Airbnb Frontline stays

Airbnb partnered with New York State, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, and New York State Nurses Association to provide more than 2,000 free hotel rooms for medical first responders in need of safe and isolated accommodations. Union members received direct access to bookings through the Frontline stays program. Airbnb Co-Founder, CEO and Head of Community Brian Chesky committed $2 million of his personal wealth to help fund the efforts.

COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Bloomberg Philanthropies coordinated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and New York State to launch a course to rapidly train contact tracers. The course teaches applicants the fundamentals of identifying contacts and how to encourage self-quarantining.  

One Million Meals

Bloomberg Philanthropies partnered with World Central Kitchen to provide fresh daily meals for 30,000 frontline healthcare workers at NYC Health + Hospitals’ 11 acute care hospitals and five post-acute long-term care facilities across the city’s five boroughs. Mike Bloomberg gifted $6 million toward the effort.

Disaster Relief Program

DJI has provided drones to the FDNY to help them respond to the COVID-19 and new burdens on public safety.

PPE Donation

Etsy worked with NYC based nonprofit Nest to donate over 100,000 masks to essential workers and vulnerable communities, including Brooklyn Public Housing residents.

PPE Procurement

 Masks, Gloves, Thermometers: Facebook donated 77,000 masks, 48,000 gloves and 250 thermometers to Mayor De Blasio’s office and an additional 74,000 masks, 48,000 gloves and 250 thermometers to Governor Cuomo’s Office. In all, Facebook provided New York with roughly 247,500 units of PPE.

Hand Sanitizer: Facebook donated over 2,000 8oz bottles (approx. 126 gallons total) of hand sanitizer to Governor Cuomo’s office and an additional 200 8oz bottles (approx. 12 gallons total)of hand sanitizer to The Bowery Mission, for a total of 138 gallons of hand sanitizer for NYC (that’s more than 174,000 single uses!).

Ad Credits

Facebook provided free ad credits to the New York state and New York City Departments of Health to support their public service announcements and education campaigns.

PPE Procurement and Providing Technology

Google donated 500 PPE masks to NYU Langone Health. Additionally, Google donated 2,000 Pixel Slate devices to NYC hospitals in order to connect COVID patients with their families, and also many Google Nest smart devices to Mount Sinai. 

Ad Credits

Google donated $7 million in ad grants to the New York State Department of Health to help promote reliable COVID information.

Free Meals with Verizon

Grubhub teamed up with Verizon to provide daily meals to feed healthcare workers in six New York City hospitals. With meals prepared from local New York restaurants, Verizon donated free meals seven days a week via the Grubhub platform to hospital staff. Participating hospitals were Hospital for Special Surgery, Maimonides Medical Center, New York Presbyterian Columbia Center, New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan, and Richmond University Medical Center. 

Hellmann’s Food Relief Fund

Grubhub partnered with Hellmann’s Food Relief Fund, an extension of Unilever’s ‘United for America’ initiative committed to providing $1 million to feed frontline workers and people in NYC. Hellmann’s provided $500,000 worth of individually-catered meals, delivered through Grubhub, to New York City hospitals, including Weill Cornell, Elmhurst, and Lenox Hill. By leveraging Grubhub’s delivery network, the partnership helped local restaurants, while feeding those serving the front lines during the coronavirus pandemic. 

New York Presbyterian Support

Grubhub partnered with New York Presbyterian Hospital to provide access to its technology platform and services that made it easy to provide meals for their medical professionals. Through the partnership, New York Presbyterian Hospital ensured that the more than 150 frontline doctors and employees who flew in from around the country are fed lunch daily.

Citi Bike Critical Workforce Program

Lyft donated Citi Bike memberships to essential and frontline workers through the Citi Bike Critical Workforce Program. Lyft worked with Mayor de Blasio’s administration to enroll public employees in the program

Spiro Wave

During the ventilator shortage crisis, Newlab partnered with 10xBeta, Boyce Technologies and the City of New York to rapidly create and distribute a new medical device, Spiro Wave, to supplement some of the functions that ventilators can provide.

Postmates Fleet Relief Fund

Postmates created a fund to support members of Postmates delivery fleet who completed at least one delivery in New York. The Fund has covered costs for couriers’ medical check-ups, regardless of whether the courier has been diagnosed or quarantined.

Meals for Nurses

For national nurses week, Postmates partnered with Subway and the nonprofit Feed Hero Nurses to deliver donated sandwiches to nurses on the frontlines. 

