A strategic approach
The company recognises it has the ability and responsibility to make a positive difference in the world and ensures its expertise helps people, particularly people in underserved communities.
Microsoft has a substantial legacy of community engagement, including many community partnerships. The company’s community partnerships are founded on a mutual commitment to creating sustainable technology solutions and making a lasting difference. Microsoft works with its employees, partners, government and industry to ensure that its citizenship programmes achieve these aims.
Microsoft’s mission for community investment is to enable social and economic opportunity, transform education and foster local innovation, and enable jobs and economic opportunity. The company takes a strategic approach to community investment that allows for maximum impact from minimum time and human resource to deliver results.
Delivering community and business benefits through partnerships
All Microsoft community programmes are managed in partnership with charity partners to enable Microsoft to understand specific social issues affecting people in local communities, and to ensure they provide appropriate investment according to need. This has led to highly successful projects that have improved the Microsoft brand, the company’s reputation and impacted positively on sales and product development. Microsoft’s strategic approach to community investment also ensures that employee volunteering is a crucial component of delivery, which has improved attrition and retention rates across the organisation.
Microsoft has demonstrated excellence in the identification and articulation of business risks and opportunities associated with key community issues. The company’s employee volunteering matrix is an example of best practice for maintaining and measuring the business benefit of this type of employee engagement. Microsoft has robust frameworks that manage community investment, including time off policies and the allocation of core business resources, expertise in information technology and products as inputs for programmes.
"Our community programmes have proved that training and access to technology inspire the workforce and help people to make the most of their talents."
- Gordon Frazer, Managing Director of Microsoft in the UK
Key areas of focus
Working across a range of community issues, Microsoft’s key areas of focus areas in line with their corporate mission and objectives include investment in bridging the digital divide. This involves tackling barriers to IT knowledge, accessibility and social exclusion through initiatives such as the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum. The company also invests in the development of skills and education for young people through its Partners in Learning programme and by supporting IT Academies.
Also recognising barriers to employment, social inclusion and investing in regeneration, Microsoft is working with the Black Country Consortium to establish The Black Country ICT Gateway. This will provide an infrastructure for third sector organisations including trained tutors, ICT hardware and software, tested programmes and IT support. The initiative will provide much-needed information technology acess to people who face the greatest barriers to using ICT in their life and work. Other initiatives include the company’s Community Technology Skills Programme, and partnering with The Prince’s Trust.
Microsoft is also working with the third sector to build capacity, skills and technology infrastructure. In partnership with the NCVO, Microsoft has delivered a free NGO IT Training course.
With increasing levels of risk associated with internet usage, Microsoft has supported the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, which – as part of a wider mission – aims to prevent the sexual exploitation of children through the internet and new technologies.
Please visit www.microsoft.com to find out more information about Microsoft's approach to community investment.
