News

Emergence Capital’s Golden Ticket Recap: Giving Back for the Holidays

URL Copied

Emergence: 01/09/15

At Emergence, we feel very fortunate to be living and working in Silicon Valley during prosperous times. We feel that privilege also comes with a responsibility to give back to those who are less fortunate. But how best to choose from so many worthy causes? We decided to crowd source that job to our network of amazing entrepreneurs and friends. If you happened to see Emergence Capital’s twitter handle @emergencecap during December, you couldn’t help but see a parade of fun photos featuring “Golden Tickets” running through our feed. These golden tickets were part of Emergence Capital’s 2014 holiday gift – we wanted to spread joy by channeling our inner Willy Wonka and sending out chocolate bars with a “golden ticket” enabling each recipient to direct $100 to a nonprofit of their choice.

By tweeting a picture of the golden ticket and including the twitter handle of the non-profit, we were able to give these non-profits some funding and recognition for all of the work they do. We also were able to learn more about the interests and causes most important to our network and were amazed at the creativity and impact that so many organizations are having in our community. We loved hearing from you all and wanted to share the joy and support that you all made possible! Thanks for supporting these amazing causes and our desire to give back.

In case you are curious about which charities received attention (we were!), we thought it would be great to share the causes and some of the photos.

So, which charities emerged as favorites? Turns out that Silicon Valley folks have a particular affinity for education and furry friends. Overall, the donation recipients fell into five main categories: youth and education, health and wellness, animal shelter and care, food and water resources for the underserved, and a general "other" category.

The most popular category for our network was youth and education. Almost one third of all the tickets were directed towards increasing educational resources and technology access for underserved communities and populations. The National Center for Women and Information Technology, the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco, the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, BRAC World, Brooklyn Youth Sports Club, Build, Child's Trust, City of Dreams, Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, Donors Choose, Dream Big, Education Super Highway, First Graduate, Free the Children, Fulfillment Fund in Los Angeles, Girls Who Code, Glow Scholars, and KIPP Bay Area represent all the great organization that were called out to us.

A full 24% of the tickets were directed towards foundations that promote or support health, wellness and disease research. There was a wide array of diversity in this category as well, with Bayes Impact, Camp Kesem, the Colon Cancer Foundation, Cycle for Survival, Drivers for Survivors, Emily's Entourage for Cystic Fibrosis, the Forever Young Foundation, the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer, the Make a Wish Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), NHS Human Services, the Northwest Parkinsons's Foundation, Oxfam, the Pan-Mass Challenge, the Sickle Cell Association, St. Jude Children's Hospital, and the Alzheimer's Association all receiving donations.

With some of the cutest photos of the bunch, 12% of the donations went to pet and animal based programs. The ASPCA, Peninsula Humane Society, Pug Savers, San Jose Animal Care and the Nine Lives Foundation were represented. See some furry friends featured below showing off their golden tickets:

[gallery columns="4" ids="1530,1473,1522,1516,1498,1482"]

Similar to the popularity of animal based programs, food and water resources for the underserved also represented 12% of the donation recipients. Charity Water, Food Corps, Food Rescue, the Food Research and Action Center and two different food banks, Second Harvest Food Bank and the SF-Marin Food Bank, were represented.

The "other" catchall represented a wide variety of great causes, with AASCEND, Earthjustice, Habitat for Humanity, Heifer International, Inn Vision Shelter Network, Israel Gives, Kiva, Macedonian Outreach, MIT, Raphael House, Exploratorium, Surfrider Foundation, Venture Church and What Would Daniel Do included.