Here at 97th Floor, we believe that the best gifts are the ones that provide the recipient with an opportunity to help others. This is why for our holiday card this past December, we created the #20helps campaign. We wanted to be able use our success as a company and as individuals to help others. More than that, we wanted to inspire our clients, partners, friends, and anyone else who might be interested, to join in the spirit of charity, and to give back a little something to help those in need. You can read more about our holiday card here.
The holiday card was also a hint at some of our big plans as a company for 2015. Last year was the year that our company really came into its own. To accommodate our extraordinary growth, we moved into a new and better office. We upgraded our equipment to take better advantage of recent technological advances. We created and filled several new positions in order to further improve our overall performance. However, for 2015, we feel as though we need to mature as a company and start helping others. So, at our company holiday celebration last month, we announced our plans to become much more heavily involved with charitable organizations in 2015.
The first aspect of our plan is to donate 1% of our gross revenue to charity. Based on our projections, we estimate that this will mean $65,000 donated by our company to charities in 2015. Each employee of 97th Floor will be able to select a charity of their choice, and 97th Floor will donate a portion of the 1% to that charity. The 1% pledge was inspired by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce. To learn more about The Salesforce Foundation and their 1% model, go here.
Charitable organizations are always happy to accept monetary donations, but sometimes the donation that does the most good, is a donation of service. The second phase of our 2015 charity plan is to provide a substantial amount of pro bono work for these organizations. We’ll be doing this by bringing on charities as we would normal clients, however, the work that we do for them will be done completely free of charge. We’ll have two charities as clients at all times, and we’ve already built a team at 97th Floor dedicated to service these charities. Our first two charity clients are both local organizations headquartered here in Utah: The Road Home (helping people step out of homelessness and back into the community) and United Way of Utah County Women’s Leadership Council (promoting programs that empower children). 
We have a great deal of respect and admiration for both organizations and for what they do for the communities in which we live and work, and we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship. We are just getting started, but over the next few months, expect to see some great things coming from these partnerships! The work itself that we’ll be donating in 2015 is equivalent to $360,000.
Above all, we realize that it’s our amazing clients that keep us in business and allow us to give back to the world that has given us so much. To quote President John F. Kennedy, "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." We believe that brands work with us because of the results we’re able to help them achieve. However, we also believe that people do business with people. Through our ongoing charity efforts, we intend to focus on the human side of digital marketing, and to improve not only our clients’ businesses, but also the lives of those with whom we come into contact. Thank you for partnering with us on your digital marketing efforts!
