2021 Social Impact Report

We leverage the full strength of our business to foster equity, democratize opportunity, and realize systemic justice.

This is accomplished by focusing our social impact strategy around five pillars:

Philanthropy
Our dollars fueling positive impact

Product
Our product enabling good globally

People
Our Zoomies showing they care through action

Power
Our voice making a difference

Policy
Our advancing of systems change for good

Across these issues, we focus on advancing success for young people and students. We approach these issues knowing they are intersectional; young people from marginalized communities might experience multiple and overlapping challenges at the same time.

Education
We support innovations that advance access to learning around the world.

Environment
We further efforts that provide a sustainable future for those most impacted by climate change.

Social Equity
We partner with organizations that help disrupt disparities in race, power, and wealth.

Mental Health
We champion groups delivering wellness and mental health support to youth.

In 2021, we leaned into our community-centered grantmaking approach to help guide our philanthropic efforts. This involved listening and working directly with community leaders with a deep understanding of the issues impacting their stakeholders. Our goal was to distribute resources in the way these leaders have asked us to — with them as an integral part of the decision-making process.

Organizations are recommended to us with an emphasis on groups led by individuals representative of the community being served. This includes a focus on supporting Black, Indigenous, low-income, immigrant, and communities of color. We leverage our grantmaking to support grassroots organizations under $5M in size with multi-year grants, flexible funding, no applications and limited reporting requirements.

We’re grateful to our expert advisors for helping us direct $6.65 million out of our total of $11.38 million in funding to nonprofits around the world — from Re:Coded, teaching coding skills to students in the Middle East, to TELL Japan, providing bilingual mental health support and counseling via a 24/7 hotline. We also looked to support organizations making a difference in the Bay Area where Zoom is headquartered, like the Ever Forward Club, which advances socio-emotional learning skills for young men of color.

Our partner organizations’ herculean efforts have led to tangible impact on the ground in local communities and serve as a positive force for global change, and we’re honored to have the opportunity to support them.

In response to ongoing mental health challenges, particularly affecting youth and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), we partnered with the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation and actress Taraji P. Henson on a fundraising event that raised more than $550,000 in support of mental health services in communities of color.

Our philanthropic approach also involved providing resources during critical moments affecting communities, from major climate disasters in Texas and Australia to the COVID-19 surge in India. Through our crisis response grants, we supported organizations that are addressing timely and pressing issues, including a $5 million, five-year commitment to The Asian American Foundation to combat rising acts of violence and discrimination against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Stories of impact

Kaleidoscope Youth Center

Kaleidoscope Youth Center (KYC) is dedicated to supporting LGBTQIA+ youth ages 12 to 24 in Ohio. Services include center-based programming, community education and training, advocacy and civic engagement, health and wellness, and housing opportunities.

KYC’s Community Wellness Initiative works to implement sustainable, community-based wellness programs that improve the lives of adolescents, identify health conditions and environmental factors that are associated with barriers to wellness, and aid in improving the social determinants of health as they relate to LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults.

“Zoom has allowed us to connect with people across Ohio — even some people from different states! — including those in rural communities who don’t have programs similar to KYC in their region,” said Erin Upchurch, MSSA, LISW-S, KYC’s executive director.

One way that KYC staff members connect with the youth they serve is through daily “check-ins,” when everyone gathers and shares their names, pronouns, and highlights/lowlights of their day. It’s an opportunity for adult mentors to celebrate a young person’s successes or to see if they can provide extra support to someone going through a rough time.

Direct mental health services include trauma-informed and culturally responsive mental health and emotional support, such as individual counseling or therapy, with the potential to engage in diverse healing and wellness opportunities such as yoga and other somatic practices.

Art club, homework help, and social activities are just a few of the events you might find on the calendar at KYC’s Drop-In Center in Columbus, Ohio. LGBTQIA+ youth can connect with a community of young people with similar identities and experiences, engage in peer-to-peer discussion groups, and find resources and support in a safe and welcoming space.

Our young people have a vision for the world that includes both individual and collective liberation, racial justice, being affirmed, and knowing that they belong. We stand with and for our youth in their commitment to intersectional existence, representative leadership, the importance of community, and access to basic needs.

Erin Upchurch, MSSA, LISW-S; Executive Director

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Image courtesy of Kaleidoscope Youth Center.

Stories of impact

Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice & Empowerment

Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment is a place-based agency serving children, youth, and their families, focusing on the Mayfair community in East San Jose, California.

Born out of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in East San Jose, Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment is celebrating an important milestone this year — 10 years of serving the local Mayfair community.Amigos de Guadalupe’s programs address basic needs such as housing, education, immigration legal services, and mental health, while also building community power to support systems change. The organization embraces a concept called Radical Hospitality, taking the time to develop authentic relationships with the children and parents they serve to help families achieve their own dreams.

