Social Impact Report highlights our phenomenal partners and grantees and their enormous efforts, with a particular focus on those supporting youth, LGBTQ+ individuals, and communities of color. It also looks back at the work of Zoom Cares and how our employees are making a collective difference.
To these organizations working for positive and necessary change: We appreciate you. We thank you. We feel incredibly grateful to call you our partners and honored to help amplify your heroic efforts.
Eric S. Yuan | CEO Zoom
Impact by the numbers
$11,383,500
of grants funded by Zoom
192 organizations supported in 41 countries
$3,429,519
of in-kind product donations to charitable organizations
33 organizations supported in 10 countries
25,049 organizations leveraged our 50% off discount offering in 105 countries
$1,843,348
total in employee giving
$942,077 in employee giving across 14 countries
$901,271 matched by Zoom
1,090 organizations supported in 25 countries
Zoom Cares Overview
Our purpose
We leverage the full strength of our business to foster equity, democratize opportunity, and realize systemic justice.
This is accomplished by focusing our social impact strategy around five pillars:
Areas of focus
Across these issues, we focus on advancing success for young people and students. We approach these issues knowing they are intersectional; young people from marginalized communities might experience multiple and overlapping challenges at the same time.
Philanthropy impact
In 2021, we leaned into our community-centered grantmaking approach to help guide our philanthropic efforts. This involved listening and working directly with community leaders with a deep understanding of the issues impacting their stakeholders. Our goal was to distribute resources in the way these leaders have asked us to — with them as an integral part of the decision-making process.
Organizations are recommended to us with an emphasis on groups led by individuals representative of the community being served. This includes a focus on supporting Black, Indigenous, low-income, immigrant, and communities of color. We leverage our grantmaking to support grassroots organizations under $5M in size with multi-year grants, flexible funding, no applications and limited reporting requirements.
We’re grateful to our expert advisors for helping us direct $6.65 million out of our total of $11.38 million in funding to nonprofits around the world — from Re:Coded, teaching coding skills to students in the Middle East, to TELL Japan, providing bilingual mental health support and counseling via a 24/7 hotline. We also looked to support organizations making a difference in the Bay Area where Zoom is headquartered, like the Ever Forward Club, which advances socio-emotional learning skills for young men of color.
Our partner organizations’ herculean efforts have led to tangible impact on the ground in local communities and serve as a positive force for global change, and we’re honored to have the opportunity to support them.
In response to ongoing mental health challenges, particularly affecting youth and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), we partnered with the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation and actress Taraji P. Henson on a fundraising event that raised more than $550,000 in support of mental health services in communities of color.
Our philanthropic approach also involved providing resources during critical moments affecting communities, from major climate disasters in Texas and Australia to the COVID-19 surge in India. Through our crisis response grants, we supported organizations that are addressing timely and pressing issues, including a $5 million, five-year commitment to The Asian American Foundation to combat rising acts of violence and discrimination against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
In 2021:
Zoom donated $11,383,500 in grant funding to 192 organizations in 41 countries
Partnership grants: $10,028,500 to 59 organizations in 15 countries
Crisis response grants: $495,000 to 16 organizations in 5 countries
Local grants: $610,000 to 12 Bay Area organizations where Zoom is headquartered
Customer grants: $250,000 to 105 organizations in 34 countries
Crisis response grants: $495,000 to 16 organizations in 5 countries
Local grants: $610,000 to 12 Bay Area organizations where Zoom is headquartered
Customer grants: $250,000 to 105 organizations in 34 countries
Stories of impact
KYC’s Community Wellness Initiative works to implement sustainable, community-based wellness programs that improve the lives of adolescents, identify health conditions and environmental factors that are associated with barriers to wellness, and aid in improving the social determinants of health as they relate to LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults.
“Zoom has allowed us to connect with people across Ohio — even some people from different states! — including those in rural communities who don’t have programs similar to KYC in their region,” said Erin Upchurch, MSSA, LISW-S, KYC’s executive director.
One way that KYC staff members connect with the youth they serve is through daily “check-ins,” when everyone gathers and shares their names, pronouns, and highlights/lowlights of their day. It’s an opportunity for adult mentors to celebrate a young person’s successes or to see if they can provide extra support to someone going through a rough time.
Direct mental health services include trauma-informed and culturally responsive mental health and emotional support, such as individual counseling or therapy, with the potential to engage in diverse healing and wellness opportunities such as yoga and other somatic practices.
Art club, homework help, and social activities are just a few of the events you might find on the calendar at KYC’s Drop-In Center in Columbus, Ohio. LGBTQIA+ youth can connect with a community of young people with similar identities and experiences, engage in peer-to-peer discussion groups, and find resources and support in a safe and welcoming space.
