Based in Arlington, Va., NAMI, the United States’ largest grassroots mental health organization, has independent affiliates throughout the nation. Their mission is to provide advocacy, education, support and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives. It’s a mission PagerDuty proudly supports. They offer multiple programs, including free education and support groups led by those with lived experience with mental health issues. 

A key service and common first point of contact is NAMI’s HelpLine. The nationwide peer-support service provides information, resource referrals and support to people living with a mental health condition, their family members and caregivers, mental health providers and the public. The HelpLine is largely staffed by volunteers who answer questions, offer support and provide practical next steps. In 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the HelpLine was overwhelmed and stretched to its limit. 

Pandemic Increases Need For NAMI’s Services 

The pandemic sparked a huge increase in the need for NAMI’s resources and support. According to The World Health Organization, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25 percent during the first two years of the pandemic. 

At the same time, NAMI saw its HelpLine inquiries skyrocket. “In May of 2020, HelpLine calls went up more than 50 percent,” said Jessica Edwards, Chief Development Officer at NAMI. “The demand increased for our virtual support groups, our HelpLine, our resources online. Everything increased in a very dramatic way because people were really struggling,” Edwards said. 

The surge didn’t stop after that first month or even that year. The need for NAMI’s services became more crucial, especially as talking openly about mental health conditions became more accepted by society at large. “One of the only bright spots of the pandemic was that mental health finally got the attention that it really needed, because it was more comfortable for people to say they were not OK,” Edwards said.

PagerDuty’s Impact Pricing Allows NAMI to Expand Services 

NAMI needed a way to scale and meet this growing demand for the HelpLine. When they were introduced to PagerDuty and learned about Impact Pricing for nonprofit customers, NAMI found a way to solve its technology needs, giving the HelpLine a much-needed boost. The ability to streamline their on-call schedule and simplify how volunteers were made aware of a crisis call allowed NAMI to scale for the increased demand for the HelpLine.  

With the support of PagerDuty, NAMI was able to add 40 new HelpLine volunteers and several new full-time staff. “We’re now able to keep pace with necessary capacity for volunteer support, as well as expand our offerings,” Edwards said. “More people are calling the HelpLine,” she added. “More people are wanting guidance and information. So, the more we’re able to leverage technology like PagerDuty to have more volunteers, the more people we can help.”

Partnering With PagerDuty to Provide More Support

Eliminating the stigma of mental health and steering the public conversation around resources and support is the main focus for NAMI. With help from PagerDuty, they plan to expand services, such as increasing the number of bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking HelpLine volunteers and interns. This gives more access to services to more people in need. 

“PagerDuty is a company and an organization that is authentic in leveraging technology for social change and social good,” Edwards said. “They really make a change and make a difference. And in our social impact world, these are the kinds of companies that NAMI loves to work and partner with.”

Learn more about PagerDuty’s Impact Pricing and see how we help nonprofits accelerate their work and reach. Get started now with our free 14-day trial.

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Our commitment to both social impact work and our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes is shared by both the company’s leadership and employees. As we have advanced our ESG programs and investments, laying the groundwork for new commitments and continued progress in the year ahead, this work gives PagerDuty a new avenue to create value for our customers and other stakeholders in pursuit of our shared societal and environmental goals. 

In 2017, we committed  to Pledge 1%, a corporate philanthropy movement dedicated to making the larger community a key stakeholder in every business. For us, that meant donating 1% of equity, 1% of product, and 1% of employee time to give back. 

Our commitment drove the launch of PagerDuty.org five years ago, the company’s social impact arm, which works to empower mission-driven teams to build a more equitable world and sustainable future. PagerDuty.org applies an integrated approach that mobilizes our technology platform, philanthropic investments, people, and voice to amplify the work of social impact organizations. Our early intention was to “empower those working to make a difference in the world and to use our technology to solve intractable challenges,” and through experimentation, iteration, and scaling of our programs, we’ve realized this vision. 

We recognize that our company’s commitment to building a more equitable world and sustainable future is a continuous journey. Given the function’s fifth  anniversary, we are pausing to reflect on the journey and celebrate some of our key accomplishments over the last five years. 

Here are five key things we’ve learned during our first five years:

1) Institutionalize your vision (and impact): Building an equitable world is part of our corporate vision and has been integral to our company’s ethos. That’s why it made sense to make the Pledge 1% commitment early in our journey toward becoming a public company. 

2) Invest beyond the money: From the start, we dedicated the internal resourcing and expertise required to make this work successful, such as bringing on a senior-level leader from the beginning, establishing the PagerDuty.org Advisory Board to provide leadership and oversight to support our strategic vision, and establishing our CFO as the executive sponsor for our ESG work. 

3) Drive momentum through accountability and transparency: PagerDuty is in the business of operationalizing trust. You see that reflected in our reporting on our social impact outcomes less than two years into the program’s tenure, with the publication of our first ESG disclosures less than three years into the program.

This year, as part of our accountability to our internal and external stakeholders for  responsible business practices, we are also refreshing our materiality assessment, defining science-based targets, and laying out a climate action plan. 

4) Align the entire  business: Leveraging our greatest assets—our people, product, and business practices—is critical to maximizing impact. It’s this holistic framework that enables us to realize our company vision and provide holistic support to community partners and Impact Customers by solving complex social and environmental challenges. By aligning the entire business, we’re positioned to meet the evolving needs of all our stakeholders: our employees, customers, communities, investors, and the planet.

One example of our work to embed social impact across the entire employee lifecycle is our recent analysis with our People team which  shows an empirical positive correlation between volunteerism and employee retention and engagement.