Undies for Healthcare Workers

Thinx provided healthcare workers with their fundamental period products. They sent a donation of 1,200 undies directly to healthcare workers in Wuhan, China, and additional packages to hospitals in NYC and the surrounding region to support their own community. They have donated over 2,500 pairs of undies so far.  

PERIOD

Thinx broadened their support for PERIOD to help the organization ensure that people impacted by COVID-19 have access to products in their local communities. For every purchase of Thinx underwear, they donated $2 to PERIOD.

SUPPORTING LOGISTICS of PPE

NYC-based Transfix has partnered with the Mayor’s Fund to move PPE, including masks, gloves, eye protection and ventilators, to warehouses around the metropolitan area. Since May, the logistics technology company has moved 100,000+ pounds of PPE, pro bono, to ensure NYC has a stockpile of these materials available for its front line healthcare workers as the city begins re-opening.

Rides and Meals

Uber pledged 10 million free rides and meal deliveries for frontline healthcare workers, seniors, and people in need. The free rides for healthcare workers applied to rides between healthcare facilities and also to and from patients’ homes.

Emergency Food Delivery and Discounted Rides

Via partnered with nonprofits to scale emergency food delivery for vulnerable residents and also provide discount rides for essential workers and volunteers.

Impact Fund

Bloomberg Philanthropies created $75 million Impact Fund to support New York City nonprofit organizations financially harmed by the COVID crisis. With seed money from several other charitable organizations, the Fund provided grants and low-interest loans to small and mid-sized nonprofits to help cover emergency needs and day-to-day operations.

Supporting Child Welfare Nonprofits

Casebook worked closely with nonprofits focused on child welfare and curbing domestic abuse. By giving those nonprofits free software licenses to Casebook for 3 months, they were better able handle the worst of the current crisis. (Casebook software is used to recruit and manage foster families and to manage domestic abuse facilities.) 

Resource Portal

Casebook aggregated available online resources, aimed at assisting organizations helping the most vulnerable members of society.

HR Tools

Casebook conducted webinars and delivered digital HR tools (including policy templates) to any organization interested in their remote work approach.

Merchant Dedicated Gift Cards

Delivery.com encouraged all of its users to spend locally by purchasing Delivery.com Gift Cards to select restaurants. By signing up to receive Gift Cards, they enabled direct sales to local businesses from local customers.

Essentials Section

Delivery.com rolled out a custom built “Essentials” Section for its grocery stores. This allowed users to purchase household goods,health and wellness supplies like hand sanitizer, and more. 

Hospital Gift Cards

Delivery.com raised $4,500 for meal gift cards for frontline healthcare workers.

Small Business Grants

Facebook awarded $6.5 million in cash grants and ad credits  for New York small businesses.

Giving Tuesday Now

On #GivingTuesdayNow, Facebook announced new features to its Community Help hub to make it as easy as possible for people to come together to #SupportLocal, as communities everywhere worked toward the road to recovery. Since May 5, people have gone to Community Help at Facebook.com/covidsupprt to: 

• Buy gift cards to support local businesses 

• Donate to local nonprofit fundraisers

• Sign up to be a donor at local blood banks

• Find local job opportunities

United Way of NYC

Facebook has an ongoing partnership with United Way of NYC to help support their mission of creating self-sufficiency of every low-income New Yorker. Amidst COVID-19, they partnered with United Way of NYC and provided Facebook Live support for upcoming annual fundraisers and shared their COVID-19 Community Fund with Facebook’s vast networks.

Business Resource Hub

Facebook compiled online resources useful for businesses of all sizes, including digital tools, grant program information, and talent searching advice.

Crowdfunding for Local Merchants

New York tech volunteers designed a crowdsourced platform to help people support local businesses by ordering online, purchasing gift cards, or donating directly.

Funding and Support for Vulnerable Businesses

Google provided seed funding to the West Side Small Business Grant (WSSBG) program, created by the West Side Community Fund to help support vulnerable businesses around Chelsea, Hudson Yards and Hell’s Kitchen. In addition to the funding, Google offered Grow with Google private digital skills workshops and one-on-one coaching for grant recipients.

Contributing to Community OrganizationS

Provided contributions to Project Hospitality and the Jewish Community Council of Pelham Parkway

FFCRA Paid Leave Tool

JustWorks built software that enabled small businesses to schedule and track the Emergency Paid Sick Leave and Emergency Family and Medical Leave available under the FFCRA for eligible employees. The tool ensures that employees on leave arepaid accurately and employers are paid back for eligible leave wages through FFCRA tax credits. This feature helped small businesses remain compliant with the new leave requirements from day one, as well as to safely follow public health guidelines while keeping people on payroll. Nearly $1 million in credits have been claimed to pay workers on FFCRA leave to date.