Our young people have a vision for the world that includes both individual and collective liberation, racial justice, being affirmed, and knowing that they belong. We stand with and for our youth in their commitment to intersectional existence, representative leadership, the importance of community, and access to basic needs.
Erin Upchurch
MSSA, LISW-S; Executive Director
Image courtesy of Kaleidoscope Youth Center.
Stories of impact
Born out of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in East San Jose, Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment is celebrating an important milestone this year — 10 years of serving the local Mayfair community.Amigos de Guadalupe’s programs address basic needs such as housing, education, immigration legal services, and mental health, while also building community power to support systems change. The organization embraces a concept called Radical Hospitality, taking the time to develop authentic relationships with the children and parents they serve to help families achieve their own dreams.
“In the past 10 years, we have grown in our ability to serve while also staying deeply centered on the needs and dreams of our community,” said Executive Director Maritza Maldonado. “We look forward to continuing to serve and build strong leaders in East San Jose.”
Amigos de Guadalupe helped me find my voice, and through Grupo de Justicia Migratoria, we are building power to organize and fight for our immigrant communities.
Linda S
Member of Amigos de Guadalupe’s Grupo de Justicia Migratoria
Image courtesy of Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment.
Top supported themes:
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Education
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Child protection
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Climate action
Top supported countries:
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United States
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India
-
Brazil
Zoomtopia giving
For Zoomtopia, our annual customer celebration, Zoom Cares gifted VIP customers with donation cards to redeem in support of an organization of their choice through GlobalGiving. We also donated 100% of the proceeds from our Zoomtopia Swag Store to the below organizations.
Zoomtopia donations totaled $109,000 in support of:
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California Wildfire Fund by GlobalGiving
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Coronavirus Relief Fund by GlobalGiving
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Gender equality by Wonder Foundation
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Socio-economic education by Instituto Revoar
Product impact
Zoom is how the world connects. Nonprofits across the globe use our product to build powerful connections, scale their reach, and deliver critical services.
During the pandemic, organizations expanded their services by engaging people virtually, and many are keeping those virtual options as a way to improve access to their programs. We’re honored to see products that we have donated leveraged by diverse organizations, from free tutoring platform Schoolhouse.world to environmental and human welfare nonprofit CORA, to engage with more people, operate more efficiently, and have a greater impact on their communities.
Our product donations and discounted product support allow organizations to worry less about their technology solution and how to pay for it, and instead on delivering their innovative, community-centered solutions to the people they serve.
In 2021:
$3,429,519 of products donated
Zoom licenses donated to 33 organizations in 10 countries
25,049 nonprofits in 105 countries leveraged a 50% discount on Zoom products through our TechSoup partnership
25,049 nonprofits in 105 countries leveraged a 50% discount on Zoom products through our TechSoup partnership
Stories of impact
CONASEMS, a public health organization based in Brazil, responded to the pandemic by using Zoom to provide virtual COVID-19 response training to first responders and medical staff.“We are united with everyone in the defense of a universal, free, and quality health system for the entire population,” said Wilames Freire Bezerra, president of CONASEMS. “The Zoom platform has improved the capacity for supporting the Municipal Health Secretariats during the pandemic.”
Operationally, CONASEMS uses Zoom to connect virtually with partners and constituents.
In the last 12 months:
45,257 meetings with 1,276,559 participants
478 webinars with 67,966 attendees across Brazil
In the history of the Brazilian National Healthcare System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), municipalities have been mainly responsible for the construction and solidification of a public system. CONASEMS believes that the best strategy is to grow in the face of challenges, to expand social dialogue and seek new partners, promoting the recognition of municipal health managers as indispensable interlocutors for the discussion of health policy.
Wilames Freire Bezerra
President
Image courtesy of CONASEMS.
Stories of impact
A 2021 recipient of Zoom’s EdInnovation Awards, Cambiar’s innovative youth programming engages students as leaders and change agents to study and address complex social and economic challenges in their own communities. Through programs like Master Innovators, Cambiar Quest, and Run the Future (the latter a joint partnership with Formation Ventures), youth explore careers, create, launch, and grow an idea, and as a result, have what it takes to shape their own futures.“The Zoom platform has allowed us to foster critical connections and real-world engagement that teaches, motivates, and inspires students,” said Talia Kolasinski, Cambiar’s chief of staff.
Cambiar has used Zoom to host successful entrepreneurs from around the country and world to share their personal leadership stories with students, and broadened its network of mentors to give youth access to leaders beyond their community. “Over time, we expanded the bounds of what we considered our community because Zoom has made the world more accessible, and pushed our thinking of who and how we could collaborate with experts and communities,” said Christina Heitz, CEO and founder of Cambiar Education.As a virtual organization, Cambiar has used Zoom since 2016 to support important communications and day-to-day operations. Its team conducts interviews, provides coaching, and has critical community-building discussions over Zoom, engaging with leaders from diverse backgrounds who might otherwise not have a chance to participate. The organization’s most recent efforts include providing Cambiar program scholarships for students and seed funding for venture ideas led by students with learning differences.