5) Invest in social impact work and realize the far-reaching benefits: We spent the first five years building the foundation, experimenting and iterating, staying curious, and gathering relevant data to inform our future investments. We’re building deeper partnerships with our social impact customers and diversifying our philanthropic investments through creative capital mechanisms like mission-related and impact investments. Additionally, we support PagerDuty’s employee acquisition and retention strategy with integrated programs that drive an impact mindset and inspire employees to take action.

Our customers and communities are central to everything we do at PagerDuty. PagerDuty.org’s partnership model mobilizes our product, people, funding, and voice to help nonprofits and mission-driven organizations accelerate their vital work. A few highlights from our partners include:  

• We support The Trevor Project in keeping their suicide hotline running 24/7, ensuring fewer interruptions to their suicide-prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. 

• We partnered with SIRUM to prioritize critical work, connecting people with surplus life-saving medications by helping organizations like nursing homes, pharmacies, and manufacturers donate their unused medicine and get it to where it’s needed most. 

• PagerDuty’s technology, unrestricted grant funding, and pro bono technical expertise help ensure that Trek Medics International deploys emergency responders in underserved communities around the world. 

“As a nonprofit organization, we’re counting our pennies every day and we are dependent on the generosity of others,” said Jason Friesen, Founder and Executive Director at Trek Medics International. “We have to watch our budget very closely. PagerDuty’s holistic support makes it totally possible for us to work at full capacity without having to make any trade-offs or compromise any of our services.”

At PagerDuty, we view addressing our environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) risks and opportunities as fundamental to practicing business responsibly and creating value for all stakeholders, and we continue to set meaningful and measurable goals and to integrate ESG activities into our business strategy. We’ve made strong progress in the past five years, and we will continue to hold ourselves accountable to deliver value across our stakeholders as we forge ahead in this next half of our first decade. 

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At PagerDuty, our Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders and regional community social impact leads help drive collective impact across the company by supporting our impact customers and community partners. Since 2019, we’ve provided resources to these leaders to build regional, community-centered partnerships and engage PagerDuty employees (colloquially referred to as Dutonians) in meaningful opportunities to give back to their communities. In 2022, we formalized this program by earmarking $60,000 from our donor-advised fund for these social impact leaders to allocate as community grants. To support partner selection in line with our equity framework and grantmaking practices, we designed and led trainings, tools and templates. By the end of the year, 85% of our social impact leaders had allocated funds to 12 organizations globally by applying a partner-centered approach rooted in our cultural value of championing the customer, which emphasizes putting users first and making it easy for them to partner with us. 

Sharing decision-making power to further equity  

The PagerDuty.org Fund is funded by our Pledge 1% equity commitment and Dutonians across the globe contribute to the value of our impact fund by driving our company’s success. Empowering them to have a say in how and where philanthropic dollars are directed is one of the ways we practice equity and power-sharing in our philanthropy work. We partnered closely with PagerDuty’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) team to build this program. “By enabling our ERG leaders with the agency to establish long-term partnerships with organizations that support the demographic they serve, we help expand the scope of impact and their motivation to incite meaningful change. This program embodies our cultural value to #TakeTheLead by increasing access to corporate resources for our emerging leaders,” said Carmel Ulbrick, Senior ID&E Program Manager at PagerDuty. 

Spotlighting our community partners 

Last year, Dutonian social impact leaders helped distribute funds to 12 organizations through this program with some positive early results. One of the partners funded through the program is Kids in Tech, whose mission is to excite, educate, and empower kids from low-income households to be leaders in the 21st century innovation economy. “With PagerDuty’s support, we were able to invest in building our resources to expand the number of kids we reach with our programming by 60%,” said Olu Ibrahim, Founder and CEO at Kids in Tech.

The impact of our community grant program has also been felt by our social impact leaders. “Alongside my Atlanta colleagues and RiSE ERG members, I am passionate about serving our local community through youth mentorship. With PagerDuty’s grant, our community partner Empowr can launch mentorship programs and buy necessary supplies to teach Atlanta’s Black and Latine high schoolers coding. In addition to grant funding, Dutonians aim to regularly volunteer with the Empowr team and students this year to help further their impact,” said Mya King, who co-leads RiSE, our ERG that supports PagerDuty’s Black employees.

“PatriotDuty is committed to supporting the veteran community and recognizes the valuable skills and experience they bring to the workforce. We’re partnering with Hire Heroes USA to help veterans successfully transition into civilian careers. Our partnership will assist 16,000 veterans in transitioning into the workforce with an average starting salary of $60,000 and support them with career advice, training, coaching and mentoring,” said Donavon Roberson, who co-leads PatriotDuty, our ERG that supports veterans.

What’s next for our community grantmaking program

At PagerDuty, we continuously work to foster a culture of changemakers where employees can thrive, grow and positively impact their communities. The community grantmaking program is an innovative benefit we offer social impact leaders across the company to engage their teams and expand a social impact mindset across the business. As we continue to invest in PagerDuty’s social impact leaders and our community partnerships, we are building additional tools and training for our leaders to begin tracking the intended impact of the community grants. Transparent learning and open sourcing tools is integral to our impact approach. As part of this commitment to ongoing learning, we will share our training materials and process through the peer communities that we are a part of, including the Pledge 1% and Impact Cloud communities. 

Learn more about broader impact work through our recently published annual Impact Report and learn more about each of the organizations funded through this community grantmaking program by clicking on the logos below.

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Our report describes the work we’ve done over the past year to advance social impact and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) through our levers of change—the actions we take or assets we leverage to effect or influence positive systemic change— across all our stakeholders. It contains critical data and metrics from our cross-functional Social Impact team, including our ESG disclosures. In it, we shine a spotlight on some of the mission-critical organizations that benefit from our affordable product access and investments in our key areas of Time-Critical Health and Climate Equity. We also highlight Dutonian Changemakers—a few of the many employees who embody our commitment to social impact through their actions and efforts.

