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Activating 50 new sustainability projects in Arizona & Chicago

with the Microsoft Datacenter Community Development Team

By ChangeX

Summary

In 2019, we partnered with the Microsoft Datacenter Community Development Team to help engage communities around Microsoft datacenters in the US. After a successful pilot in Arizona and Chicago, we are now scaling the ChangeX solution for investing in communities to more datacenter locations worldwide.

Launched: May 16 & June 5 2019

Theme: Sustainable Communities (Global Goals 11,13 & 15)

First Impact Roundup: December 2019

Activating 50 new sustainability projects in Arizona & Chicago

Scaling the impact of a team that cares about communities

Microsoft's Datacenter Community Development Team aims to invest effectively in impactful community projects.

Photo: The Microsoft Datacenter Community Development team and the ChangeX team together in Dublin

About the Microsoft Datacenter Community Development Team

Microsoft operates datacenters in communities all over the world and their mission is to establish a positive presence in these communities, contributing to long-term social, economic, and environmental health.

Through the Datacenter Community Development initiative, they work to build local partnerships that contribute to Microsoft's overall mission and deliver economic, social, and environmental benefits. Their commitment to accelerating global progress towards a more sustainable future, means that their community investment often focuses on climate-related issues, contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals like "Goal 13: Climate Action" "Goal 15: Life on Land" and "Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities".

In order to drive progress toward these goals at a local community level, every datacenter location is assigned a community lead. The community leads build relationships with local community leaders and local NGOs, finding impactful ways to support their work.

The Challenge

Holly Spangler Beale leads the Global Environmental Sustainability vertical for the Microsoft Datacenter Community Development team from Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA. Holly and her team are building a world-wide program of partnerships to manage and execute environmental sustainability projects. Through a partnership with ChangeX, Holly was looking for ways to make it easier for her and her team to:

(1) Find the right grassroots projects and people to invest in

(2) Increase the number of projects her team could support

(3) Maximize the impact an investment would make

"We need a way to scale investing and impact in our datacenter communities globally. ChangeX is proving an excellent partner for that."

Holly Beale, Community Lead Microsoft

Funding up to 50 teams in two datacenter communities to replicate ideas.

The Solution

With a pilot budget of $140,000 for two regions - Arizona and Chicago - we set out to find 40 to 50 teams to start one of 10 locally relevant sustainability ideas in the areas of water, food, transport, waste, and biodiversity. Teams could access grants of between $500 and $5,000 to kickstart their selected project.

Packaging a portfolio of ideas to spread

"The ChangeX team very quickly identified project ideas that best fit our strategic goals. They put together a strong mix of environmental sustainability solutions relevant for local communities. It was important to us to keep local organizations and existing partners in the portfolio where relevant, but we were very excited to include projects that had seen success in other parts of the world, making these ideas available to our local datacenter communities. This would have required a lot of time and resources to do on our own." - Holly Beale, Community Lead Microsoft

With the ChangeX model, Microsoft were hoping to reach and support more people to take action on sustainability initiatives. By taking ideas that had proven to work elsewhere and allowing people to replicate those, Holly was hoping to add something new to the local sustainability community sector and accelerate local changemaking capacity.

This grassroots approach could complement Microsoft's existing approach that involves bigger strategic partnerships with NGOs in each of their datacenter communities.

The Challenge was launched online, bringing the Microsoft team, local and international idea partners and local community members together in a video call.

Once kicked-off, ChangeX runs a localized targeted marketing & communications campaign to recruit local leaders and provides communication materials to all stakeholders to help spread the word and activate their networks.

Unleashing more local changemaking potential

"It has been incredibly satisfying and energizing to see that we can empower so many people to take an idea they feel passionate about and run with it. Once we launched the challenge and applications started coming in, it was interesting to see that demand for projects was different in each location. People jumped on Grow It Yourself in Chicago while in Arizona, Pollinator Partnership has been particularly popular. Locally communities ultimately decide what’s important to them" - Holly Beale, Community Lead Microsoft

Getting funding into the hands of committed community teams

Once the challenges go live on the ChangeX website, people apply and are supported through the ChangeX process which involves completing the 30 Day Challenge. The process involves various steps to activate the project including hosting a team meeting, sharing a team photo and a call with the ChangeX team.

The team at Microsoft can follow the progress live on their impact feed on ChangeX.

"I love that the calls the ChangeX team set up with every starter are not just about vetting people but are also about providing personal encouragement and support to give them the best chance of succeeding. I love hearing directly from the project leaders. Through the ChangeX platform, I’ve also been able to reach out directly to the project leaders, hear their feedback, and hear how their project is going" - Holly Beale, Community Lead Microsoft

A community fund always requires a rigorous selection process. On ChangeX, it's very simple for people to apply but the 30 Day Challenge ensures that only those who are committed and ready to take action ultimately access the funding.

Through years of product development and learning from people starting ideas on ChangeX, criteria have been developed to help the team identify the leaders who are most likely to see the idea through to community impact. This allows the ChangeX team make the process more efficient and spend time supporting people who are really committed to having an impact, rather than vetting applications.

Watching the impact unfold

"I went to visit Annie Ansell, who had successfully completed the Challenge to start a Community Fridge in El Mirage, Arizona. She told me the new food pantry was not just helping more people access fresh food but had already had an impact on community cohesion and engagement. I was blown away by the progress achieved in a short amount of time: Annie and her team received their funding, the project was started, and I could visit to see the impact they were already having" - Adonis Trujillo, Microsoft Community Lead Arizona

"We don’t have the money or time to set up a non-profit entity so a lot of funding is not accessible to us. When I saw the Microsoft Sustainability Challenge in Chicago, I thought this can’t be true. The process was so easy and the platform was so user-friendly. It's made for pragmatic people who just want to do something. It allowed us to use what we had in our hands to get the funding and to put so much more energy into the garden. " - Pearl Ramsey started Grow It Yourself in Chicago

The energy that leaders like Pearl have to unleash for the good of their neighborhoods too often goes unsupported. For the Microsoft team, the pilot showed that they could reach people that they may not have found through their existing community outreach strategies. They then had the opportunity to connect directly with each of these community leaders through the ChangeX platform.

"ChangeX is a force multiplier for us"

"With ChangeX our community leads can now expand their impact with minimal added time and resources. ChangeX is a force multiplier for our community engagement, allowing us to support more grassroots projects with minimal hands-on time." " - Holly Beale, Community Lead Microsoft

Since this initial pilot, Microsoft and ChangeX have launched several new community challenges in the U.S..

Learn more about ChangeX Corporate Partnerships