In a world where lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders restrict physical movement, digital technology is filling the void to keep households connected, supplied, entertained and informed.
But amid the increased demand for digital products and services — and the logistical challenges associated with a massive work-from-home transition — many Los Angeles tech companies have not forgotten those who are struggling right now. We asked local tech leaders to describe how they’re giving back to their communities during this uncertain season, and the responses offer a fine example of the city’s wealth of ingenuity.
Know of a team or company that’s going above and beyond right now? Share the love using #UnitedWeTech.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
As our community continues to be affected by COVID-19, many families are left without access to their everyday basic essentials. To meet families’ immediate needs, Honest has committed to donating 3 million diapers, 30,000 packs of wipes and 20,000 personal care products this year to our charity partner, Baby2Baby — with 100,000 diapers and 100,000 wipes immediately delivered in March. These essential items are being distributed throughout family resource centers, homeless shelters, health clinics and Head Start centers to families impacted by this outbreak. In addition, Honest is matching employees’ donations — up to $500 per person — toward the nonprofit of their choice.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
We are continually assessing the short-term and long-term effects that COVID-19 will have on our community and the subsequent needs of our charity partners. Our increased charitable giving commitments not only reflect what we can do right now but also how we will continue our support throughout the year.
In addition, we are exploring ways to connect our consumer base to our charity partners to help us amplify our giving initiatives. This year, we will continue to focus our efforts to ensure we are leading with compassion, serving as a reliable resource for our charity partner, Baby2Baby, and making a difference in the Los Angeles community.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We’re taking several steps to help, including providing free Headspace subscriptions to U.S. healthcare providers working in public health settings through 2020. Our healthcare system is facing immense pressure amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and we’re seeing incredible stress, anxiety and burnout among healthcare workers who are on the front lines of this crisis. While this is currently only accessible to U.S.-based healthcare providers and employees of the NHS in the U.K., we’re working with global NGOs, health systems and government officials to quickly establish ways to uniquely identify healthcare providers in countries around the world.
We’re unlocking a free, specially-curated “weathering the storm” collection of meditation and mindfulness content in the Headspace app for everyone around the world and sharing our “Headspace for Work” tools and resources. As experts in workplace mental health, we understand the profound and lasting impact this global health crisis has had on employees and their families everywhere. We also know the impact on teachers and caregivers in light of school closures and social distancing measures. Headspace offers free access to K-12 teachers, school administrators and supporting staff in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. And to help guide students and their parents through this tough time, we’re also sharing tools and tips for talking mindfully with young people to help educators guide kids and their parents through this public health crisis. “Headspace for Educators” is our flagship social impact program that has been in place since 2018 and will be here to support educators indefinitely.
This is our small way of helping people around the world find some calm and compassion for themselves and those around them in a truly trying time. The most significant benefit of meditation is its ability to help you rest in uncertainty. Of course, our lives are always uncertain, and it’s at times like these when we feel it more than ever. We hope these small gestures can help all of us look after the health and happiness of our minds as well as the people around us.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Omaze exists to empower nonprofits, and everything we do is designed to maximize the impact we create for charities. When COVID-19 hit the U.S., we saw an urgent need to help those on the front lines fighting the effects of the virus — but we also saw an ongoing need from many of the nonprofits we work with regularly. This virus impacted their ability to serve their communities in innumerable ways. From those assisting the homeless to those funding critical cancer research — many right in Omaze's backyard in LA — a lot of charities saw their fundraising capabilities and their ability to help immediately cut.
That’s where Omaze was able to come in and lend support. We continued our existing campaigns and launched new quick-turnaround campaigns including spin bikes, home office renovations and gaming rigs that would all support the work of nonprofits and the communities that rely on their services. There’s no question that even after the immediate effect of the virus passes, hundreds of charities and the people they serve will continue to need support, and Omaze is uniquely positioned to help.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
In addition to the ongoing support we’re providing our charity partners, our team was able to almost immediately mobilize to support those working on the front lines of COVID-19 relief. Within days of the COVID-19 crisis officially hitting the U.S., our team was able to identify and vet the nonprofits that were making the greatest impact on the ground and onboard them to our platform. We built a new project page that waived 100 percent of the Omaze fee and secured multiple matching partners, which gave our audience a trusted place to give a little (or a lot) and make a big impact.