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Report

This program was used by thousands of companies to calculate their Average Monthly Payroll (AMP) and verify their PPP loan amount to a lender, making the process easy for small businesses that lack large accounting teams. 

Relief Center & Social Security Tax Deferrals

JustWorks developed content and software that helped small businesses more easily understand and navigate the various government relief programs available. It offered a clearer picture of how their choice to utilize a specific COVID-19 relief program impacted their eligibility for other programs. The software piece enabled customers to opt in to deferring their employer-paid Social Security taxes under the CARES Act. This feature returned millions in working capital to businesses, which could be used to pay employee wages.

Guide to Navigating COVID-19 for Employers

JustWorks published free expert guidance on accessing COVID relief and resources for small businesses. The online guide was viewed over 27,000 times since it went up in mid-March.

Ask an Expert Series

JustWorks curated a free lecture series for businesses on a range of COVID-19 topics.

Free Rides

Lyft provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in free Lyft rides to dozens of partner groups including,: RAINN, Met Council and National Supermarket Association, National Action Network, the American Federation of Teachers, the Asian American Federation, NY Cares, The Campaign Against Hunger, Common Pantry, OATS, Haitian American Caucus, CHIPS and DORT. The free rides helped organizers and volunteers serve at-risk communities in NYC.

Donation & Disbursements Solutions

Mastercard, with The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, distributed financial aid via 10 community-based organizations (CBOs) to individuals in need. CBOs worked with their respective communities to identify, validate, and distribute prepaid cards. The fund planned to distribute $1,000 to approx. 20,000 people ($20 million total fund value).

Empowering Small Businesses

Mastercard committed $250 million in financial, technology, product and services support over the next five years to small businesses in the United States and other markets where they operate, supporting the vitality of businesses and the financial security of their workers.

Start Small / Think Big

Persado helped small business entrepreneurs with mentoring and coaching sessions on marketing techniques to help sustain and grow their businesses.

Relief Fundraising

Persado raised approx.$6,000 (+ matching) for relief funds its key CSR partners to support hospitals, the elderly and those at risk of food insecurity.

Workforce Development Grants

Salesforce announced $1.25 million in grants to support workforce development. A $500,000 grant to City University of New York (CUNY) will allow their Career Success on Campus program to reach diverse and underserved communities, connecting them with meaningful employer interactions during college. The grants will help younger people be prepared for the demands of the post-pandemic economy.

Virtual Volunteering

Shutterstock collaborated with Raisedby.Us to provide access to virtual volunteer opportunities for employees, including support for small businesses (through a marketplaces and marketing platform), thank you notes for healthcare workers, connections with vulnerable populations, homemade PPE, and translation services (among other options).

Corporate Giving

Shutterstock amplified its corporate giving through Good Today, a charitable program that offers employees the opportunity to donate corporate funds directly through Slack. InApril, they focused donation efforts on global organizations helping individuals affected by COVID-19, including the UN Foundation, WaterAid, Partners in Health, and Rise Against Hunger.

Free Rides

Via worked with NGOs like Bowery Mission and Urban Pathways to help their essential workers get to and from their locations overnight.

WeWork for Good

The WeWork for Good (WWFG) initiative contributed office space to eligible organizations that played an active role supporting the public health response, including existing government and nonprofit WeWork members, as well as non-members in need. g WeWork coordinated with WWFG members across New York Citywho assisted with wide array of COVID-19 relief efforts, including the provision of mental health services, financial services, and education and e-learning services, as well as hosting virtual town halls with government and medical professionals to disseminate information to the public.   

Real Estate Resources

Zillow provided new resources for its agent and broker partners, like facilitating 3D Home virtual tours and virtual consults. In an effort to help Zillow partners adapt their business while remaining sensitive to rapidly changing guidelines, Zillow also shared information such as the virtual business best practices, important changes to tour connections, and advisories in compliance with local health guidance.

Supporting Domestic Violence Survivors in New York

Airbnb and Sakhi for South Asian Women formed a partnership to provide funding to residents fleeing gender-based violence during the pandemic, as the City and State reopen. This partnership will support Sakhi’s existing Transitional Housing Program, which helps provide survivors of gender-based violence with access to no-cost accommodations in New York.

Food Rescue

Facebook donated 2,500 pounds of perishable food to Rethink Food NYC from its closed office.

Rise Up New York

Facebook partnered with Robin Hood to help spread awareness and support live programming for their ‘Rise Up New York’ Relief Benefit Event on May 11th. The donations raised have provided e support for food, shelter, health and mental health services, legal services, education, and more to local NYC communities.

Relief for Teachers and SNAP Recipients

Google donated $247,000 in grants to teachers in lower income communities through Donors Choose. Google NYC has also raised $537,000 on Give Directly for families in the city receiving SNAP benefits.  

Relief for local food banks 

Google donated 98 boxes containing roughly 2,000 items of varying types of feminine products to local food banks.

Meal Delivery

Grubhub teamed up with World Central Kitchen and the organization’s ‘Chefs for America’ initiative, a nationwide emergency food relief program. Through the partnerships, Grubhub delivered fresh meals to New Yorkers in need across Queens and Brooklyn, as well as provided reliable, recurring revenue for local restaurants. Grubhub’s delivery operations ensured meals reached those most urgently in need, as identified by city agencies and community-based nonprofits.

Food Bank Relief

Instacart contributed a $25,000 donation to the Food Bank of NYC to help ensure shelves remained stocked and distribution networks remained intact. 

#GIVEFROMTHECART

From July 14 to August 14, Instacart is hosting the #GiveFromTheCart Challenge to turn grocery carts into good by donating the value of their last grocery cart (or any amount you choose) to Feeding America at www.givefromthecart.com. Every dollar raised will go to help fight hunger and Instacart will proudly match each donation, up to 1 million meals to Feeding America.

Driver PPE

Lyft provided thousands of free wipes, hand sanitizer and face masks to any driver that needed them with pick up locations all over the state including two in NYC (Bronx and LIC), and others in Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Syracuse, and Long Island. 

Essential Service Support

Mastercard worked through its partner networks to support essential services in NYC. With Lyft, a City Possible industry member, Mastercard expanded access to transportation and delivery services for low-income seniors, and families and children while schools are closed. With Citi, Mastercard contributed $1 million to expand the Citi Bike Critical Workforce Membership Program to more essential workers. With this support, the first-responder, healthcare, and transit workforce received annual Citi Bike memberships. The program will expand to provide free annual memberships to essential City of New York employees.

Civic Labs

Through several partnerships with organizations, Postmates facilitated emergency food access for vulnerable populations like refugees and food bank users. Postmates also helped donate excess food to shelters, food banks, churches, and housing programs in need.

Child Care, Telemedicine, and Financial Tools

Postmates was the first gig company to offer childcare cash stipends for delivery workers. The relief was aimed at parents and caregivers left without access to childcare or who are caring for sick family members. Postmates also began providing new resources for its delivery fleet including telemedicine access, financial health tools, and career planning for post-COVID.  

Project 100

Propel launchedProject 100, an effort to send $100 million in emergency cash aid to Propel users, who all receive SNAP benefits. To date, Propel has distributed over $30 million in direct cash payments and fundraised over $70 million in possibly the largest non-government cash transfer program ever attempted. Many participating funders elected to target their funding specifically to New Yorkers in need. 

Immigrant Assistance

Nova Credit provided various resources to help immigrant communities respond to the pandemic, including webinars with leading immigrant attorneys and a regularly updated web page containing recent COVID-related changes made by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and Department of Homeland Security.

Virtual Volunteering

Persado helped students from Per Scholas prepare for the workforce through mock interviews conducted on video communications software.

#NYTechCares

Suzy collaborated with charitable giving startup Percent Pledge and created a coalition of companies — including Namely, Letgo, Via, Electric, Slice, and Knotel — to support tech-related COVID-19 relief efforts in the New York City area. Called #NYTechCares, the program has worked to provide underserved kids with technology so they could continue their education remotely while NYC public schools remained closed.

Response and Recovery Fund

Shutterstock expanded giving opportunities through Raisedby.Us, which is available to all employees and includes corporate matching. They specifically focused on the 2020 Coronavirus Response and Recovery Fund, which includes six nonprofit organizations that have provided short-term and long-term response and recovery assistance, including healthcare, medical needs, support for vulnerable populations, and nutrition-food support at the local and international level.

Keep Americans Connected

Starry was one of the first internet service providers to join the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) pledge to “Keep Americans Connected.” Starry pledged to not disconnect service due to non-payment as a result of impacts customers faced from COVID-19 through June. 

Starry Connect Service

Starry offered its high-quality true broadband access program for residents living in public and affordable housing for free to all current and new Starry Connect subscribers across NYC until the end of June.