Read the full PagerDuty Fiscal Year 2023 Social Impact Report, published today.

How we seek to build an equitable world and sustainable future

Our approach to social impact continues to evolve to maximize our ability to influence positive systemic change. We apply a “levers of change” framework that guides how we accelerate outcomes for all stakeholders, including our employees, customers, communities, investors, and the planet. These levers—our products, philanthropic funding, employee expertise, planetary commitments, and responsible business practices—help us realize our vision for a more equitable world and sustainable future. 

Below, I break down what each lever means, and highlight some of the successes we’ve achieved under each in the last year.

1. Our products: We deploy PagerDuty’s platform to support nonprofits, B Corps, and higher education organizations in delivering on their mission-critical work.

• We enhanced our Impact Pricing offering to nonprofits and B Corps to provide increased product discounts (40% discount on all products and services beyond the initial 5 free licenses), and expanded eligibility to include higher education institutions, resulting in a 67% increase in new applicants.
• We served 306 Impact Customers through our Impact Pricing offering.

“Too often, corporations that offer free or discounted services to nonprofits end their engagement with NGOs after they have provided the licensing. PagerDuty has taken the time to ensure that those who benefit from their impact programs are truly positioned for success.”— Chris Hillis (he/him), Co-Founder, Information Technology Disaster Resource Center

2. Philanthropic investments: We’re mobilizing our funding, product, people, and voice to meet our partners’ needs.

• We deployed $1.25M in our two portfolio areas of Time-Critical Health and Climate Equity. 
• We provided $1.2M in product discounts and product donations to impact organizations.
• We launched the PagerDuty Impact Accelerator, providing $800,000 in unrestricted funding to four tech-forward organizations, along with product credits and discounts, technical pro bono support, and voice amplification. 
• 90% of our philanthropic investments support organizations led by a woman or a non-majority leader.

“PagerDuty is a valuable funder and partner, willing to design programs with us specifically in mind. We are a software company building tech for good, and as our tech stack becomes bigger and more complicated, solutions like PagerDuty become more important. PagerDuty allows us to prioritize and identify potential issues quickly, so that we can focus on the things most important to our users.”— Kiah Williams (she/her), Co-Founder, SIRUM

3. Our people: We are building a culture of changemakers, where employees can thrive, grow, and positively impact their communities. 

• We reached parity in global gender pay equity, and improved pay equity for our U.S.-based underrepresented population to within one cent ($0.99 to $1.00). 
• Our Board is diverse in both gender and race/ethnicity, with 44% of our Board identifying as women and 67% identifying as racially diverse. 
• 95% of global employees volunteered or donated to a cause.
• 90% of employees cited PagerDuty’s social impact work as making them proud to work for the company.

“Social impact is a big part of why I joined PagerDuty. Being able to work somewhere I can grow in my career and give back to my community makes me proud to work at PagerDuty. Social impact and inclusion is at the core of our culture and PagerDuty.org makes it easy for every employee to be aware of and contribute to great causes.” — Kent Chao (he/him), VP, Finance

4. Planet stewardship: We are working across our value chain to help create an inclusive, low-carbon economy.

• We completed four years’ worth of carbon footprints, with expanded analyses of our value-chain emissions for FY22 and FY23. 
• We will submit science-based climate targets in FY24 with a plan to address these reduction focus areas: workplace, data center providers, business travel, and value-chain emissions.

5. Responsible business practices: We’re institutionalizing ESG into how we operate as a company.

• We improved or maintained strong ESG ratings, including EcoVadis Silver for the second year in a row and top 25% in the tech industry for our inaugural S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment.
• We appointed our first Chief Information Security Officer to oversee our data privacy, security, and ethics. 

What’s next

We’ve made great progress around our social impact goals, but we know there is always more work to do. In the next year, we plan to:

• Perform a double materiality assessment to reevaluate and recommit to our ESG priority focus areas.
• Submit science-based climate targets and develop a cross-discipline climate action plan to support the global need to limit warming to 1.5°C, as laid out by the Paris Agreement.
• Launch an inaugural corporate match program that will match employee philanthropic donations.

PagerDuty views its social and environmental risks and opportunities as fundamental to practicing business responsibility and creating value for all stakeholders. Integrating Social Impact and sustainability policies and practices, and ESG metrics, into each business function is key to our leadership as a purpose-driven company.

Read the full PagerDuty Fiscal Year 2023 Social Impact Report.

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Based on these learnings, partner conversations, and our continued commitment to mobilize our resources for good, we are launching our newest funding program — Impact Labs. The goal of Impact Labs is to help tech-forward organizations in our focus areas of time-critical health and climate equity amplify their impact with full-spectrum support — providing unrestricted funding, product credits and discounts, technical pro bono support, story telling, and voice amplification to four organizations over a 24-month period.

Practicing trust-based philanthropy 

At PagerDuty.org, we have been on a journey to embody trust-based practices across all of our work to guide how we build nurturing, transparent relationships and share power with our partners. We understand that mission-driven organizations are the experts because they are the most proximate to, and therefore best positioned to solve, the challenges they are focused on. We view our role as an amplifier and seek to design programs that center around the needs of our social impact partners. 

We designed Impact Labs with an eye toward transparency and equity by sharing our selection criteria with interested organizations and structuring our outreach and discovery process to lessen the fundraising burden for our partners. To ensure diverse perspectives were considered, shortlisted organizations were reviewed by a PagerDuty Advisory Council comprising PagerDuty.org team members as well as teammates from across the company. 

