Collaborate to Maximize Global Giving

Philanthropic representatives from a dozen leading IT companies met with the CompTIA Educational Foundation as part of its first-ever IT Philanthropy Summit last week during Breakaway. The invitation-only summit provided participants the opportunity to leverage and collaborate with other leaders to make all industry philanthropic programs more effective.

The attendees represented AMD, Applied Materials, CDW, Dell, IBM, Intel, iSys, Microsoft, SalesForce.com Foundation, Symantec, VMware and Xerox. For most of the attendees, the summit was the first time they had met with their counterparts in other IT companies. This groundbreaking collaborative effort aims to show all IT industry leaders what the future of IT philanthropy can look like and the impact it can have.

With the amount of time, talent and money that IT companies and their employees are giving back to their communities, if we can build more collaboration, our industry can have a tremendous impact on society.

IT companies across the board see a growing trend of volunteerism within their companies and have numerous creative programs to aid the communities in which they work.  Many are particularly involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) educational programs both in the U.S. and across the globe, but they also are active in disaster relief, environmental efforts, civic development, mentoring, health and hunger challenges, workforce skills development and job creation, and diversity issues.

During the summit, attendees identified that as an industry they need to creatively use their technology and people to help non-profits accomplish their missions on a greater scale.  They also need to collaborate more across the industry and better measure the impact of their efforts.

The attendees hope to create a more formal coalition of philanthropic IT leaders, gather industry research to provide a baseline assessment of their collective efforts, collaborate in mapping solutions for non-profit needs, and develop a diverse future workforce of global IT innovators.

As next steps, the CompTIA Educational Foundation will summarize discussions from the summit, seek additional input from the participants, and meet via teleconference in late September.  Summit attendees praised the small group atmosphere of the summit, allowing them to get to know each other much better and remain more nimble in their future efforts.  However they also will plan to add a few more members to reach more IT companies within the channel.  IT philanthropic leaders should contact Dennis Zimmerman, if they are interested in joining the group.

How is your company giving back to the IT industry or using its technology to enhance the efforts of non-profits across the globe?  We want to hear your stories.