We built our business on providing once-in-a-lifetime experiences to support charities around the world. When COVID-19 hit, a significant portion of these experiences were postponed or required travel that was no longer safe. Our team moved quickly to update our community, rearrange experience dates and test launch new virtual experiences that would allow our community to continue to dream big while also making a big impact. When movie premieres were cancelled and travel was discouraged, we launched virtual game nights and coffee dates with celebrities, benefiting either COVID-19 relief efforts directly, or causes that needed ongoing support in light of the current reality.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
WeeCare is supporting the community by assisting families in finding a temporary childcare solution in a “Fever-Free” WeeCare home daycare, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. WeeCare is offering essential workers full access to WeeCare’s team of childcare experts, who are removing parents’ stress in finding childcare and quickly placing their child in a WeeCare home daycare.
We are also collaborating with local government agencies and allowing them to utilize WeeCare technology to streamline the process of finding childcare by giving them access to a childcare provider’s availability in real time. Additionally, we have developed several features for home daycare providers to create a safer environment for the families they are serving, such as a process to verify their home daycare is fever-free and implementing virtual daycare tours and daily health checks.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Currently, we are finding childcare for essential workers at no cost. If we cannot find them a spot in a WeeCare home daycare, we will proactively locate a daycare outside of our network that has availability and can accommodate their child. Childcare providers who are not part of our network can now join the WeeCare platform at no cost to their current families and take advantage of our upgraded features, which includes access to our educational program. Finally, we are working around the clock and offering 24/7 support to ensure we can quickly service both families and providers.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Ardius’ key technology was almost made for the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program. By integrating with any company’s existing technical and financial systems, our software learns to automatically discover, categorize and qualify tax credit eligible expenses. In the past weeks, our team has responded to an overwhelming number of anxious questions from the startup community, centered on payroll tax holidays, tax credits, deductions and exemptions. As more details are released in the days to come, Ardius wants to make sure that all startups understand the relief that might be available to them and that such specialized knowledge is not reserved for a few highly specialized and expensive CPAs.
With everyone sheltering in, working from home and social distancing, it’s easy to forget about the greater community. Ardius is trying to combat this way of thinking by creating innovative ways to get more involved.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Although the COVID-19 crisis continues to increase in severity and seriousness, Ardius is leveraging our know-how and making as many resources available and accessible to make a difference for startups in need. Even before the onset of this crisis, Ardius saw its objective far beyond just creating software to automate the R&D tax credit and payroll offset. Our goal and mission has always been to bring growth, cash flow and strategic resources where they’re needed the most.
To this end, Ardius has stepped up to help startups not just thrive and grow but survive. Some of the initiatives Ardius started since the crisis began include waiving all our sign-up fees for any company needing help; utilizing a portion of our fees to purchase back the very services and products that our customers sell; donating those clients’ services and products to other startups that may need it; and deferring our fee until companies receive their payroll tax offset.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Throughout this crisis, I’ve been amazed at how well our company has responded to unprecedented challenges. We’re fortunate to have a great team of Caltech-trained engineers and data scientists who are giving back to the community by analyzing data related to the coronavirus. Virtualitics is partnering with a large government entity and an LA-based hospital network to better prepare and plan for local outbreaks. Specifically, our team has developed AI-based predictive models that forecast short-term infections at a local level. We’re proud to be a part of this fight.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
The COVID-19 crisis has pushed our entire staff to think about how we could give back more during this time of need. One of my favorite initiatives is that we’ve been granting complimentary use of our flagship software, Virtualitics Immersive Platform, to users in the healthcare field working with coronavirus data. Through machine learning, our tool allows users to understand and visualize large amounts of data very rapidly. This empowers users to make better data-driven decisions faster, at a moment when time to insights is critical.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We focus on where we can make the biggest impact with our specific resources and expertise. First of all, that means committing to our most local community: our team. Deep 6 AI has worked hard to assemble a world-class team of smart, talented people with a deep passion for driving innovation in healthcare. My goal is to keep that team together and focused on our mission: getting life-saving treatments to patients faster.
How have you expanded, adapted or changed your product offering or strategy in light of recent events?
It is always a privilege to work in healthcare, given the purpose and the impact this lends to our professional and personal lives. So for us, the current crisis is yet another opportunity to double down on our mission and help the efforts to battle the pandemic.
For Deep 6, that means that we immediately expanded our AI-driven clinical trials acceleration software to accurately detect evidence of SARS-CoV-2 across our hospital partners’ rapidly growing patient data. This helps researchers on the front lines of the crisis find patients for the many clinical trials that are required to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market, as soon as safely possible.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
In response to the heightened risks of social isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Seriously is aiming to increase social engagement and boost community resilience through its leading title, Best Fiends.
