Beyond Philanthropy: The Cisco Foundation's Commitment to Thriving Communities

By Brian Tippens, Charu Adesnik

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2024 / Cisco Systems Inc.

Cover of the 2024 Cisco Foundation Impact Report

For over 25 years, the Cisco Foundation has been on a mission to shape the future through a deeply held commitment to the greater good.

A mission to create a healthy planet. Thriving communities. A world in which everyone can reach their full potential.

Our mission has never been more important. And the Cisco Foundation continues to expand the ways we fulfill it - bringing the best of Cisco's technology, resources, and expertise to develop innovative solutions for the critical challenges facing our people, planet, and society.

Introducing the Cisco Foundation's FY24 Impact Report

After surpassing our ten-year One Billion Lives goal in FY23, we felt inspired to share lessons learned, celebrate the transformative work of our partners, and actively communicate our approach.

In the Cisco Foundation's FY24 Impact Report, we aim to do just that. We dive deeper into our investment model, our partnership approach, how we define and measure impact, and highlights of the results we achieved over the past year.

Through our partnerships, more than 170 million people were positively impacted in more than 100 countries, in every region of the world. Beyond the number of people reached, the depth and sustained impact of our investments is clear.

• Forty percent of the solutions we have invested in today are reaching more than 1 million people per year-advancing successfully from idea to scale

• Ninety-seven percent of our partners have secured new funding which they directly attribute to Cisco's support-evidencing the catalytic nature of our investments

• Fifty-six percent of our partners operate on less than $5 million annual operating budget-proving that small organizations can have an outsize impact

• Eighty-one percent of our partners have more than 75 percent of their staff based in the country their programs operate-showing the importance of a proximate, client-centric, and community-focused approach

Our commitment to driving impact beyond philanthropy

Within the report, we've also featured stories of the impact our non-profit partners are having in communities in every region of the world. Each of these stories shines a light on how our unique approach drives extraordinary impact.

The Foundation's cash grants to our nonprofit partners are just the beginning of what we contribute. The powerful combination of Cisco's in-kind technology donations and the expertise and engagement of our Social Impact and Innovation teams and leaders and employees across our global company is what helps our partners build solutions that generate exponential impact.

We also continue to innovate - in FY21 introducing a $100M commitment to Climate Regeneration, which provides grant funding to non-profits as well as investments in climate companies and funds. We have completed the third year of this commitment, which is already delivering impact.

For Cisco, what we contribute is beyond philanthropy - it is integral to who we are and how we choose to impact the world around us.

We believe that continuing to share our journey will help our customers, our partners, our suppliers, and organizations of any type and size start to leverage their own unique strengths to move beyond philanthropic giving and begin to change the world for the better in new and fulfilling ways.

Together, we can usher in a new era of impact, developing solutions to the greatest challenges facing people, planet, and society with the power to change billions of lives.

Moving forward - our next big ambition

Since announcing our One Billion Lives achievement, we've been hard at work turning what we now envision as possible into our next big ambition.

Backed by our company's laser focus on our purpose to power an inclusive future for all, we've decided our path forward will feature innovative solutions to deepen our impact to specific underserved communities across the globe.

Our upcoming Cisco Purpose Report will feature a glimpse of our new aspiration - and give you a preview of the exciting solutions and partnerships that will focus on what matters most in these communities and drive generational impact.

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SOURCE: Cisco Systems Inc.