“Because of the amazing support from our Zoom award and the interaction the Zoom platform enables, we have been able to significantly expand our reach and secure additional funding to improve and customize Master Innovators to meet the needs of many different partners and communities,” said Marie Garcia Melli, director of Cambiar Education.
Cambiar has been an instrumental partner for me in launching Formation Ventures in multiple ways. Their support of me as an entrepreneur through coaching, fundraising support, and strategic advising has been invaluable to both my own development as a new CEO, and to the development of Formation as an organization.
Saamra Mekuria-Grillo
Cambiar Change Agent and Founder, Formation Ventures
Image courtesy of Cambiar Education.
People impact
Our global employees are connected by our value of Care, committed to bettering their community and the world. Zoomies made a record number of donations through Zoomies Care, our employee giving program, and collaborated with nonprofit partners through volunteer opportunities detailed below.
Employees also led a number of fundraisers that their colleagues supported:
- Our Zoom Goes Back to School campaign, launched in honor of late Zoomie Shawn Q., involved Zoom offices around the world raising funds for local organizations to help students and families go back to school. In total, we donated more than $40,000 to nine organizations, including Family Giving Tree selected by our San Jose office, and Students Without Mothers chosen by our colleagues in Atlanta.
- On Giving Tuesday, organized in partnership with Zoom’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team, Zoom donated more than $46,000 in employee donations and corporate matching funds for six nonprofits selected by our Employee Resource Groups, including the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, The Hunger Project, and Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
- Tour de Zoom, a bike competition organized out of our Amsterdam office, had 37 teams of Zoomies around the globe racking up mileage on their bikes to raise nearly $100,000 for 45 global organizations.
Zoom employees participate in the Tour de Zoom fundraising campaign.
In 2021:
Total donated: $1,843,348
Zoomies donated $942,077 and Zoom matched $901,271
1,622 Zoomies donated to 1090 organizations globally
1,622 Zoomies donated to 1090 organizations globally
Employee volunteering
In addition to their monetary donations, Zoomies generously gave their time and skills to support charitable organizations in their communities. Nonprofit partners invited us to participate in virtual volunteering opportunities that engaged our employees in unique ways.
We appreciate our partners for giving Zoomies the opportunity to gain an understanding of the complex challenges being addressed at the community level, and the chance to collaborate on advancing their efforts.
We worked with The Tech Interactive, a family-friendly science and technology center in the heart of downtown San Jose, California, home to Zoom’s headquarters. Zoomies volunteered as virtual judges for The Tech Challenge, a program that invites students to come up with innovative ways to design solutions for real-world problems. Students had to build a useful item out of cardboard that transformed into something else, and judging took place over Zoom.
The Tech Interactive has also used Zoom to:
- Conduct its popular in-person labs virtually, providing feedback to students building their own roller coasters or devices to keep trash out of storm drains.
- Connect students to working scientists through its “Book a Biologist” collaboration with the Stanford University Genetics Department.
- Provide professional development for educators and give teachers an opportunity to talk to each other about what they were learning and what was working back in the classroom.
We believe that increasing the number and diversity of people at the problem-solving table creates better solutions to our biggest problems. The last two years have tested our own capacity to solve problems. But with Zoom’s help, we’ve been able to continue providing fun and educational opportunities for young people to learn and grow.
Gretchen Walker
Chief Learning Officer
Video courtesy of The Tech Interactive.
Why Zoomies give & volunteer
“For two years, I have been involved with Zoom’s Happy Crew, which coordinated volunteer and fundraising opportunities for our employees before Zoom Cares was formed. When Zoom Cares launched, I volunteered with the team to help employees continue to have access to community programming. It ended up being an incredible experience — we raised more money than ever before and had new opportunities to volunteer that we would not have had otherwise.”
USA
Denver,
USA
Organizations Supported:
“Our employee resource group Somos Zoom represents a community where we celebrate, educate, and are voices for Latinx at Zoom — allowing people to feel a sense of family and culture at work. Somos Zoom has brought leadership skills that I had no idea were in me. Same with the nonprofit work we did with Psydeh. As a first-generation Latina and the youngest of four daughters, helping and supporting women in Latin America is a passion. To give these women a voice and a platform to express their art humbles me because of how blessed I am to have the freedom to express myself.”
USA
Atlanta,
USA
Organizations Supported:
“Knowing that I have the ability to help just one person around the world who is in greater need than myself reminds me why I do what I do. I feel very special to work for a company that truly lives out its core value of Care.”