Impact Labs partners 

Today, I’m delighted to announce our inaugural cohort of Impact Labs partners — an inspiring group of organizations with missions rooted in time-critical health and climate equity. Each of these organizations will receive $200,000 in unrestricted funding, product credits and discounts, technical pro bono support, and storytelling and voice amplification over the next 24 months. These organizations and their leaders represent our commitment to bring a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens to our philanthropic giving and channel funds where there are massive funding gaps. For example, 58% of BIPOC-led organizations received corporate funding in 2021, compared with 71% of white-led organizations. Further, there is a $2.7 billion funding gap between BIPOC-led and white-led environmental organizations. 

We are excited to embark on a long-term partnership with our new Impact Labs partners. 

Intelehealth connects last-mile communities with uninterrupted healthcare by providing telemedicine software and digital infrastructure to government health facilities and nongovernmental organizations that provide healthcare in low and middle income countries. Intelehealth’s current work is focused on India and Kyrgyzstan, and they are expanding to additional low- and middle-income countries. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Intelehealth to improve their platform on scalability, usability and user experience, data use, clinical decision support, interoperability, privacy, and security. 

NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health advocacy organization and the NAMI HelpLine is a cornerstone of their work, touching 100,000 lives every year. NAMI’s programs reach people across the United States through 600 local Affiliates and 49 State Organizations. NAMI recently onboarded as a PagerDuty.org impact customer to enhance their incident notification workflows as they scale their HelpLine. Participating in Impact Labs will help NAMI develop culturally resonant Spanish translations of Helpline resources, recruit volunteers for Spanish HelpLine support, and expand HelpLine hours by an additional 24 hours/week. 

Replate is reducing food waste, a major contributor to climate change, by leveraging technology, and improving access to nutritious food by redistributing surplus food to community organizations that serve people experiencing food insecurity. Replate has programs across the United States and Canada. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Replate to scale their impact by expanding their network of food donor businesses and integrating onto the PagerDuty platform to synchronize data across their digital systems to conduct more seamless food recovery. 

Sibel Health has developed and is scaling an FDA-cleared wearable monitoring tool to reduce health inequities and drive improved outcomes for pregnant people and premature neonates by helping medical staff identify and address drivers of maternal and neonatal mortality. Sibel implements programs in 24 countries globally. Participating in Impact Labs will enable Sibel to augment their monitoring tool with additional telehealth features to better serve both underserved populations in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries. By onboarding onto the PagerDuty platform, they envision using our technology to help triage lower acuity technical failures with critical outputs that require immediate clinical attention. 

Tracking progress

In the spirit of our trust-based practice, we asked each organization to share organizational metrics that they will track for the duration of the Impact Labs program. In addition to each organization’s self-defined metrics, we will hold ourselves accountable to delivering value through Impact Labs by measuring successful onboarding onto the PagerDuty platform, partner engagement and satisfaction, mid-point technical “health checks”, and publishing partner stories. 

As we continue on this journey, we will share our learnings and spotlight our partners and the incredible work they are doing to make this world more equitable.

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A key insight of our initial work in climate equity is that as a technology company, an important (and often overlooked) way to add value is by showing up with humility, listening, and investing in systems change. We are also committed to sharing our learnings with others so that we can build on each other’s work in a generative, rather than duplicative—or even extractive—way. 

We are excited to share this conversation with The Solutions Project, one of our climate equity grant partners. We spoke with Sarah Shanley Hope, Vice President of Narrative Strategies, to learn more about why we need an equity lens to mitigate the climate crisis and how supporting grassroots movements and leaders is an important way to drive change. 

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Sarah, can you tell us one thing that people who aren’t familiar with The Solutions Project should know about the work you do?

Our purpose is to fund and popularize climate justice solutions that are rooted in the communities that are at the front lines of the climate crisis. These are largely communities of color—Black, Indigenous, immigrant, AAPI, Latinx—communities that have been experiencing the worst of pollution and the climate crisis for decades. We know that those who are closest to the problems are also the first to find solutions. This is why we, The Solutions Project, exist—we see our role as supporting grassroots organizations in the United States and Puerto Rico on the frontlines of the climate crisis by providing grants and media training, and serving as a platform to amplify the voices of community leaders.  

For those of us who may be new to the climate equity space, can you tell us what climate equity means  and why it’s important? 

I think it’s important to name what the dominant climate and environmental lens is because that’s what needs to be disrupted. The dominant lens is that climate change is strictly about greenhouse gas emissions. There are three reasons to expand this very singular lens to a more integrated one of climate and equity.  

First, if we actually want to achieve emission reductions at the scale and speed that the science tells us we need to, then we have to look at who’s creating the most scalable solutions. An amazing organization that we work with, Native Renewables, is a perfect example among hundreds of others I could share. They have built affordable off-grid solar photovoltaic systems for Navajo and Hopi families living without electricity and primarily using diesel generators, today. Now, the challenge is how we take what they’ve created and help them scale it, because there are millions of households in the rural United States and across the world that would benefit from this technology. So, the number one reason to integrate climate and equity is that this lens creates solutions that can be scaled and adopted in the vast majority of the global context. 

The second reason is about politics. We now have a diverse and younger voting and elected official demographic here in the United States. And, the political pathway to scaling green infrastructure is by addressing inequities and understanding the needs of “working class voters.” This group includes women, young people, and people of color who are feeling the impact of the climate crisis and are voting to push local and federal governments to fund green infrastructure, create good green jobs, ensure affordable housing and healthy places to live.  

The third reason is moral. We have to understand the history of which communities have borne the brunt of our dirty energy economy over centuries; this is key to building a just transition to a green economy. 

What does it mean to show up as a trust-based funder? How do you measure and evaluate your impact? 

People who are passionate about climate change usually start by asking themselves, “What can I do?” We shift that approach to ask: “Who am I with?” Then, “What can we do together? Or “What’s already happening that I can support?” 

When The Solutions Project was founded, we had a simple goal—100% renewable energy for 100% of the people. Very early on, we recognized that social change happens by rooting in ground-up movements for change. An idea like 100% renewable energy has actual meaning in the neighborhood organizations that meet the needs of their communities for healthy air, affordable utilities, and reliable infrastructure. From our earliest days, our grantmaking has brought dollars into these grassroots organizations. We trust that communities that are closest to the problem are going to be the first to the solution, and what they need are true partners who can respond to their requests for more momentum, money, and media attention for their successes. 

Under the leadership of our CEO/ED,Gloria Walton, who came to the organization following decades building power in frontline communities, The Solutions Project now aspires to solidarity philanthropy. The difference between solidarity and trust is that solidarity involves showing up and mobilizing resources, co-creating, and sharing power with our partners. Solidarity comes through relationships that build trust. 

So this gets to the impact measurement question. The status quo in philanthropy is laborious reports that require hours and hours of work. Funders ask for proof of every cent spent and the impact it achieved. Trust-based philanthropy takes away the laboriousness but it’s the same process: “Here’s an application, here’s a report format. Make the case for your work.” Instead of taking 20 hours, it takes five. Solidarity puts the onus on us. We spend our resources building media capacity for our grantees because what better indicator of impact and success than a Washington Post journalist deciding to write a story on a grantees’ success, for example. We also do an annual evaluation of ourselves through an independent evaluator to measure if we are effective, if we are doing what we say we are doing. 

In the midst of constant dire news on the climate crisis, what gives you hope?

The climate crisis can be really overwhelming. It can feel very doom and gloom. So another thing I want people to know about The Solutions Project is that we’re your folks if you want to find hope. I’m not talking about hope in a bottle. I’m talking about real gritty, powerful hope that comes from a relentless determination to figure out the best solutions for really complicated problems. And frontline communities, communities of color that face the compounding crises of climate, pollution, a dirty economy, racism—they’re not waiting for somebody to come in and save them. They are solving big, complex problems and their communities are where we find hope. 

Let me tell you a little more about Native Renewables so you have a clearer picture of their impact and hope “in action.” They bring solar power to families in Navajo and Hopi nations. The organization is founded and staffed by Navajo and Hopi people. Theircommunities have faced genocide, displacement, and continued disinvestment by the U.S. government; at least 15,000 homes Navajo homes have no electricity. Native Renewables founders Dr. Suzanne Singer and Wahleah Johns built an off-grid photovoltaic system right-sized from a cost perspective to replace what Native families were paying for diesel fuel to power generators. Their team has installed more than 100 kilowatts, bringing clean electricity to dozens of homes. The organization also built a workforce development program that provides Navajo and Hopi people with training and skill building needed to install and maintain the off-grid photovoltaic systems. This is just an incredible and hopeful example of what’s possible when communities have the resources to build solutions for themselves.

How can PagerDuty and peer tech companies best support you and the communities you serve?

Join us. No grant is too big or too small for The Solutions Project and our partners. I mentioned Native Renewables earlier. We know exactly how much those off-grid photovoltaic systems cost and what we need to scale them. Our partners have the solutions. They need the support to scale them. Our partners are hungry and ready for expanded support like marketing, design and communications expertise.  The longer-term opportunities lie in thinking through how we bring the best of Silicon Valley and these technologies in support of the climate justice movement through the practice of solidarity. We’re not talking about charity. We’re talking about rooting in trust, and it’s aspiring to show up in new and innovative ways. 

How do you and your partners think about the potential role technology can play in accelerating solutions?

I know there’s an actual match to be made between our two sectors, but I’m not sure how to go about it in a way that truly breaks the status quo. So I return to those questions: Who am I with? What can we do together? What’s already out there that we can complement and integrate with?  As a technologist, you have to ask “Am I willing to be influenced? Am I willing to collaborate?” True collaboration means balancing listening and telling. It means not being in denial about where your expertise really lies when your goal is to solve social injustices. 

As we build partnerships and explore how technology can help, the first thing we need is shared values. When we were first introduced to PagerDuty, it was your value system that most impressed us and made us feel like we can actually go on a journey together. 

Can you share 1-2 actions our readers can take to support TSP’s work and further the outcomes you are working toward?

Yes! Visit TheSolutionsProject.org or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to learn more about climate justice solutions you can amplify or support. We also have a map of our grantees on the website that you can check out. As you consider your year-end giving, we hope you’ll find at least one new climate justice organization to donate to! 

The post Showing Up for Climate Equity Finds Hope: An Inspiring Conversation with The Solutions Project appeared first on PagerDuty.

In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, however, it’s estimated that only about 28% of hospitals have reliable electricity. With little to no data to understand how and when power outages occur, it has become increasingly challenging for the hospital staff to manage. 

Nexleaf Analytics is working to solve this challenge. Nexleaf creates data and technology solutions for better health outcomes in low and middle income countries. They work alongside health advocates, governments, and local communities to provide actionable data for decision-making at scale. Their mission is to ensure countries have the data they need to build lasting solutions that improve people’s health.

The Case for Data and Analytics

Having an unreliable power source causes a myriad of problems for rural hospitals. For example, many rely on diesel generators when they have unreliable power. Although this is the only way to ensure backup power, it’s also a costly and inefficient workaround for unstable power systems. Most of these facilities lack baseline data to track the trends in outages, which means the hospital staff play a guessing game of when there will be an outage and are constantly on high-alert. It also causes problems forecasting budgets for diesel fuel expenses. 

Without data showing exactly how long and costly these outages are, it’s difficult for these hospitals to justify additional funds. “Our main aim was to document demand for power data and to also understand what problems and challenges exist that could be assisted by having visibility in data,” said Amos Momanyi, Medical Equipment Project Manager for Nexleaf Analytics. 

