Tech for Good Ecosystem - Microsoft and Nationwide

Microsoft has partnered with Nationwide during Black History Month to deliver a free online finance and digital skills event for BAME students. The event will take place on Wednesday, October 20, and young people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds will hear from business leaders about a variety of ways to achieve and maintain financial freedom.

In addition, participants will also get hands on with technology, building an app during the event. Students with the best app ideas will receive one-to-one mentoring sessions with experts at the event to support them in their career planning and development, while also helping them to build their CVs.

For Microsoft this is just a small part of a multi-faceted approach to ensuring the organisation lives up to its civic responsibilities. Within the organisation itself it has initiatives such as GLEAM (Global LGBTQI+ Employees and Allies at Microsoft) and BAM (Blacks at Microsoft), amongst others aimed at improving diversity and support. Microsoft Philanthropies was set up in 2015, “to invest the company’s strongest assets – technology, money, employee talent and the company’s voice to partner with non-profits and communities to create lasting positive impact”.

Its Tech for Social Impact initiative aims to accelerate digital transformation across three million non-profits globally and it does this by providing significant discounts on many of its products and services, claiming to support more than 300,000 non-profits globally in the Microsoft cloud,   alongside capacity building through training and investment in social good causes such as employability programmes and affordable housing.

The #Buildfor2030 is a hackathon initiative for the Microsoft Partner network that aims to drive collective impact and innovation in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Organisations with global scale are often subject to criticism in relation to social impact, but it’s undeniable that by committing their resources to support tech for good initiatives they can have an extraordinary impact, much of which is driven by their employee network.

Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash