SAP Gives Back

SAP is helping to make a difference in the nonprofit and library community through their donation program here at TechSoup. Their business intelligence products let organizations create interactive reports and presentations, while their cloud-based tools help enable group decision making. See how organizations like yours are benefiting from their donated products and services.

SAP's donation program is part of their overall social benefit efforts, which aim to accomplish the following goals:

• Impacting 1,000,000 lives by focusing on meeting basic needs, enhancing education, and creating sustainable growth and economic opportunity
• Enabling 1,000 nonprofits through donations of technology, thereby helping organizations to run more efficiently and maximize their potential
• Volunteering 100,000 hours and using employees' skills to help nonprofits run more effectively and reach more people

Making Social Investments

In 2010, SAP invested almost US$17 million in universities and nonprofits worldwide, an increase from US$10 million in 2009. They also began a strategy of linking these financial investments with other resources. For example:

• SAP continues to invest in their University Alliances program, which provides technology and expertise to educate students throughout the world and cultivate new IT leaders. They contribute curriculum ideas, teaching, and even an interactive social network so that members of their virtual university community can participate in webinars, blogs, and peer-to-peer coaching.
• In response to the 2010 crisis in Haiti, SAP employees contributed US$530,000 for immediate aid, and the company plans to match this over a two-year period. In addition, SAP is supporting Haitians in running social businesses, which combine a social mission with entrepreneurship. Instead of soliciting donations, this work is based on the idea that people can take care of themselves if given the opportunity.

Tech for Good

To further reach their goals, SAP is going beyond their traditional giving model to make an impact through technology — an idea that makes them a great partner with TechSoup. Most nonprofits (understandably) spend the majority of their funding on accomplishing their mission, meaning there's not always enough left over for technology investments.

With this in mind, SAP donates their products and services through TechSoup but also connects their employees with organizations to provide them with volunteer help in devising technology solutions. This strategy has evolved over the past year and includes a range of projects and programs throughout the world.

• In India, one out of two SAP employees is volunteering on a community project focused on improving educational opportunities through tutoring or enhancing school infrastructure and resources.
• In Ghana, SAP is using their technology and volunteers in partnership with a leading NGO to help women create thriving businesses through the harvesting of shea nuts.

Seven Billion Actions

By tapping into this broad range of technology and volunteerism, SAP is moving closer to their ultimate goal of positively affecting one million lives. They believe that their multi-tiered approach will help build a sustainable future for both civil society and community businesses. Although one million people may seem like an enormous number, consider this: on October 31, 2011, the global population reached 7 billion.

According to the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) Seven Billion Actions movement, a world of 7 billion has implications for sustainability, urbanization, access to health services, and youth empowerment. Thanks to an interactive population dashboard that SAP designed and built for UNFPA, anyone anywhere can access and interact with this information using UN data. 

The site lets you examine historical population data and future projects through a visual interface. You can, according to Wired, “compare the population across Europe and North America with the growing bubble in China. 'We’re trying to take the subject of the world’s changing population from awareness — to insight,' says Steve Williams, SAP’s director of corporate social responsibility.”

To learn more about what SAP is doing around the world, check out their sustainability report and their social impact page.

Want to hear more about the corporate social responsibility efforts of other TechSoup donor partners? See how SAP, Symantec, and B Corps like BetterWorld and Azavea are giving back.