A pilot program between PagerDuty, Nexleaf and the Center for Public Health and Development was implemented to understand how and when outages occur, and to establish protocols for maintaining healthcare facilities when outages happen. The program was implemented in 15 rural hospitals in Kenya with a few goals in mind:

• Document the demand for power data
• Understand the problems and challenges that could be assisted by having visibility in data
• Understand how alerts and data could help resolve power outages

The Power of PagerDuty

Nexleaf deployed PagerDuty and connected IoT sensors to provide notifications to hospital staff via SMS and an online application. This allowed the staff to easily understand the root cause of power outages. One hospital, for example, found that they were sharing electricity with a neighboring facility, triggering power outages at 6 a.m. They shifted energy usage to different times of day to maintain a predictable energy supply–  a simple solution, but one that would otherwise be invisible to the team without data from PagerDuty.

The data from the PagerDuty platform also helped medical facilities explain their need for increased diesel and justify why they were over budget. Even better, the data helped improve the accuracy of their financial projections for the months ahead.

Most importantly, real-time notifications from PagerDuty meant that biomedical engineers were not required to be at the facility to know when an outage was happening. After receiving an alert, hospital employees could act quickly to reconnect power to the facility. This eliminated the need to manually monitor their backup power, and prevented blackouts with potentially major consequences on patient outcomes. “With PagerDuty, teams could ensure that no fatalities happened because of equipment failure due to loss of power,” said Momanyi.

The Future Looks Bright

With the success of the pilot, hospitals and their staff found a number of solutions. Hospital employees worked to determine use cases for power data that could help them make effective and efficient decisions around management of power at their facilities. Facilities are keeping PagerDuty in place and Nexleaf is expanding to new facilities. 

For more on Nexleaf Analytic’s journey, watch the full Summit ’22 session here.

Learn how real-time operations from PagerDuty powers nonprofits, or try a 14-day free trial today.

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• Five free Professional user licences 
• 40% off additional product
• Expanded onboarding and training resources

We know that in today’s digital economy, seconds matter. Maybe even more so for mission-driven and nonprofit organizations, where seconds can be a matter of life and death. Whether operating a suicide or safety hotline, delivering disaster relief, time-critical healthcare, or food stamps—such services rely on round-the-clock availability. PagerDuty’s real-time operations platform guarantees reliability and uptime, so that mission-driven organizations can be assured the constituents and communities they work for will never be without their services.

Our vision at PagerDuty is an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust. Enhanced Impact Pricing supports this vision by making PagerDuty accessible to more teams from IT to business operations such as constituent service and support. This is particularly important at a time when prices are rising universally and many organizations are working with additional resourcing constraints. We also know that mission-driven teams are committed to being the best stewards of the resources they have, and Impact Pricing helps them meet this goal.

Deepening PagerDuty’s Social Impact 

Our work through PagerDuty.org, the company’s social impact arm, is a vital part of how we support PagerDuty’s broader vision of an equitable world. PagerDuty.org mobilizes company assets across our product, people, and philanthropic funding to help organizations save lives by reaching people faster and to advance justice and equity. Combining the capabilities of our platform and the expertise of Dutonians, we work with partners to solve complex social and environmental challenges that help move people from risk to thriving. 

In 2021, PagerDuty.org provided a total of $804,000 in platform discounts and donations to qualifying nonprofit organizations and B Corps through Impact Pricing. Here are just some of the organizations that we supported.

• Trek Medics improves emergency response for at-risk and vulnerable populations through innovative mobile phone technologies. It uses PagerDuty to support its Beacon communications platform, through which responders are alerted and coordinated in response to emergencies. 
• The Trevor Project is a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth. It uses PagerDuty to keep its suicide hotline and text services available and ready 24/7.
• Democracy Works helps Americans vote no matter what, by providing the tools and support needed to confidently participate in elections. It uses PagerDuty to keep its voter engagement platform, TurboVote, and its data tool, Voting Information Project (VIP), running around the clock.

You can learn more about our social impact work in our 2021 Impact Report, and key social and ESG outcomes here. 

Driving Positive Change Through 2022 and Beyond 

In concert with our improved Impact Pricing offering, we’re creating new programs to provide enhanced support to our nonprofit customers and PagerDuty.org grant partners. This includes “Health Check” services for our nonprofit customers that we are currently piloting. PagerDuty employees (Dutonians) provide pro bono expertise to nonprofit customers to ensure they are fully benefiting from the PagerDuty platform’s features and benefits. Health Checks will help nonprofit organizations ensure they have a solid foundation in place should they wish to extend the use of the PagerDuty real-time operations platform to other departments, teams, and use cases.

We’re also working with PagerDuty’s Services, Support, and Education teams to create new offerings for nonprofit users to help them adopt proven practices and drive better outcomes for their real-time digital operations. For more information, please contact support@pagerduty.com.

From time-critical health to civic engagement to reducing environmental impact, PagerDuty’s technology is the single most valuable asset we can bring to our nonprofit customers. We are committed to continuing to learn alongside our customers and partners to effectively apply our resources and expertise to create a responsive world where everyone has the freedom to thrive.

 To apply for Impact Pricing, visit: https://www.pagerduty.com/foundation-apply/. 

The post Helping More Non-Profit Organizations Leverage The Power Of PagerDuty through Impact Pricing appeared first on PagerDuty.

Today, I am delighted to launch PagerDuty’s 2021 Impact Report. 

Here’s the question we’re interested in: Is this world better off because PagerDuty is in it? We move in this direction by adopting a social impact mindset that asks us to examine and account for the way our actions, individually and jointly, impact the world around us. 

PagerDuty’s 2021 Impact Report describes the influence we had in 2021 through our social impact arm, PagerDuty.org, and in partnership with our customers, community partners, and Dutonians. This year’s report contains our inaugural environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures along with an expanded description of our social performance. The report is vital in ensuring we continue to be accountable to our stakeholders and communities, and transparent about how we measure and adapt our impact on the world.

