Five years ago, Google.org committed to contributing $1 billion to organizations around the world that are working to create opportunities for everyone. Today, thanks in part to the generosity of our employees, we’ve doubled that goal. Since 2017, we’ve provided more than $2 billion in cash grants and employee contributions to nonprofits, and Google employees have collectively volunteered the equivalent of 160 years worth of time with organizations they’re passionate about.

When we started Google.org in 2004, we wanted to use the best of Google to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. Today, our commitment to nonprofits goes beyond cash grants and volunteering to include access to our products and technical expertise.

In addition to grants and employee contributions, we’ve donated over $7 billion in Ad Grants since 2017. These donated ads help organizations connect with potential donors, recruit volunteers and inform people of their services — and do so at the moment when their services are needed most.

We know that magic happens when we pair funding with employee tech expertise through Google.org Fellowships, a pro bono program that matches Google employees with nonprofits and civic entities to work full time for up to six months on technical projects. Last year alone, Fellows worked on projects that included raising awareness about gaps in health equity, making it easier for people in Detroit to find affordable housing, using AI to stop pests devastating crops that feed communities across India, and more.

As we mark these milestones of nonprofit giving, we also want to look to the future and focus on where tech-driven philanthropy can have the most impact.

We believe in the importance of taking big bets on new ideas that can pay off in the long run. Take our grantee GiveDirectly for example. Back in 2012, they shared with us a new idea about giving cash directly to people in need, and we jumped on board to provide some of their first seed funding. Today, there are more than 300 studies on the effectiveness of direct cash transfers, and GiveDirectly has distributed more than $500 million, making them one of the fastest-growing nonprofits of the decade.

We also know that when solving global issues — whether it’s supporting vaccine roll-out or creating economic opportunity — equity and inclusion are critical. We’ll continue to advocate for the role technology can play in driving equitable outcomes in everything from health to racial justice.

Our grantees around the world inspire us every day, and we’re excited to continue this journey towards a better world, together.

Five years ago, Google.org committed to contributing $1 billion to organizations around the world that are working to create opportunities for everyone. Today, thanks in part to the generosity of our employees, we’ve doubled that goal. Since 2017, we’ve provided more than $2 billion in cash grants and employee contributions to nonprofits, and Google employees have collectively volunteered the equivalent of 160 years worth of time with organizations they’re passionate about.

When we started Google.org in 2004, we wanted to use the best of Google to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. Today, our commitment to nonprofits goes beyond cash grants and volunteering to include access to our products and technical expertise.

In addition to grants and employee contributions, we’ve donated over $7 billion in Ad Grants since 2017. These donated ads help organizations connect with potential donors, recruit volunteers and inform people of their services — and do so at the moment when their services are needed most.

We know that magic happens when we pair funding with employee tech expertise through Google.org Fellowships, a pro bono program that matches Google employees with nonprofits and civic entities to work full time for up to six months on technical projects. Last year alone, Fellows worked on projects that included raising awareness about gaps in health equity, making it easier for people in Detroit to find affordable housing, using AI to stop pests devastating crops that feed communities across India, and more.

As we mark these milestones of nonprofit giving, we also want to look to the future and focus on where tech-driven philanthropy can have the most impact.

We believe in the importance of taking big bets on new ideas that can pay off in the long run. Take our grantee GiveDirectly for example. Back in 2012, they shared with us a new idea about giving cash directly to people in need, and we jumped on board to provide some of their first seed funding. Today, there are more than 300 studies on the effectiveness of direct cash transfers, and GiveDirectly has distributed more than $500 million, making them one of the fastest-growing nonprofits of the decade.

We also know that when solving global issues — whether it’s supporting vaccine roll-out or creating economic opportunity — equity and inclusion are critical. We’ll continue to advocate for the role technology can play in driving equitable outcomes in everything from health to racial justice.

Our grantees around the world inspire us every day, and we’re excited to continue this journey towards a better world, together.

COP26 wrapped up last week, and world leaders and industry experts headed home with commitments made to work together to further reduce emissions. You can learn more about Google’s commitments in this blog post.

Even for climate negotiators, transparent and trustworthy data around emissions can be hard to come by. Historically, there has been a limited push to build the kind of data sets and models needed to create a shared fact base for everyone. So we asked ourselves: How can we help advocates, citizens, governments and businesses take action on climate, faster?

We believe philanthropic dollars can play a critical role in creating important public goods, like transparent data sets and accessible digital tools, that might not otherwise exist. The world urgently needs a solid foundation of data and tools to monitor and verify our progress to make better decisions. That’s why much of our sustainability-related philanthropy is now focused on funding the creation and organization of data and the tools to make this data easily usable.

Three of our grantees launched tools around COP26 that are examples of this in action. Climate TRACE, the world’s first independent, comprehensive, near-real time greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring platform uses large-scale data and AI models to provide neutral, accurate data for everyone. On the small business side, the work of Normative is hugely promising. They’re building out emissions estimates for SMBs and helping companies automatically compile detailed carbon reports so that they have actionable data to make better decisions around reducing their footprint. And for consumers, there’s Open Food Facts, an open-access food products database where users can see the eco-score of food products with a simple scan of the barcode from a mobile device.

