One of Cisco’s longest-running traditions is a special program for Silicon Valley nonprofits, which has offered Community Impact Cash Grants to carefully selected community organizations for more than a decade. In recent years, the grant amount has been set at $15,000 each for programs focused on K-8 education and health, a subset of Cisco’s overall social investment areas.

A unique aspect of the program is its reliance on Cisco employee volunteers. While holding down their day jobs, these hardworking team members help drive every aspect of the grantmaking process – from evaluating the applications to performing site visits to identifying the 40 strongest applicants from a large and worthy pool. (See this year’s awardees.) On Wednesday, this year’s recipients gathered at Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, California, to pick up their checks, brainstorm with peers about common challenges they face, and reunite with the Cisco employees who helped evaluate and recommend their grant proposals as the most competitive.

From left: Operation Access’ Marisol Ponce de Leon, Cisco’s Cindy Cooley, and Operation Access’ Ellen Kaufman.

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Tags: grant, nonprofit, Silicon Valley

Today, four videos that were created to inspire social change were named the winners of the seventh annual DoGooder Video Awards.

The DoGooder Video Awards recognize the creative and effective use of video in promoting social good. The awards are organized by See3 Communications, the Nonprofit Technology Network, and YouTube. The winners were announced today at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As the sponsor of the DoGooder Video Awards, Cisco will provide a US$3500 cash prize to each of the following winners:

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Tags: award, dogooder, nonprofit, social cause, video, youtube

The field for this year’s DoGooder Video Awards is down to a handful of superb finalists. Now you can help choose the winners.

With great difficulty, the DoGooder team has narrowed an incredible array of funny, moving, and compelling videos that communicate important messages down to several finalists.

Voting is easy; just select your favorite video or videos in each category. Visitors can vote once per day through April 5, 2013. This is a great opportunity to get involved with cause video and have an impact on organizations doing crucial work.

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Tags: award, Cisco, dogooder, nonprofit, see3, social cause, video, youtube

At Cisco, we focus our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) work on specific areas, one of which is critical human needs. Or, more simply, food, water, shelter, and disaster relief.

A lot of the nonprofits we have partnered with over the years in this area, such as food banks and disaster response agencies, have been working round-the-clock dealing with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

Consider this a “shout out” to those organizations that are doing so much for those affected, whether in New York and New Jersey or the Caribbean. We will tell you how Cisco is supporting the relief effort in a future blog post.

Mariuxi Chicoaiiza and her son grabbed a hot lunch from the Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicle in Moonachie, NJ
Photo: Julie Daigle/American Red Cross

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Tags: disaster relief, humanitarian, hurricane, nonprofit, Sandy, superstorm

At Cisco, our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy centers on a simple question: How can we use the power of the Internet to benefit individuals and communities? More often than not, the answer involves collaborating with other organizations-- nonprofits, government agencies, or healthcare facilities, for example--to multiply the impact technology can have.

I’d like to introduce you to one of those partners: One Global Economy. This Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit provides people in underserved communities with greater access to technology, Internet connectivity, online content--and the training and support to use it all.

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Tags: beehive, Cisco, Community Connectors, CSR, impact multiplied, nonprofit, one global economy, technology