Read the full PagerDuty Social Impact Report 2021, published here today.

Last year, our work was completed in the midst of the pandemic, deepening political schisms, and the acute need for greater racial justice. This year, the backdrop feels just as tumultuous. Collectively, we face many unknowns—from the climate crisis to global conflicts to increasing inequity. Yet I also know that when we join forces, we have far more power to engender greater justice, freedom, and health for all. 

How We Approach our Social Impact Work to Accelerate Change 

I am proud of the projects that we’ve supported, how we’ve helped nonprofit organizations and B Corps to achieve their missions, and how Dutonians have given back generously to their communities. These outcomes are led by three clear principles that guide our work and our partnerships. Because we’ve seen first-hand that how one makes an impact is as important as the impact itself. Here are the highlights.

1. We provide full-spectrum support. We mobilize company assets across our product, people, voice, and philanthropic funding, and tailor this support in the way that best serves our partners’ goals.
   • $1.87m in funding deployed to 668 organizations globally.
   • 75% of 2021 grantee organizations led by women and/or leaders of color.
   • 23,300 people received COVID-19 vaccine doses (via our investment in the Go Give One) campaign.
2. We practice trust-based and equitable grantmaking. A core operating principle is a trust-based, participatory approach to philanthropy.
   • We made investments to reduce health inequities and support equitable COVID-19 vaccine access, piloted grants in environmental justice, and launched the Employee Resource Group (ERG) Grantmaking Program.
   • Our grants are provided as unrestricted funding and we made our first multi-year grants, allowing organizations to innovate and make longer term program investments. 
   • We trust local leaders to apply resources where, and when, they are most needed because they hold insights into the issues, climate, and culture.
3. We cultivate an impact mindset. We examine how our actions, individually and collectively, affect the world around us. We empower every Dutonian to create this impact as a part of their core role.
   • 92% of Dutonians volunteered or donated to a cause.
   • 5,232 hours volunteered by Dutonians; an 83% increase compared to 2020.
   • 90% of Dutonians say the company’s social impact work makes them proud to work here.

In the full report, you can read in detail how some of our nonprofit customers have leveraged the PagerDuty platform to advance their work. This includes SIRUM, which is using PagerDuty to facilitate the distribution of unused prescribed medication in the United States. And WeRobotics, which is using PagerDuty to support incident response for drone field and operations support for COVID-19 vaccine delivery in Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines.

An ESG Roadmap to Guide our Company, and Contributions to Society and the Environment 

Formalizing and integrating ESG into our daily operations is critical to our resilience as a company, and aligned with our vision to contribute to an equitable and sustainable world. Our ESG program is a natural evolution of our social impact work. PagerDuty’s existing programs contribute to progress against 11 of the 17 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We’re making investments to advance these outcomes and to further align ESG within PagerDuty. In 2021, we identified material priorities, developed an ESG roadmap, assigned accountability, and targeted initial investments. In addition, we set benchmarks that we’ll use to measure our progress, including:

• Achieved gender pay equity within $0.01
• Achieved race/ethnicity pay equity within $0.02
• Built a diverse Board of Directors: 50% women and 75% underrepresented minorities
• Completed first Materiality Assessment to guide our ESG priorities
• Completed two years of Greenhouse Gas Inventories

The full report has more detail on our ESG programs—including our Inclusive Hiring Program, our Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) goals, and how we assess and reduce our environmental impact. 

What’s Ahead for 2022

While we’ve launched new programs to deliver greater value to our nonprofit customers, and built on early investments and learnings in Time-Critical Health and racial equity, we know there is more work to be done to create healthier and more equitable communities. 

In 2022, we will continue to put social impact at the core of PagerDuty’s business, including how PagerDuty’s technology can help customers cure delays in healthcare and reduce environmental impact, and how our social justice investments can most effectively eliminate systemic discrimination. We will launch Impact Labs, a new program that inverts our current model, and provides more than $1M in funding, product credits, and technical volunteer support for Time-Critical Health partners. We are also introducing new Impact Pricing to reduce cost barriers and enable nonprofits and certified B Corporations to expand their use of the PagerDuty platform. And we’re building a multi-dimensional Just & Equitable Communities strategy to guide long term investments in Climate Justice. We will continue to advance and report on our ESG priorities and progress.

These last few years have been a continuous beat of unknowns and of everyday resilience. Drawing inspiration from our partners, customers, and the communities we work in, we remain optimists. We will continue to work toward more justice, freedom, and health for all, as we move towards our vision of a responsive world where everyone has the freedom to thrive.

Read the full PagerDuty Social Impact Report 2021 here: https://impact-report.pagerduty.com/ 

To find out more about PagerDuty.org and our Impact Pricing for nonprofits and social enterprises, visit: https://www.pagerduty.com/foundation/.

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Our World, Our Goals

With a commitment to combatting systemic discrimination, we’ve expanded our work in addressing health inequities to another area impacted by structural racism—the effects of climate change and environmental pollution. With extreme weather events increasingly affecting more of our day-to-day lives and well-being, we are seeing more clearly the harm that climate change brings to the health of our communities. While these changes affect all of us, it is those with the fewest resources who will suffer the most. Notably, the health inequities we’ve witnessed in the pandemic response are mirrored in the way that persistent racial, class and gender inequalities leave many groups more vulnerable to the impacts of environmental hazards and climate change. A growing body of research is documenting how people of color, low-income communities, and indigenous people are disproportionately harmed by water and air pollution and toxic contamination. Though the practice of redlining was banned more than 50years ago, its effects continue to hurt communities of color today as historically redlined neighborhoods in U.S. cities experience hotter temperatures, with fewer trees and green spaces than non-redlined neighborhoods. Furthermore, these same groups are more likely to suffer the most severe harms from climate change—being least able to prepare for and recover from heat waves, flooding, wildfires, and the impacts of other extreme weather events. 