“In the past 10 years, we have grown in our ability to serve while also staying deeply centered on the needs and dreams of our community,” said Executive Director Maritza Maldonado. “We look forward to continuing to serve and build strong leaders in East San Jose.”

Amigos de Guadalupe helped me find my voice, and through Grupo de Justicia Migratoria, we are building power to organize and fight for our immigrant communities.

Linda S., member of Amigos de Guadalupe’s Grupo de Justicia Migratoria

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Image courtesy of Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment.

For the holiday season, our top customers received charitable gift cards to donate to a nonprofit of their choice through GlobalGiving.

In 2021, we donated $250,000 on behalf of Zoom customers

Our customers supported 105 organizations in 34 countries around the world

For Zoomtopia, our annual customer celebration, Zoom Cares gifted VIP customers with donation cards to redeem in support of an organization of their choice through GlobalGiving. We also donated 100% of the proceeds from our Zoomtopia Swag Store to the below organizations.

Zoomtopia donations totaled $109,000 in support of:

• California Wildfire Fund by GlobalGiving
• Coronavirus Relief Fund by GlobalGiving
• Gender equality by Wonder Foundation
• Socio-economic education by Instituto Revoar

Zoom is how the world connects. Nonprofits across the globe use our product to build powerful connections, scale their reach, and deliver critical services.

During the pandemic, organizations expanded their services by engaging people virtually, and many are keeping those virtual options as a way to improve access to their programs. We’re honored to see products that we have donated leveraged by diverse organizations, from free tutoring platform Schoolhouse.world to environmental and human welfare nonprofit CORA, to engage with more people, operate more efficiently, and have a greater impact on their communities.

Our product donations and discounted product support allow organizations to worry less about their technology solution and how to pay for it, and instead on delivering their innovative, community-centered solutions to the people they serve.

Stories of impact

CONASEMS

CONASEMS (Conselho Nacional De Secretarias Municipais De Saúde — National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries) represents municipal health secretariats in Brazil in promoting and consolidating a new model of public health management, focusing public funding, human resources, and defense of the principles of the Unified Health System on the health agenda.

CONASEMS, a public health organization based in Brazil, responded to the pandemic by using Zoom to provide virtual COVID-19 response training to first responders and medical staff.“We are united with everyone in the defense of a universal, free, and quality health system for the entire population,” said Wilames Freire Bezerra, president of CONASEMS. “The Zoom platform has improved the capacity for supporting the Municipal Health Secretariats during the pandemic.”

Operationally, CONASEMS uses Zoom to connect virtually with partners and constituents.In the last 12 months:

45,257 meetings with 1,276,559 participants
478 webinars with 67,966 attendees across Brazil

In the history of the Brazilian National Healthcare System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), municipalities have been mainly responsible for the construction and solidification of a public system. CONASEMS believes that the best strategy is to grow in the face of challenges, to expand social dialogue and seek new partners, promoting the recognition of municipal health managers as indispensable interlocutors for the discussion of health policy.

Wilames Freire Bezerra, President

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Image courtesy of CONASEMS.

Stories of impact

Cambiar

Cambiar Education is a nonprofit venture design studio focused on student success and equity, with a mission to spark positive change by scaling bold ideas that massively accelerate student success for all.

A 2021 recipient of Zoom’s EdInnovation Awards, Cambiar’s innovative youth programming engages students as leaders and change agents to study and address complex social and economic challenges in their own communities. Through programs like Master Innovators, Cambiar Quest, and Run the Future (the latter a joint partnership with Formation Ventures), youth explore careers, create, launch, and grow an idea, and as a result, have what it takes to shape their own futures.“The Zoom platform has allowed us to foster critical connections and real-world engagement that teaches, motivates, and inspires students,” said Talia Kolasinski, Cambiar’s chief of staff.

Cambiar has used Zoom to host successful entrepreneurs from around the country and world to share their personal leadership stories with students, and broadened its network of mentors to give youth access to leaders beyond their community. “Over time, we expanded the bounds of what we considered our community because Zoom has made the world more accessible, and pushed our thinking of who and how we could collaborate with experts and communities,” said Christina Heitz, CEO and founder of Cambiar Education.As a virtual organization, Cambiar has used Zoom since 2016 to support important communications and day-to-day operations. Its team conducts interviews, provides coaching, and has critical community-building discussions over Zoom, engaging with leaders from diverse backgrounds who might otherwise not have a chance to participate. The organization’s most recent efforts include providing Cambiar program scholarships for students and seed funding for venture ideas led by students with learning differences.

