At thinkPARALLAX, we’ve donated our time and resources to various nonprofit organizations since our founding. For nearly 20 years, we’ve used our skills, creativity, and hands-on-volunteer time in a variety of ways to make an impact within the communities where we live and work.
While our team is made up of individuals with a wide range of perspectives and skill sets — we all share a passion and drive for creating positive change. That’s why we decided to embark on a new kind of company-wide initiative, making our annual giving initiative a (friendly) pro bono skills-based competition.
Breaking into four teams, employees were empowered to select a nonprofit partner of their choice, work with a designated charitable budget, and develop a creative GivingTuesday campaign with their partner organization. It should come as no surprise that when it comes to supporting causes we care about we give it ‘our all’ — but we upped the ante with a prize to push ourselves to raise more money and awareness for four incredible organizations.
How we did it:
Established Campaign Criteria
With three main criteria in mind — measurability, opportunity for impact, and creativity — we thought about how to use our skills, budget, and time in the most effective and efficient way. Measurement was a key criteria, to ensure our campaign could be validated, and improved year over year. We also wanted to ensure the experience would be a fun, collaborative, and creative project for our team.
Assessed the Opportunity
In addition to establishing the criteria, we researched the current nonprofit landscape and uncovered just how deep of a challenge many organizations face when it comes to promoting their work due to a lack of funding — an issue that has accelerated since the onset of COVID-19.
As purpose-driven professionals, we wanted to make sure that aligning a campaign with GivingTuesday made sense for maximizing our impact. In 2021, 35 million adults participated in GivingTuesday in the U.S. alone, a 6% increase over 2020*. With 82% of participating organizations using GivingTuesday as a way to experiment with new fundraising tactics, we decided a GivingTuesday-focused campaign would be a great opportunity to use our creativity while supporting a clear need amongst our partners.
*10 GivingTuesday Statistics Every Fundraiser Should Know, Neon One
Created Cross-functional Teams
With clear guide rails established, we divided our company into four cross-functional teams, ensuring team members who don't usually work together had the opportunity to collaborate. To further embrace parallax, team members took on roles that are typically outside of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Each team chose a nonprofit partner based on personal passions and alignment with tPX’s values. Next, we defined goals, established a timeline, researched their work, and developed a strategic and campaign strategy to align with their goals. Over the course of four months, we supported the nonprofit with concept development, design assets, and funds to support social media ads or other promotional needs. One team even paired the nonprofit with a brewery to host a fundraising event.
Through lots of teamwork and close collaboration with their nonprofit partner, each team launched campaign content throughout the months of October and November.
Measured our Impact
Using organizations’ prior year GivingTuesday results as a baseline, our teams monitored the results of this year’s campaigns. The team whose campaign had the largest percentage increase year-over-year will be named winners.
While we all love a good, friendly competition — this year’s pro bono initiative was all about supporting the causes we care most deeply about. Through supporting the nonprofits, the tPX team enjoyed healthy competition, connected with team members they don’t often work with, experimented with new roles, and made a collective positive impact with communities across the country.
Regardless of challenges that arose, teams remained focused on what matters most: increased funding for our nonprofit partners, improved brand awareness, and creating more impact with our communities.
Learn more about the nonprofits we partnered with this year and support them through their respective donation link:
Alemany Farm — Sowing the seeds for economic & environmental justice
A 3.5 acre organic farm ecosystem that grows food security and educates local residents about how they can become their own food producers through ecological knowledge and habitat value. We helped increase their GivingTuesday donations by 94% compared to last year.
Brady — United against gun violence
A national organization that emphasizes education, litigation, and legislation to ensure every community is safe from mass shootings and the daily toll of gun homicide, domestic violence, suicide, unintentional shootings, and police violence. We helped increase their GivingTuesday donations by 78% compared to last year.
Espacio Migrante — Sanctuary for human rights
A binational organization that works with migrant communities to promote access to Human Rights, such as education and healthcare, and raises awareness in the community about the realities of being a migrant. We helped increase their GivingTuesday donations by 288% compared to last year.
MAKE Projects — Eat well. Do good.
An urban farm, restaurant, and events/catering company that provides paid, real-world work experience for low-income refugee and immigrant women and youth. We helped increase their GivingTuesday donations by 4,000% compared to last year.