We’re proud to support these organizations and look forward to more opportunities to combine philanthropic funding with technology to help everyone take action on climate change.

In case you missed it 

Here’s recent progress our grantees have made to close these data gaps.

• BlueConduit is mapping out lead pipes across the U.S, for remediation.
• Open Food Facts expanded to 50 countries — you’ll hear more on that from their co-founder Pierre Slamich below.
• Normative debuted their Industry CO2 Insights carbon emissions accounting engine for small businesses at COP26.
• Restor launched an open data platform built on Google Earth Engine that allows anyone to select an area around the world and analyze its restoration potential.
• Dark Matter Labs launched their first version of TreesAI (Trees As Infrastructure), an open source platform to make it easy to map, monitor and forecast ecosystem services. The tool helps local authorities attract funds to develop and maintain urban nature-focused tools to fight climate change.
• Climate TRACE, supported by $8 million in funding from Google.org and a team of Google.org Fellows, talked about their emissions tracking project in this video.
  

Hear from one of our grantees: Open Food Facts

Pierre Slamich is the co-founder of Open Food Facts, a collaborative effort to create a worldwide database of food products, thanks to mobile apps that also empower citizens to make more informed food choices. Last spring, Open Food Facts received a $1.3 million Google.org grant and support from a team of 11 Google.org Fellows.

A few words with a Google.org Fellow: Astrid Weber

Astrid Weber is a UX Manager on the Google Assistant team and currently working with Normative for a six month Fellowship.

"Our program trains and lifts women who never thought they could rise," says Mariel Reyes Milk. Mariel is the CEO of Reprograma, which teaches computer programming to Black and transgender women in Brazil. Reprograma is one of the 34 organizations receiving funding and additional support from the Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls. Though the mission of each organization is unique, they share a common goal to create economic opportunities that lift up women and girls around the world.

In March, recognizing that COVID-19 was quickly widening the gender equity gap, Google.org put out a $25 million call for project proposals to economically empower women and girls. The response was greater than we have seen for any other Google.org Impact Challenge, with 7,800 applications coming in from more than 160 countries.

With the help of anall star panel of female experts and our Impact Challenge partners, Vital Voices and Project Everyone, we narrowed the field to 34. Their solutions help women and girls, especially those from geographically, economically or socially marginalized populations, reach their full economic potential, and in doing so, strengthen the well-being of entire communities.

Moving forward, recipients will participate in a four-month Google accelerator program led by our Women Techmaker community and supported by Vital Voices. Select organizations will also receive a Google.org Fellowship and donated ads to promote their mission.

You can learn more about our selected organizations on our Impact Challenge website. I am so thrilled Google.org is supporting these organizations in their work to improve the lives of women and girls around the world. The organizations are pretty excited, too.

Note: For this edition, Jacquelline Fuller is passing the pen to her colleague Hector Mujica, who leads our Economic Opportunity work, to share more about how we approach skill building and recent support from Google.org to honor Hispanic Heritage Month.

One of our goals is to help people — especially those without college degrees — gain the skills they need to pursue in-demand, higher-paying careers. This is a topic that is deeply personal to me, as a Latino in tech, and that is important to Google, as a company that strives to create greater equity and access to opportunity — particularly for underserved communities.

We know that 80% of middle-class jobs in the U.S. require a strong knowledge of digital skills, and that these jobs often pay better. That’s why we partner with nonprofit organizations to help them bring digital skilling solutions to historically underserved and excluded people, like the Latino community. We support organizations like the Hispanic Federation and Per Scholas to use solutions, like the Google Career Certificate and other digital skill training programs, that help job seekers gain the right skills to land jobs in the digital economy. These organizations provide not only training, but also the wraparound support needed to make sure participants can access jobs and success at them.

There’s not a single solution to tackle these economic challenges. In an effort to advance the dialog and create fulfilling opportunities for all, we’re also supporting research to unpack how to best support Latino digital inclusion in the workforce with organizations like Opportunity@Work and Aspen Institute’s Latino and Society Program.

In case you missed it 

To mark Hispanic Heritage Month (which runs September 15-October 15), we’re announcing a $1M grant to the Latino Community Foundation’s Latino Entrepreneur Fund to support Latino micro-entrepreneurs across rural and urban communities in California; and donating $1M+ in ads to participants in a new Latino Founders Fund, helping them reach new audiences and address funding inequities. We’re also supporting Latinos searching for jobs: we announced a $1 million reinvestment in the Hispanic Federation.

Hear from one of our grantees: Hispanic Federation

Frankie Miranda is the President and CEO of the Hispanic Federation. Their mission is to empower the Latino community by increasing the capacity of Latino-led and Latino-serving community-based organizations (CBOs) with funding, technical assistance and a resource sharing network.

A few words with a Google.org Fellow: Rosalva Gallardo

Rosalva Gallardo is a Program Manager for Google Shopping.