“Because of the amazing support from our Zoom award and the interaction the Zoom platform enables, we have been able to significantly expand our reach and secure additional funding to improve and customize Master Innovators to meet the needs of many different partners and communities,” said Marie Garcia Melli, director of Cambiar Education.

Cambiar has been an instrumental partner for me in launching Formation Ventures in multiple ways. Their support of me as an entrepreneur through coaching, fundraising support, and strategic advising has been invaluable to both my own development as a new CEO, and to the development of Formation as an organization.

Saamra Mekuria-Grillo, Cambiar Change Agent and Founder, Formation Ventures

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Image courtesy of Cambiar Education.

Our global employees are connected by our value of Care, committed to bettering their community and the world. Zoomies made a record number of donations through Zoomies Care, our employee giving program, and collaborated with nonprofit partners through volunteer opportunities detailed below.

Employees also led a number of fundraisers that their colleagues supported:

• Our Zoom Goes Back to School campaign, launched in honor of late Zoomie Shawn Q., involved Zoom offices around the world raising funds for local organizations to help students and families go back to school. In total, we donated more than $40,000 to nine organizations, including Family Giving Tree selected by our San Jose office, and Students Without Mothers chosen by our colleagues in Atlanta.
• On Giving Tuesday, organized in partnership with Zoom’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team, Zoom donated more than $46,000 in employee donations and corporate matching funds for six nonprofits selected by our Employee Resource Groups, including the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, The Hunger Project, and Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
• Tour de Zoom, a bike competition organized out of our Amsterdam office, had 37 teams of Zoomies around the globe racking up mileage on their bikes to raise nearly $100,000 for 45 global organizations.

Zoom employees participate in the Tour de Zoom fundraising campaign.

Zoomies Care, our employee giving and company match program, allows employees to support causes that they care deeply about by amplifying their giving efforts with a matching donation from Zoom.

In addition to their monetary donations, Zoomies generously gave their time and skills to support charitable organizations in their communities. Nonprofit partners invited us to participate in virtual volunteering opportunities that engaged our employees in unique ways.

We appreciate our partners for giving Zoomies the opportunity to gain an understanding of the complex challenges being addressed at the community level, and the chance to collaborate on advancing their efforts.

Team4Tech

We partnered with Team4Tech, a nonprofit that works with companies on social impact projects that create opportunities for under-resourced learners, to develop a series of meaningful virtual volunteering sessions for Zoomies.

Zoom employees teamed up to help EducationSuperHighway, PSYDEH, and Centre for Youth and Development. They participated in Design for Impact and Skills for Impact workshops that aimed to tackle technology challenges facing our nonprofit partners.

• EducationSuperHighway is working to close the digital divide for the 18 million U.S. households that have access to the Internet but can’t afford to connect. Zoomies designed four potential solutions to reach families eligible for free and reduced-price internet services, and overcome their resistance to signing up.
• PSYDEH is one of Mexico’s leading grassroots civil society organizations that strengthens marginalized indigenous women and their communities at the convergence of rights and human development. In their design workshops, participants designed three potential solutions to provide more support for women artisans in Mexico starting their own business and developed a website to share stories of indigenous women artists with a global audience.
• Centre for Youth and Development is a Malawi-based organization with an innovative people-led approach to delivering sustainable development goals, with a focus on education, health, and economic empowerment. Zoomie volunteers designed four potential solutions for CYD to bring new educational resources to schools and encourage more girls to get involved in STEM education.

Dean L.

Denver, USA

“For two years, I have been involved with Zoom’s Happy Crew, which coordinated volunteer and fundraising opportunities for our employees before Zoom Cares was formed. When Zoom Cares launched, I volunteered with the team to help employees continue to have access to community programming. It ended up being an incredible experience — we raised more money than ever before and had new opportunities to volunteer that we would not have had otherwise.”

Organizations Supported:

• Anti-Defamation League
• Kenzi’s Causes
• Phenomenal Women

Anabel G.

Atlanta, USA

“Our employee resource group Somos Zoom represents a community where we celebrate, educate, and are voices for Latinx at Zoom — allowing people to feel a sense of family and culture at work. Somos Zoom has brought leadership skills that I had no idea were in me. Same with the nonprofit work we did with Psydeh. As a first-generation Latina and the youngest of four daughters, helping and supporting women in Latin America is a passion. To give these women a voice and a platform to express their art humbles me because of how blessed I am to have the freedom to express myself.”

Organizations Supported:

• Psydeh

Emily M.

Sydney, Australia

“Knowing that I have the ability to help just one person around the world who is in greater need than myself reminds me why I do what I do. I feel very special to work for a company that truly lives out its core value of Care.”

