3 min read
Updated on April 27, 2021
Published on April 27, 2021
In a year unlike any other, we’ve seen inspiring displays of resilience, strength, and determination from individuals and communities around the world. Many education, health, disaster response, and racial justice organizations showed enormous courage and perseverance during this time, showing up for their communities and ensuring critical needs were met.
Through our social impact arm, Zoom Cares, we’ve provided support to organizations continuing to deliver on their mission during a unique and difficult year. From closing the digital divide to advancing racial justice to providing remote learning during the pandemic, their impact on the global community is unmeasurable.
We’re extremely proud to share some of those stories in our inaugural Zoom Cares Social Impact Report. The report shines a light on our partner organizations as well as the global impact of our product donations and discounts, employee-driven efforts, and more than $5 million in grant funding.
Some highlights from our report:
When schools closed a little over a year ago due to pandemic lockdowns, no one was quite sure how long it would be until students could come back to the classroom. To help educational institutions achieve continuity and uninterrupted learning, we lifted the 40-minute time limit on meetings for K-12, primary, and secondary schools on the Zoom Basic plan. More than 125,000 schools in 25 countries took us up on our offer, clocking more than 95 billion meeting minutes of class time on Zoom.
While the Zoom platform helped enable continuity of learning during the pandemic, an estimated 10 million to 15 million students were left behind without reliable internet access at home. This limited students’ ability to learn remotely and initiated long-term effects on their education, as well as future workforce outcomes.
Of the over $5 million dollars we advanced, we committed $1 million to address this gap, partnering with the San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund and EducationSuperHighway to bring greater equity to education. Check out our report to learn more about what these organizations are doing to improve access in unconnected communities.
Our core value at Zoom is Care, and our employees are extremely passionate about showing up for their community. Our employee match program provides each team member an allocation of company-matched funds every year so they can give more to the causes they care about.
Last year, this program generated more than $453,000 in employee donations and matching contributions to 555 nonprofits globally, supporting racial justice, education equity, COVID-19 response, and many other causes. Our largest employee fundraising effort was in support of justice for Black communities, moving financial resources to nonprofits including Black Lives Matter and NAACP Empowerment Programs.
We are grateful for the opportunity to work with powerful individuals and organizations around the world, and look forward to furthering our impact in 2021. For even more stories from our partners and details on our community impact over the past year, read the full Social Impact Report. To follow our progress, visit the Zoom Cares website.
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