Jacquelline’s Corner

The pandemic laid bare existing inequalities across gender, race, class and country lines. And at the same time, other disasters — like hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes — continue to affect people globally and strain already tight resources. To have the greatest impact, we rely on strong relationships with nonprofit organizations around the world that are working on disaster preparedness, relief and recovery — like the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and GiveDirectly, that you’ll hear more about below. We learn about their needs and search for where our philanthropic capital — coupled with technology, data and an eye toward equity — can help make the biggest difference.

But we’re also asking ourselves this: what if cities and organizations could predict disasters and be better prepared with resources before they even happen? With a changing climate, we know there’s more to do in advance of crises to mitigate loss of lives and livelihoods. That’s why we’re betting more and more on the role that technologies like AI and machine learning can play in generating the data we need to be better informed and prepared ahead of disasters.

Last year, our grantees provided 6.9 million people around the world with crisis relief support and resources for long term recovery. An additional 2.8 million people were better prepared with resources and supplies, and nearly three-quarters of our grantees are developing tools to improve the availability of information during a crisis. Together, we can ensure that those who are most vulnerable during a crisis are more protected — before, during and after it hits.

In case you missed it 

Kent Walker, Google SVP for Global Affairs, recently announced a $1.5M grant to The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affair’s (UN OCHA) Centre for Humanitarian Data. The grant will go toward supporting their “Anticipatory Action” work that focuses on developing forecasting models to anticipate humanitarian crises and trigger earlier, smarter action before conditions worsen.

Hear from one of our grantees: Center for Disaster Philanthropy

Regine A. Webster is the founding executive director and vice president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), an organization that seeks to strengthen the ability of communities to withstand disasters and recover equitably when they occur. Since 2010, CDP has provided donors with timely and effective strategies to increase their disaster giving impact, and they work to amp up philanthropy’s game when it comes to disaster and humanitarian assistance giving.

A few words with a Google.org Fellow: GiveDirectly

Growing up in a family of community advocates, I developed both a strong sense of social justice and an interest in using my skills for the community. This made me excited to work with GiveDirectly for my Google.org Fellowship. GiveDirectly gives no-strings-attached cash to its recipients, empowering people to improve their lives.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of interviews between expert panelists for the Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls. 

Lisa Mensah works to make sure business owners who “don’t get a fair shake” can get the capital they need to grow. She’s the president and CEO of the Opportunity Finance Network(OFN), which provides capital, advocacy, and capacity building to community development financial institutions (CDFIs). Driven by a mission to serve rural, urban and Native communities underserved by mainstream finance, CDFIs lend to small businesses and community developers who build thriving communities. 

Lisa brings her experience working at the crux of finance and advocacy to the Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls. As one of our expert panelists, she helps us decide what organizations will receive funding from Google.org to help women and girls reach their full economic potential. I recently sat down with her to learn more about her path to OFN and why supporting women-led businesses is crucial. 

What got you started on your path? 

I’m from a bi-racial, bi-cultural family, and lived in Ghana as a young kid. I always thought I would do something in international relations. 

While I was getting my master’s degree, I was most interested in helping refugees and women in developing countries. But I felt I was missing out on powerful conversations — often led by men — on how nations develop. These conversations were frequently about money. So, my path pointed me to the financial industry, where I could be involved in strategic decision-making that would ultimately affect issues surrounding women. 

I began my career in commercial banking at Citibank. From there I moved to the Ford Foundation where I used my banking knowledge to help the Foundation build its program in microfinance and development finance. That’s where I fell in love with CDFIs, and I’ve worked with them ever since. Life’s twists pointed me to my true north, which is a combination of finance and advocating for change for people in poverty. 

What sparked your interest in inclusion for women in finance?

From an early time, I was interested in the economy at the grassroots. That’s usually the economy that women inhabit. I wanted to understand: Who is really feeding everyone? Who is keeping kids healthy? Who is providing income to families? Women across the world, often in informal employment, were leading this.

Poverty in the U.S. is a phenomenon that is quite gendered, often women-led households are lower income. By getting involved in development finance, I was able to see who controls the money and found that women-led enterprises and activities were being left out. 

How have CDFIs been transformative for female-led businesses?

Female and minority entrepreneurs have a harder time accessing affordable bank financing than their male counterparts. This is where CDFIs shine: where others see risk, we see opportunity. CDFIs take time to understand our clients and tailor products for them. This played out again and again during the pandemic when CDFIs provided great relief to women-owned small businesses.

Why did you get involved with the Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls?

The Google.org Impact Challenge will surface leaders that are flying under the radar in their countries and areas of work. We'll resource them to operate at a new level, like a venture capitalist finding the next big company. There aren’t enough philanthropic dollars for all the ideas that are out there in the world, but Google.org’s intention is to find efforts that are benefitting women and girls and support them at scale. That’s powerful, and I’m really pleased to be a part of it. 

Pretend you have a megaphone to reach every little girl around the world. What’s your message for them?

Your dreams are yours and they are real. They’re in you for a reason. You’ve got your contribution to make to this world — don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. And even if your path changes, like mine did, you’ll find your way. Along your journey, look for your cheerleaders and helpers — find the people who believe in you and will support you in your dreams and ambitions.