Hi folks,

One of the best decisions we made as a company was to join the Pledge 1% campaign. If you haven’t heard, this is a growing global movement that encourages startups to contribute one percent of equity, product, profits or employees time (pick some or all!) into their communities.  Since it was started, the movement has 8,500+ members in over 100 countries and have created over $1 billion in new philanthropy.

In a recent interview hosted by our local radio station, I sat down with Matthew Zwiebel, Director of Pledge 1% Colorado, and Boulder Community Foundation trustees Joshua Forman and Jim Williams, to talk about our experience with Pledge 1%—what drove our decision to join, why we like this method of giving back to the community, and and how it’s impacted working at Scaled Agile.

Following the leadership of Ryan Martens, founder of Rally Software, and Brad Feld, a local venture capitalist, our involvement with this movement has become a big part of our company culture. Our employees aren’t shy about saying that this is an important factor in working here and our volunteer time off together is one of our favorite activities. Benefits abound.

Since we joined, Scaled Agile has donated over $200,000 and our teams have contributed hundreds of hours to local charities doing every kind of work from painting barns and building bicycles to helping organizations like Sister Carmen put food on the tables of people who don’t always know where their next meal is coming from.

Here are are some of the organizations we support. If you’re local to Colorado and you don’t know about them, take a moment to get acquainted.

• Wish for Wheels
• Rocky Mountain Therapeutic Riding Center
• Attention Homes
• Harvest of Hope Pantry
• Sister Carmen
• EFAA (Emergency Family Assistance Association)

Pledge 1% is an amazing organization driven by people who are passionate about being a force for good in the world and helping early-stage startups bake in philanthropy from the beginning, rather than thinking about it at a later stage. They’ve figured out how to make it easy to get involved and still have control over which charities you want to support.

I encourage you to look into this for your own organization. You don’t have to be a start-up to join. Learn more at:

Colorado: pledge1colorado.org
Global: pledge1percent.org

As it is with all things SAFe, we don’t do this alone. Everyone who contributes to the success of SAFe has made it possible for us to pay it forward to the people who need it the most.

Stay SAFe!
—Dean