Best Fiends is enabling family, friends and players from all over the world to connect and support each other remotely by sharing free daily gifts. The daily gifts are sent as virtual gift packages using the in-game Post Office feature. Every time a player claims a gift, the friend who sent it simultaneously receives a gift of their own.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Best Fiends is also supporting players with awesome new content, like the fan-favorite Easter Egg Hunt where players win free rewards by finding things hidden around the game. There’s also an extra special Easter Egg with a special message — and a digital care package of free gifts.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Each of our offices is supporting our local restaurants by hosting trivia and other contests and providing local restaurant gift cards as prizes. Our company has a great love of music, so we are also introducing a Friday night concert series and live-streaming musicians to support them. This provides a great opportunity for our people and their families, roommates and other co-habitants to enjoy the power of music, together.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
We have some well-established relationships with organizations like Hack.Diversity and are continuing to support them — especially now.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We rolled out our Healthcare Heroes initiative on April 2, and doctors and nurses around the country can now sign up to receive their free FabFitFun bundles. As they’re risking their lives and serving us all on the front lines every day, we wanted to show our appreciation with some essentials and a little self care, as they certainly need and deserve it right now.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Every season between our seasonal box sales we host mid-season e-commerce “edit sales.” Our spring edit sale is taking place right now. As schools began to close and millions of children were sent home without the free school lunch they depend on, we were proud to quickly partner with No Kid Hungry as our spring edit sale charity partner. Our members now have the opportunity to donate directly to the charity through the sale, and FabFitFun will match up to 50,000 of the donations received.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Playtika has taken a dual approach to support people in need during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the recently launched #PlayApartTogether campaign to promote the WHO’s health guidelines, Playtika’s studios have rolled out a series of in-game initiatives to encourage players to stay safe through social distancing but also to feel connected with one another through in-game communication.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
With the implementation of Playtika’s company-wide work-from-home policy, we wanted to give back to the wider community. Instead of canceling the provision of catered meal delivery to offices, the company is donating food packages to nonprofits serving vulnerable communities across Eastern Europe in Minsk, Kiev, Dnipro and Vinnitsa, as well as in Israel. Playtika is delivering over 2,500 food packages and hot meals per week across its Eastern European sites, as well as 1,000 food packages per week in Israel.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
For more than a month now, Thrive Market has been focused on one thing: getting our members the products they need to keep their families safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. The coronavirus crisis has entered an even more serious phase over the last two weeks. Millions of families are facing mounting hardships, from lost wages to unforeseen childcare needs to potentially crippling medical expenses.
On March 16, we launched the Thrive Market COVID-19 Relief Fund and are providing grocery stipends and free Thrive Market memberships to any family facing health or financial hardships due to COVID-19. In just two weeks, our member community has raised over $80,000 through donations at checkout. Our plan is to match those donations, dollar for dollar, up to a total donation of $200,000. We’ve currently deployed over $180,000 in grocery stipends for those in need.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
The COVID-19 relief initiative is not uncharted territory for us. Since 2015, we’ve donated every dollar collected at checkout each month to the shopping budgets of Thrive Gives members, disaster relief efforts, food access and veteran aid programs and a range of fully vetted partner organizations that align with our mission.
Over the last few years, we’ve mobilized our member community for similar relief efforts including hurricanes Katrina, Michael and Florence and wildfires in California, the Amazon and Australia. We also supported those impacted by last year’s government shutdown and donated to migrant relief efforts at the U.S. border. At this point, we’re able to turn these types of campaigns around and activate our community really quickly.
Time and time again, our members have stepped up in a huge way. This time is no different. Their generosity continues to inspire us, and together we’ve already been able to support over 1,000 families in need during this really challenging time.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Giving back to the communities we serve is more important now than ever. We are fortunate to be able to partner with our apparel vendor who has converted one of their facilities to produce protective masks. We will be delivering more than 10,000 protective masks to healthcare systems in both Santa Monica and Los Angeles, where we service our customers and where our employees reside.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
We’ve partnered with our friends at Omaze to raise $50,000 to support several organizations that are on the front lines of COVID-19 relief efforts. Our employees and customers want to know how they can contribute, so we are engaging them to spread the word to their networks to maximize our impact.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Centerfield recently donated to Frontline Foods, an organization raising funds to feed healthcare workers by partnering with local restaurants. We wanted to show our sincere appreciation for healthcare workers who are on the front line, risking their lives to save others and helping to put an end to this unfortunate pandemic. Our donation will also help our local restaurants that are struggling financially during this time.