Organizations Supported:

• The Smith Family

Julie W.

Kansas City, USA

“Operation Breakthrough is very STEM-focused, which is an aspect of their organization that I love. I feel that what they are working to achieve is extremely impactful for younger students. My goal for this upcoming year is to provide more in-person volunteer hours. … Backing up our work with hands-on contribution would be fantastic.”

Organizations Supported:

• Operation Breakthrough

Beyond Zoom Cares, many other teams within Zoom provide community support and contribute toward positive change. See the impact of these teams’ efforts.

Zoom’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) team embodies our core value of Care by helping to create the most inclusive workforce, workplace, marketplace, and community possible for our employees and customers.

To foster educational conversations in the workplace and set a path for broader cultural change, DEI hosted 20 Zoom Talks and speaker sessions for employees to listen and learn. Zoom Talks provide Zoomies with opportunities to learn more about each other’s respective backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to broaden our attitudes, behaviors, and worldviews.

We were fortunate to hear from special guests like Rice University professor Danielle King, Ph.D., reflecting on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder; civil rights activist and Rise founder Amanda Nguyen; and Nancy Tolson, Ph.D., assistant director of African American Studies at the University of South Carolina, on the history of Juneteenth.

Externally, our DEI team played an integral role in the release of Zoom’s pronoun feature. DEI partnered with GLAAD and gathered essential input from individuals and organizations, including members of our Zoom Pride employee resource group, to contribute to the design of this important feature.

Our Zoom Apps Fund, a $100 million global venture fund to stimulate the growth of Zoom’s developer ecosystem, chose to invest in Pledge as part of our first batch of portfolio companies. Pledge is an innovative fundraising platform that enables people and organizations to seamlessly raise funds during any type of meeting or event by adding a Donate button within the Zoom experience.

Image courtesy of Pledge.

Pledge’s platform helps organizations make a positive impact in their communities and around the world, and we’re incredibly excited to support them in their journey.

The Zoom platform has helped customers reduce their carbon emissions by enabling remote work for millions of people around the world each day. We’re also taking action to make sustainable choices for our company to lessen our impact on the environment. Here’s a snapshot of our work in 2021.

• We engaged Anthesis, a global sustainability consultancy, to conduct an audit of our greenhouse gas emissions in our offices. We will use this audit to help us identify where we can make meaningful improvements, set targets, and measure the effectiveness of our efforts.
• We retrofitted our lighting and HVAC systems in Zoom offices to improve the energy efficiency of our physical spaces.
• We conducted an audit of our offices’ energy usage and providers to identify opportunities for reducing usage and purchasing green energy.

Our Event Services team donated time to support virtual events held by our partners, helping these organizations connect with their audience, engage their community, educate, and share resources.

Value of time donated: ​​$129,200

• Stand Up 2 Cancer hosted a celebrity meet and greet where select donors were able to meet with special guests.
• Association Of Children’s Museums held a conference with 35 training sessions, two plenary sessions, and an online variety show.
• Teach For All’s Global Conference convened nearly 2,000 members from more than 65 countries for a four-day event with international thought leaders.
• In partnership with the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, we hosted “A Write to Education!: My Mental Health Matters” in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, featuring actress Taraji P. Henson. The event included a live fundraising component powered by Pledge, which Zoom matched dollar-for-dollar up to $250,000 in donations.

Taraji P. Henson spoke during the “A Write to Education!: My Mental Health Matters” fundraising event.

Caring for our community is intertwined with our company’s purpose to help the world connect. We feel grateful and privileged to have the opportunity to support organizations whose critical efforts have such a positive impact on our world.

Visit zoom.us/zoomcares to follow our work, learn about our latest grant announcements, and get to know our partners.

Methodology

Our 2021 Social Impact Report covers the actions, activities, and efforts of Zoom Cares and our partners in fiscal year 2022 (February 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022).

The goal of this report is to share our social impact efforts here at Zoom accurately and transparently. Here’s a look at the data collection and analysis methods we used to create this report.

Philanthropy

Zoom Cares grants are reported with support from our partners at the Tides Foundation who manage and administer funding for Zoom’s charitable program. In addition, some of our charitable giving comes directly from Zoom and we track and report those numbers manually.

Product

Product donation numbers are compiled leveraging ticket requests submitted by employees, as well as employee self-reporting. We calculated the value of our donated product using our current pricing model as of March 2022.

People

Employee dollars donated through our Zoomies Cares program, along with Zoom’s matching donations, are tracked on our internal Benevity platform.

Event Services

The value of pro bono hours donated by Zoom’s Event Services team for charitable events is calculated leveraging per-project standard costs implemented for paid events.