Announcing our Box Impact Fund Grant

Shared from BoxBlogs post December 7, 2021 by Corrie Conrad, VP Communities and Impact, Executive Director of Box.org

Today is a truly special day at Box — it’s our annual Global Impact Day! Boxers around the globe look forward to this day dedicated to giving back in our local and global communities. We’re proud that 75% of Boxers engage in causes they care about throughout the year. Today we join together to be good neighbors, support digital transformation and encourage diverse young people in partnership with impactful nonprofits like Career Village, Cambodian Children’s Fund, Love for Our Elders, Save the Children, Hands on Tokyo and more. Boxers will be teaming up on a range of activities from offering career advice to students, creating care packages for foster youth, and writing cards to the elderly, to cleaning up parks and leading donation drives.

Making this Global Impact Day even more special is a new addition: announcing our inaugural cohort of Box Impact Fund grantees. Shared at BoxWorks in October, this year the Box Impact Fundprovides $100k in grants for digital transformation in two very important areas: child welfare and crisis response. At Box, we see organizations of all kinds benefit from digital transformation, as technology improves productivity and efficiency. Our goal is to help these organizations focus on what they do best – delivering on their missions.

We received hundreds of applications from nonprofits of all sizes in over 40 countries. It was a privilege to read about so many organizations working hard to create change and improve communities around the world. After a multi-stage process and weeks of review, our judges panel helped us select four incredible nonprofits. Each will receive $25,000 for their digital transformation project related to child welfare or crisis response.

We are excited to announce our 2021 Box Impact Fund grantees:

African Community Center for Social Sustainability (ACCESS): Located in Uganda, ACCESS is committed to working with vulnerable people in resource limited settings through provision of medical care, education and economic empowerment to create a long-lasting change that is owned by the entire community.

This grant will enable ACCESS to set up an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data system that will be used to monitor the implemetnation of child welfare interventions in the community, integrate them and use the data to cotinuously address ongoing challenges. The grant will support the organization to improve health, education and livelihoods of orphans and vulnerable children in rural areas.” – Dr. Robert Kaylesubula, President ACCESS Uganda

Children’s Home Society of Minnesota: With a mission to help children thrive, and to build, strengthen and sustain individual, family and community life, Children’s Home Society of Minnesota is committed to serving those in need through ethical, transparent and inclusive services throughout the lifelong foster care/adoption journey.

This grant from Box Impact Fund will allow us to digitize thousands of adoption records. This will not only help our organization financially, but most importantly will allow adoptees, birth families and adoptive families quicker access to vita information.” – Heidi Wiste, President of Children’s Hom Society of Minnesota

U.S. Digital Response (USDR):A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, USDR places experienced, pro-bono technologists to work with government and organizations responding to moments of crisis, to quickly deliver critical services and infrastructure that support the needs of the public.

These funds will allow USDR to grow our Rapid Response team and support our partners at the front lines of response, including the scaling of off-the-shelf solutions that we can repeatedly deploy to local governments. When people are in crisis, that’s when they need their governments and community organizations to show up for them the most. We’re honored to receive this award from teh Box Impact Fund so that U.S. Digital Response can bring the best of technology to the people meeting the hardest challenges in our communities.” – Jessica Cole, CEO of U.S. Digital Response

Water Mission: A nonprofit Christian engineering organization, Water Mission designs, builds, and implements safe water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions for people in developing countries and disaster areas. Since 2001, Water Mission has used innovative technology and engineering expertise to provide access to safe water for more than 7 million people in 57 countries.

This digital transformation grant from Box helps us move from traditional paper-based data colection in East Africa to a fully digitized could-based operation. This will enable us to be more effective in processing and utilizing data to strategically mobilize critical resources to address the most urgent water, sanitation, and hygiene needs in the communities we serve. This primarily benefits women and children as they are often the most impacted by the global water crisis.” – George C. Greenie, IV, PE, CEO and president of Water Mission