Australia
Sydney,
Australia
Organizations Supported:
“Operation Breakthrough is very STEM-focused, which is an aspect of their organization that I love. I feel that what they are working to achieve is extremely impactful for younger students. My goal for this upcoming year is to provide more in-person volunteer hours. … Backing up our work with hands-on contribution would be fantastic.”
USA
Kansas City,
USA
Organizations Supported:
Impact across our company
Beyond Zoom Cares, many other teams within Zoom provide community support and contribute toward positive change. See the impact of these teams’ efforts.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Zoom’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) team embodies our core value of Care by helping to create the most inclusive workforce, workplace, marketplace, and community possible for our employees and customers.
To foster educational conversations in the workplace and set a path for broader cultural change, DEI hosted 20 Zoom Talks and speaker sessions for employees to listen and learn. Zoom Talks provide Zoomies with opportunities to learn more about each other’s respective backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to broaden our attitudes, behaviors, and worldviews.
We were fortunate to hear from special guests like Rice University professor Danielle King, Ph.D., reflecting on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder; civil rights activist and Rise founder Amanda Nguyen; and Nancy Tolson, Ph.D., assistant director of African American Studies at the University of South Carolina, on the history of Juneteenth.
Externally, our DEI team played an integral role in the release of Zoom’s pronoun feature. DEI partnered with GLAAD and gathered essential input from individuals and organizations, including members of our Zoom Pride employee resource group, to contribute to the design of this important feature.
Zoom’s investment in Pledge
Our Zoom Apps Fund, a $100 million global venture fund to stimulate the growth of Zoom’s developer ecosystem, chose to invest in Pledge as part of our first batch of portfolio companies. Pledge is an innovative fundraising platform that enables people and organizations to seamlessly raise funds during any type of meeting or event by adding a Donate button within the Zoom experience.
Image courtesy of Pledge.
Pledge’s platform helps organizations make a positive impact in their communities and around the world, and we’re incredibly excited to support them in their journey.
Our sustainability efforts
The Zoom platform has helped customers reduce their carbon emissions by enabling remote work for millions of people around the world each day. We’re also taking action to make sustainable choices for our company to lessen our impact on the environment. Here’s a snapshot of our work in 2021.
- We engaged Anthesis, a global sustainability consultancy, to conduct an audit of our greenhouse gas emissions in our offices. We will use this audit to help us identify where we can make meaningful improvements, set targets, and measure the effectiveness of our efforts.
- We retrofitted our lighting and HVAC systems in Zoom offices to improve the energy efficiency of our physical spaces.
- We conducted an audit of our offices’ energy usage and providers to identify opportunities for reducing usage and purchasing green energy.
Pro bono event support
Our Event Services team donated time to support virtual events held by our partners, helping these organizations connect with their audience, engage their community, educate, and share resources.
Value of time donated: $129,200
- Stand Up 2 Cancer hosted a celebrity meet and greet where select donors were able to meet with special guests.
- Association Of Children’s Museums held a conference with 35 training sessions, two plenary sessions, and an online variety show.
- Teach For All’s Global Conference convened nearly 2,000 members from more than 65 countries for a four-day event with international thought leaders.
- In partnership with the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, we hosted “A Write to Education!: My Mental Health Matters” in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, featuring actress Taraji P. Henson. The event included a live fundraising component powered by Pledge, which Zoom matched dollar-for-dollar up to $250,000 in donations.
Taraji P. Henson spoke during the “A Write to Education!: My Mental Health Matters” fundraising event.
Thank you!
Caring for our community is intertwined with our company’s purpose to help the world connect. We feel grateful and privileged to have the opportunity to support organizations whose critical efforts have such a positive impact on our world.
Visit zoomcares to follow our work, learn about our latest grant announcements, and get to know our partners.
Methodology
Our 2021 Social Impact Report covers the actions, activities, and efforts of Zoom Cares and our partners in fiscal year 2022 (February 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022).
The goal of this report is to share our social impact efforts here at Zoom accurately and transparently. Here’s a look at the data collection and analysis methods we used to create this report.
Philanthropy
Zoom Cares grants are reported with support from our partners at the Tides Foundation who manage and administer funding for Zoom’s charitable program. In addition, some of our charitable giving comes directly from Zoom and we track and report those numbers manually.
Product
Product donation numbers are compiled leveraging ticket requests submitted by employees, as well as employee self-reporting. We calculated the value of our donated product using our current pricing model as of March 2022.
People
Employee dollars donated through our Zoomies Cares program, along with Zoom’s matching donations, are tracked on our internal Benevity platform.
Event Services
The value of pro bono hours donated by Zoom’s Event Services team for charitable events is calculated leveraging per-project standard costs implemented for paid events.