In 2016, Microsoft Philanthropies said it would donate $1 billion in cloud computing resources to 70,000 nonprofit organizations over three years. By the end of 2017, “we passed that goal and we now plan to support 300,000 nonprofit organizations around the globe,” writes Mary Snapp in a post published Tuesday on LinkedIn.
Snapp, corporate vice president and head of Microsoft Philanthropies, says there were several other successful initiatives in 2017, from Microsoft’s Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program – which connects classroom teachers with technology industry volunteers to team-teach computer science – to the Microsoft Giving Program, in which U.S. employees generously donated a record $156 million in 2017 in technological services to others.
“This is why Microsoft Philanthropies was created two years ago,” Snapp writes. “At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To me, the key word is ‘every.’ Before people can enjoy the social and economic benefits that progress brings, they must first be able to use the technologies that make progress possible.”
Billions of people around the world remain excluded from today’s technology-driven society, Snapp writes. “At Microsoft, we believe that as technology moves forward, no one should be left behind.”
Building upon Microsoft’s decades-long history of philanthropy, “we’re working with governments, the private sector, and thousands of nonprofit organizations to make the benefits and opportunities of technology accessible to everyone,” Snapp writes.
Read the entire post on LinkedIn.