Annual Non-Profit Roundup for 2022
Online Optimism strives to Support our Communities throughout the year and in various ways, from donating financially to volunteering our time to promoting local non-profits on our social channels and within our company. Read on to learn about how Online Optimism upheld this value in 2022.
Donate + Elevate
Our donation matching program, Donate + Elevate, was created in 2020 to encourage our team to make donations to non-profits that align with their values. When an employee gives to a non-profit, Online Optimism will match their contributed amount to that organization and to a chosen local non-profit that aligns in some way with our team’s values, yielding a 200% total donation match.
In 2022, our chosen nonprofits focused on urban farming, which brings fresh, healthy food and gardening to city neighborhoods that are deemed food deserts. Our New Orleans non-profit was Sprout NOLA, which holds community gardening classes and brings fresh food to its neighborhood. In Washington, D.C., we supported Dreaming Out Loud, which brings food security to its community while also holding local events and farmer’s markets. Our national non-profit was The Urban Garden Initiative, which empowers youth to achieve urban sustainability through gardening.
Hey Taco!
Through Slack, we use an app called Hey Taco! to thank our co-workers throughout the work week. We have an #appreciation channel on Slack where Optimists can send shout-outs to each other for doing work that aligns with Online Optimism’s values. Then, we calculate how many appreciations were sent and received for each Optimist every trimester. These numbers are then translated to monetary value and donated to a non-profit organization of each Optimists’ choice. Organizations that we donated to through this program include:
- ACLU of GA
- Animal Rescue New Orleans
- Atlanta Neuroscience Foundation
- Black Women’s Health Imperative
- Caring Hearts for Canines
- Culture Aid NOLA
- Edible Schoolyard NOLA
- Frankie and Andy’s Place
- Friend to Friend
- Friends of the New Orleans Public Library
- Fund 17
- Good Trouble Network
- Heavenly Dog Paws Sanctuary
- House of Tulip
- Immigration Services & Legal Advocacy
- Jefferson Children’s Advocacy Center
- LGBT Community Center of New Orleans
- Literacy Lab
- Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen
- Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants
- Louisiana SPCA
- Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund
- Musicians on Call
- New Orleans Film Society
- StandUp for Kids
- Step Up NOLA
- St Jude
- St Thomas Community Health Center
- Suicide Awareness Voices of Education
- Take Paws Rescue
- Texas A&M Veterinary Oncology Fund
- TREES ATL
- Trevor Project
- We Are Casa
- Young Women’s Project
- Youth Empowerment Project
- Young Leadership Council
- ZAMI NOBLA from ATL
Non-Profit Spotlights
Online Optimism highlights a nonprofit on our social media and blog every quarter. The organizations are usually local to New Orleans or DC and already connected to Online Optimism in some way, whether we have volunteered, donated, or collaborated with them in the past. We highlighted several phenomenal non-profits doing great work in and beyond our cities in 2022. Non-profits we showcased include:
Volunteering
Our New Orleans team continued to volunteer with Culture Aid NOLA, a local non-profit that meets weekly to sort and distribute food to anyone in the community who needs it. Find out more about working with Culture Aid NOLA at their website.
G.I.V.E. Hours
In 2022, Online Optimism added a new community-based benefit for its employees called G.I.V.E. hours (Growth Initiative for Volunteering Employees). Through this program, Optimists may take up to 16 work hours and use them toward volunteering for a non-profit organization. Even though this initiative was launched in the second half of the year, several Optimists participated by spending several hours with the YMCA of Northwest Florida, Tulane Upward Bound Program, and Animal Rescue New Orleans.
We look forward to seeing our employees continue to serve their communities on and off the Online Optimism clock.