In order to tackle the disinvestment in communities of color, a root cause at the heart of this inequity, we must focus on a vision for environmental justice that is centered around the meaningful involvement of all people, especially those who have been disproportionately, and systemically, affected by the effects of pollution and climate change. In this window of opportunity, we have to reimagine a more equitable future, we need a socially just approach that doesn’t redline the effects of our environmental crisis. Ensuring that the most marginalized are protected from environmental hazards and the impacts of climate change, as well as emerging health threats, requires a collaborative and systemic approach.

In researching the field of climate philanthropy, we learned of another inequity: only 1.3% of funding from climate-focused funders was directed to BIPOC-led organizations addressing environmental justice. This imbalance has led the Donors of Color Network to create the Climate Funders Justice Pledge, asking the nation’s largest climate funders to commit publicly to greater transparency and to deploy at least 30% of their climate funding to BIPOC-led frontline groups. 

Investing in Future World Leaders

With a goal of advancing equity, we have been intentional across all our funding initiatives in supporting diverse leaders and organizations that empower communities of color. PagerDuty.org is building on our history of investing in organizations with women and BIPOC leaders by deploying a total of $250,000 in unrestricted funding to four organizations working toward environmental and climate justice. These organizations, all of which are led by a BIPOC executive director, are part of national, regional, and international community-led movements, with some also using open-source technology to advocate for a more just future. These partners include:

Earth Guardians trains and empowers youth to be effective leaders in the environmental, climate, and social justice movements across the globe. With thousands of engaged youth across six continents, Earth Guardians provides the platform, resources, and opportunities to connect, amplifying their voices and the impact they are having in their communities. Whether through music, art, and culture, or by organizing climate strikes and rallies, Earth Guardians youth leaders are inspiring others to imagine a regenerative future.

“Having gone through a transition in the organization—This is the first time since the founding in 1992 that we are led by a BIPOC woman under 40. We are grateful for PagerDuty.org publicly supporting Earth Guardian through this transition and the work we do. With this donation, we will directly support our youth empowerment to create powerful change using arts, storytelling, organizing, and legal action, all while inspiring impactful solutions to the critical issues we face as a global community.”

-Catherine Mongella, Executive Director, Earth Guardians

Earth Hack’s vision for inclusion is a global community in which intergenerational and multinational connections form and students engage together in hackathons as a form of environmental action. Prior hackathons have worked on solutions to inequity problems such as urban heat islands, an issue disproportionately impacting communities of color stemming from the historical discriminatory practice of redlining. Harnessing the innovation capacity of hackathons, their open source project library serves as a launching point for thousands of university students to engage in critical thinking and get a jump start on potential solutions. 

“Earth Hacks is grateful to the PagerDuty.org Fund for their generosity in supporting our work harnessing hackathons as a form of environmental action. This grant enables us to support more students than we have in previous years, push forward constellations of small, meaningful environmental solutions, and continue to drive a justice-focused culture shift in the environmental tech space.”

-Sanjana Paul, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Earth Hacks

OpenAQ is a nonprofit organization with the mission to connect individuals and communities with open data to advance science, impact policy, and empower people to fight air pollution. The OpenAQ Platform is the largest open-source air quality data platform, aggregating and harmonizing 16 billion data points from 135 countries across the globe with 15 million data requests per month. The OpenAQ Platform serves as the foundation underpinning global, regional, and local action for cleaner air. They also bring together diverse stakeholders to collaboratively develop data design and action plans to catalyze equitable solutions for cleaner air.  

“OpenAQ is thrilled to be a PageDuty.org grant partner. Support through this partnership will help OpenAQ better fulfill its vision of a world where access to data is no longer a barrier to achieving clean air. We will be able to make air quality data more accessible to those who are most affected by poor air quality and bring together a coalition of air quality advocates who will harness the power of open data to catalyze solutions for cleaner air.”

– Chisato Fukuda Calvert, Interim Director, OpenAQ 

The Solutions Project (TSP) is a public foundation that funds and amplifies climate justice solutions created by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, women and People of Color-led organizations across the U.S. In 2021, TSP made $10 million in grants to 127 grassroots organizations and provided $1 million in communications capacity to grantees. This supported celebrated wins from the phase-out of oil production to stopping a pipeline, to the development of wind turbine and electric vehicle manufacturing to the creation of community solar and water systems.

“The movement is asking philanthropy to further collaborate with grassroots organizations who are creating climate justice solutions on the ground that tackle a multitude of issues simultaneously. The Solutions Project envisions a world where everyone has affordable housing, good green jobs, and equitable access to resources. The only way we can get here is moving in solidarity with frontline communities and we are excited for industry leaders like PagerDuty to recognize this path to climate justice.”

-Gloria Walton, CEO of The Solutions Project

One positive outcome from the COVID-19 pandemic has been how it prompted funding partners to increase the speed and flexibility of their funding. PagerDuty.org continues to follow the precedent set in this regard, structuring our grants as unrestricted funding, allowing these organizations to advance their missions as they see fit. We are also grateful to a group of PagerDuty employees—leaders from our employee resource groups, our Social Impact ambassador council, and some of our most dedicated environmental champions—for weighing in on our selection process and providing a number of diverse perspectives that helped inform our decisions.

Support and Encourage

As one of our partners, Earth Guardians, has shown us, the youth-led climate movement is pushing philanthropy to step up to the urgency of the moment. Insights and learnings from our partners will continue to inform our strategy as we evolve our approach to addressing systemic discrimination. We are honored to support these exceptional organizations and encourage others to join us in this effort to help protect the health of all humans and the planet.

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