Giving back

We’re in a position of privilege. We see it as our responsibility to do our best to use that privilege for good. 

Outside work, lots of us are involved in volunteering in various forms, giving time to be governors, mentors, teachers and grafters. We have a company volunteering day too. But money counts as well. That’s why Public Digital donates at least 1% of its profits to charity.

A lot of corporate giving comes with strings attached, of sorts. We’ve made donations to organisations like Ada’s List and Sporting Hackney where we’ve received things in return - conference passes, football shirts and so on. But we don’t think all our giving necessarily needs to involve an exchange.

After the chaos of 2020, it felt especially important to do something tangible for those affected by Covid-19. On that occasion, we donated to the Trussell Trust and the Disasters Emergency Committee.

There are some general principles we use to guide who we donate to.

We want our charitable giving to match Public Digital’s mixed perspective of working around the world, but rooted in the UK - to be global and local.

We want to support organisations that believe in similar things to us, with a clarity of public purpose.

And we want our donations to reach causes that have recently made us take stock and reprioritise how we think about the world.

For 2021, it feels especially important to give to organisations striving to end violence against women and girls. This year, we’re making donations to Plan International and Women’s Aid.

There’s plenty more we can do. As with most things, we plan to start small, and scale.