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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Microsoft employees gave away $125 million to nonprofits in ’15

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A couple of years ago, Mari Horita asked her friend David Jones, a longtime Microsoft employee, if he could answer a few questions about Excel.

Jones, who spent almost seven years earlier in his career working on the spreadsheet program, said he was happy to help. Last year, Jones spent dozens of hours volunteering to help ArtsFund, the Seattle nonprofit Horita leads, build an Excel model to help allocate grants among the groups ArtsFund supports.

For nonprofits, many of which operate without a dedicated technology specialist, “that kind of help is so valuable,” he said.

Microsoft’s annual employee giving campaign contributed $125 million to nonprofits in 2015, including the check the company wrote to ArtsFund to match the hours Jones spent there. That’s a record for the company, and a 7 percent increase from a year earlier. About $62 million of that went to organizations headquartered in Washington state, home to 70 percent of the company’s U.S. employees.

The software giant’s philanthropic efforts, rebranded in December with a broader set of goals under the Microsoft Philanthropies banner, are relatively generous for corporate America. Microsoft matches employee donations of up to $15,000 each year. Employees who, like Jones, donate their time, see their hours matched in Microsoft donations to that nonprofit at $25 an hour.

“I’ve been here 27 years,” said Mary Snapp, a longtime Microsoft attorney who in December started leading Microsoft Philanthropies. “I remember in the first year, sitting in the all-company meeting at Seattle Center, and hearing Bill Gates talk about the giving campaign. It’s a big thing here.”

Snapp said 71 percent of Microsoft’s U.S. employees donated time or money in 2015.

“We’re very privileged in many ways” at Microsoft, said software engineer Juan Lema, who teaches computer science via video chat with high school students in Quincy. “Giving people the opportunity to reach their potential, or at least discover they have that potential, is very important to me.”

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