Deb Bauer of Dell gives you an inside look at the technology giant’s corporate giving strategy.
A: Today, more than half of our employees are located outside of the US and more customers are, as well. We made a very strong commitment to moving more of our dollars outside the US where they would be more proportionate to where our customers and employees were. It was in that process that we met GlobalGiving. My very earliest experiences learning how to give outside the US effectively and to begin to connect with nonprofits outside the US were in fact with GlobalGiving. We got a great deal of guidance from the leadership at GlobalGiving, and we are incredibly grateful.
A: We want to make a meaningful difference in the lives of young people in underserved communities using Dell’s technology solutions, our resources, and our know-how. We focus our giving because there are a million good things that one can do in the world. Most important for us, I think, was our desire to balance our technology, our employee engagement, and our fundraising and to bring all three to bear with any nonprofit we choose to work with.
A: Our objectives are to find and create innovative collaborations with nonprofits that do four things. Providing measurable impact to underserved communities—that’s at the heart and most critical, and you’ll see that is our focus area. That’s the essential ingredient.
Second, and just as critical to us, is employee engagement. Every nonprofit that we give to, we also encourage our employees to engage with and encourage the nonprofit to find strong ways to partner with our employees. In my experience, some nonprofits really love this, and some don’t. This is a really key thing that we now try to explain to nonprofits upfront because the reality is engaging employees takes time and effort on the nonprofit side. We know that. While you get great benefit from it, it also takes great commitment to be able to work, and so we need to make sure we are a fit with any nonprofit that we work with.
We’re also interested in increasing our brand value. By that, I mean we really want to use our technology and bring it to life through the creativity and programs of the nonprofit. Our view was: Let’s go out and find nonprofits in the countries that we want to work with that are who already doing incredible things with technology and our technology could help them do what they do even better. We could help them scale; we could help prove an idea for them through technology. That’s really important to us. When that happens of course it’s a huge win for the nonprofit because they can do something they do really well, but it’s a wonderful win for Dell because it allows our products to be showcased in a really important and impactful way. It’s also really incredible for employees because it brings to life what we all do every day in way that’s really meaningful.
We also want to strengthen local relationships. We have key stakeholders all over the world, and our community programs are certainly ways to build on those relationships.
A: We match employee giving up to $10,000 annually, and we’re really proud of the fact that we were able to expand and offer this everywhere in the world through GlobalGiving.
A: When disaster hits, what people need is funding in the local community where the disaster occurred to very quickly restore services and take all the necessary steps. We reserve a significant amount of our funding to do just that, and, again here, our partnership with GlobalGiving is key. When a disaster hits, frequently it’s in a remote place somewhere far from us. We reach out to our local employee teams for their help. We’re interested in finding nonprofits on the ground who are going to respond to this disaster. GlobalGiving has the reach to find us those folks.
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