HCCI Broadband

Starry partnered with Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI) to immediately expand Starry Connect to 11 apartment communities reaching more than 600 households in Harlem.

Mental Health Month Campaign

Tumblr launched a month long Mental Health Campaign in partnership with Ditch the Label to provide tools, resources, and answers to various mental health concerns and questions arising within its user base during the coronavirus pandemic. Tumblr bridged information and support between its users and mental health experts.

Supporting Education and Vulnerable Populations

Xandr Cares CSR program continues to harness the passion and generosity of our employees worldwide through donation matching programs in partnership with AT&T, along with virtual volunteer opportunities for those looking to donate their time and skills to those in need. These global volunteerism efforts include a partnership with New Alternatives for Children (NAC) where employees record themselves reading their favorite stories to New York’s most vulnerable children, and DECA, where employees worldwide can share their knowledge and experience with students currently unable to attend classes at school. 

Online Experiences

Airbnb created a digital platform called Online Experiences that enabled its hosts to continue earning despite travel and renting being halted during the pandemic. Hosts have put on virtual experiences like meditation, cooking classes, and workouts. To help those who are most isolated, like older adults, Airbnbpartnered with SAGE and the National Council on Aging to offer Online Experiences free of charge.

NYC COVID-19 Rapid Response Coalition

Amazon AWS, in partnership with leaders in social services and healthcare, created the NYC COVID-19 Rapid Response Coalition to lessen the strain on New York City’s overburdened hospital emergency departments and intensive care units. Leveraging several AWS services, the coalition built a number of tools including a SMS-based chatbot designed to help connect over 10,000 MetroPlusHealth members per day to a wide range of healthcare resources.

Art Keeps Going

Artsy launched an online space for artists that were impacted by coronavirus closures. They programmed benefit auctions, online-only fairs, and other events to support artists, galleries, and nonprofits.

Free Friday Campaign

General Assembly put out free resources for people to develop professional and technical skills virtually. They engaged their community by offering some of the most popular workshops (normally $60-200 each) for free every Friday. Some classes include Programming for Non-Programmers, Excel for Beginners, Optimizing Your Campaigns, and How to Negotiate Your Total Compensation. . 

Digital Reskilling Initiative

General Assembly collaborated with Microsoft on developing regional initiatives to support workers from sectors like hospitality and retail to learn new skills to increase their career opportunities post-recovery.  They plan to expand this to expand this initiative to NYC since it showed success in other markets.

City Insights

Mastercard provided city leaders with access to anonymized and aggregated data-driven insights to help them assess the impact of COVID-19.New York City leaders utilized City Insights to estimate the sales tax revenue impact in order to inform budget planning and recovery programs. These insights will help target relief efforts to specific industries and geographies that need the most support. 

Technical Expertise & Talent

In partnership with leading global technology companies in the region, Mastercard joined the New York State (SWAT) team to accelerate and amplify the state’s response to COVID-19. They assisted with urgent response activities by contributing insights, solutions and skilled tech employees.

ImmuneRACE

Microsoft partnered with Adaptive Biotechnologies and developed a virtual clinical study to inform improved diagnostics for more reliable testing. 1,000 people from New York City participated in helping Microsoft and Adaptive map and measure the body’s immune response to COVID-19. The program incorporated machine learning to scale up the study of the novel coronavirus. De-identified data was made freely available to public health officials, academia, and industry professionals to accelerate solutions to the pandemic.

Tech Support

Starry provided free access to its best-in-class technical support team, the Starry Experts, to any resident in New York City in need of technical support. Starry Experts are highly trained customer service professionals who have always been available to our subscribers to answer questions 24/7 about any internet connected device or service.

Telehealth

Ro leveraged its technology and its network of physicians to create a free telehealth assessment for anyone concerned about contracting COVID-19. For symptomatic and high-risk individuals, Ro connected them to a licensed doctor or nurse practitioner for free telehealth consultations.  Ro also partnered with dozens of companies like Uber, Postmates, and Fiverr to provide these free services directly to their workers.

Misinformation Initiative

Tumblr partnered with NAMLE to show users how to protect themselves and others from spreading false information on the pandemic and coronavirus. Tumblr Creatrs helped design content that educated users how to easily identify misinformation online. 

Job Networking

Upsider aggregated various spreadsheets of people impacted by coronavirus layoffs into their platform to make it easier for companies still hiring to match their open positions against that data set. Upsider offered 100 percent free employer access to remove all barriers and get people back to work.