We have also given to Meals on Wheels, an organization dedicated to keeping seniors safe and nourished. We want to take care of our elderly who are at high risk from COVID-19. Meals on Wheels replenishes their food and supplies, subsidizes their transportation and enables tech-based efforts to check in on them.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
At Centerfield, one of our favorite ways of giving back to the community is by donating our time and volunteering at local elementary schools by helping with their after-school programs and partnering with awesome organizations that assemble care packages for those in need. Sadly, we’ve had to temporarily suspend our volunteer events that were scheduled for March and April but are eager to pick things back up where we left off once it’s safe for everyone. In addition to donating funds to initiatives that need our support during this challenging time, we’re looking into ways that we can volunteer virtually.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
HopSkipDrive helps children and other vulnerable populations, such as senior citizens, connect with rigorously vetted CareDrivers who safely get them where they need to go. Right now, school closures are keeping kids at home and CareDrivers with less rides to give. This means we currently have the capacity to help our community during this time of crisis. In some cases, we are expanding our service offerings, such as helping senior citizens. We’re working with a current client to increase our services for seniors, assisting them in picking up food deliveries, buying groceries, picking up prescriptions and more.
While students don’t need transportation to and from school while schools are closed, we’re looking at ways to support them and continue our mission to promote equity. For instance, delivering education technology for distance learning or taking students to open meal programs. We’ve also been focusing on new areas of our business: community support initiatives. We built a ride donation program to let individuals and organizations donate rides to those in need.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
We are partnering with community organizations to donate rides and HopSkipDrive gift cards to children, families and senior citizens in need. Whether the ride is for a meal delivery for a senior, taking a child to pick up free lunch from a school meal program, getting children with IEPs to their appointments or helping health workers with their child transportation needs, we’re all in this together.
We are also committed to supporting HopSkipDrive CareDrivers’ health and safety. We offer free telehealth and diagnostic services through a partnership with Ro and are in constant contact with drivers regarding new partnerships and what the various benefits are out there for them. We are also providing hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes for CareDrivers as a measure to further protect CareDrivers as well as riders.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Our team at RepairSmith is rallying to support the communities we serve in a big way. We’re donating $100,000 in free “no-contact car repair” to people who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic and those on the front lines, like government workers, service workers, delivery drivers, healthcare professionals, employees of grocery stores and pharmacies and volunteers. We believe it’s simply the right thing to do to help relieve financial burden for the heroes and victims of the pandemic — and to help essential workers get where they need to go safely.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Giving back is something we’ve been passionate about since RepairSmith was founded. When we began to see the need for community support on all fronts in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, we knew we had to step in to help. While we could have never truly planned for this program given how quickly the outbreak intensified, our team did an incredible job of conceptualizing the initiative and mobilizing to make it happen in just a matter of days.
This is RepairSmith’s largest philanthropic initiative to date and one that has already begun to make a meaningful impact on the community. We have been inundated with applications since launching the program in late March and plan to support hundreds of deserving neighbors over the next few months.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We’re in an unprecedented time that has created so many challenges, leading us to create new ways to help our customers and the broader community in Los Angeles and beyond. We have adapted our “side hustle” feature — which connects people with jobs — to include more jobs that can be done from home like Swagbucks and SurveyJunkie. Between March 15 and 29, 70,000 Dave customers turned to the feature for remote work opportunities, 30,000 of which are based in Los Angeles.
Additionally, Dave has donated $250,000 to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund, which will help to address hunger caused by the pandemic at Los Angeles food banks and across the country.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
COVID-19 has caused many Americans to lose their source of income. Coupled with the closures of most schools — which many children rely on for regular meals — Feeding America expects food insecurity to rise in the coming weeks. To address these concerns for Dave’s customers and the broader U.S. community, Dave is expanding its existing partnership with Feeding America through its donation to their COVID-19 Fund.
This is a continuation of Dave’s ongoing relationship with Feeding America, which provides a “meal match” where Dave donates a meal to Feeding America in return for certain actions within the app, such as referring a friend.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
MobilityWare is helping to flatten the curve by participating in the #PlayApartTogether initiative, which promotes healthy physical distancing. We’ve also forged a partnership with Vungle and others in the mobile advertising community to make it easier for our players to make much-needed donations to BuildAid and other well-known entities who are aiding to combat the pandemic.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
Our charitable efforts are normally more local in nature. For example, we’ve partnered with Second Harvest Food Bank and cancer support organizations that are based in Orange County. With the global nature of COVID-19, we have the opportunity to offer our support to the international community. With just these two initiatives, MobilityWare and its partners are able to reach people in need around the world.
As a part of the #PlayApartTogether initiative, MobilityWare will bring players exclusive in-game events, activities and rewards across our portfolio of titles to promote social distancing in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus. We are also working with Vungle and other participating ad networks to help support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, SpecialEffect, BuildAid and other charities.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
I’ve been working closely with the founders and CEOs from several of LA’s homegrown tech companies to launch LA-Tech.org, a non-profit coalition run entirely by local tech CEOs from Blackline, Factual, Zefr, HopSkipDrive, Comparably, Thrive Market and ServiceTitan. Our goal is to give back to the community that has allowed us to grow and become successful by applying the power and compassion of the LA tech community to the challenges facing our city’s most vulnerable populations. By investing in our local talent through partnerships with some of LA’s most impactful community organizations, we can expand economic opportunity and ensure the diverse and vibrant future of our growing tech sector.
How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events?
In light of COVID-19, one of LA-Tech.org’s first major initiatives was to create #StepUpForLA, a fundraiser to provide rapid relief to our fellow Angelenos by stepping up in two ways: to feed 1,000 of our food-insecure neighbors and to reconnect 1,000 foster youth to their education by gifting them laptops. We have an aggressive goal to raise $415,000 in the next few weeks and have invited the LA community to contribute to the cause. Dozens of tech companies have stepped up to join us, and myself and LA-Tech.org co-founder Therese Tucker, CEO of Blackline, have agreed to match all incoming donations. We invite all of our partners, colleagues, competitors and friends to come together and do what the tech community does best: lead the way to improving people’s lives.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We’ve started offering 30 minutes of free human resources consultation to any business owner during these difficult times, whether they’re a Bambee client or not. We’ve also made our coronavirus webinars, FAQs and policy templates available for free on our website. Most small business owners have never had to deal with furloughs before — let alone the brand-new regulations from the Families First Act — and we want to alleviate the confusion and help keep people in business in any way we can.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
During this time of necessary isolation, telehealth is empowering healthcare providers to deliver care — and calm. Our entire team at PatientPop has been working tirelessly to launch PatientPop Telehealth, a virtual healthcare solution that allows providers to continue to care for their patients virtually amid the COVID-19 crisis.
In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We’ve always believed in utilizing our engineering, business and financial resources to help our creator community thrive. We feel that our diverse community’s stories are incredibly important, especially during these times when so many people are sheltering in place. Their stories have the opportunity to provide entertainment, comfort, escape, catharsis, community and so much more. So for our creator community, we’ll be waiving the fees and commissions associated with our open ad revenue program, along with our internal microtransaction-based crowdsourcing feature starting April 3. Creators will be earning and taking home 100 percent of the revenue from those programs during the month of April.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
We will be donating 50,000 meals to Feeding America to assist our neighbors in need during this time of uncertainty. Together, we can extend our reach beyond screens and impact our communities in a positive way.
How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why?
Our mission at Finli is to help neighborhood schools and studios manage their businesses, starting with our first product, an app that digitizes and simplifies the payment process. This product has been critical to many of our clients who have had to switch from offering classes in person to online. Talking to our clients, we realized that there was more we could do to advance our mission.
Being able to accept payments digitally was one thing, but having customers willing to take classes online was another. As a fintech company well connected in the business community, we decided to focus on this problem. In response, we launched #standupforsmallbusiness, a platform connecting these neighborhood studios and schools with corporations and employees looking to support small businesses or learn a new skill virtually.
This is a win-win in these tough times: the schools and studios get a much-needed revenue boost from new customers and corporations can offer classes to their work from home employees looking for connection, all while giving back to the community in a real and direct way. The messages of support and gratitude have been incredible.
We’ve opened up our classes beyond our client base to include any neighborhood school or studio that could use the revenue. Our classes range from “learn to draw your fruit bowl” to “tai chi it up in your living room” and “drumboxing 101.” We’ve always been a mission-driven company and we are grateful to be able to help during this time of need.
