Jan 27, 2023 | Our Purpose
The IMPACT Briefing: a quarterly social impact update
Kellie Wellman, Senior Director, Social Impact Institute
Thomson Reuters is one of the only companies in the world that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. With our customers, we lay the foundations upon which value is created, advancing the integrity and resilience of critical institutions and systems.
Together, we inform the way forward to a more understanding, trusting world for all.
While everyone at Thomson Reuters drives this important work forward, the Thomson Reuters Social Impact Institute works with our people and partners to create opportunities for innovation, community investment, volunteer impact, and sustainable corporate citizenship.
Here, we look back at 2022 – it was a very exciting year for the Social Impact team (and all our teammates). Here are three great initiatives we undertook last year:
Launching our first global IMPACTathon
Last year’s IMPACTathon extended support to 17 nonprofit organizations across the U.S., Canada, India, and the Philippines. More than 70 teammates served as pro bono consultants, sharing their communications, sales, public relations, operations, marketing, strategy, human resources, and technology expertise. Much of the work focused on helping the organizations develop necessary capacity-building tools to enhance their own ability in areas not typically funded by foundation grants and individual donors.
In total, teammates volunteered over 560 hours, totaling more than $110,000 worth of pro bono consulting services with an average of $6,400 per non-profit – in just five hours!
Launching our first annual Global Volunteer Day
In November, we hosted our first annual Thomson Reuters Global Volunteer Day. Over 750 teammates prepared and distributed meals and hygiene kits to those in need, stocked shelves at food pantries, picked up litter to clean up parks and beaches, created cards for hospitalized kids and seniors, provided walks and toys for animals in shelters, hosted resume and career workshops, visited schools – and even classified the behavior of owls!
In total, our teammates logged 5,000+ volunteer hours to support 100+ charitable organizations in 15 countries.
Announcing the winner of the Carla Jones Social Impact Award
Agnieszka Podgorska was the winner of our 3rd Carla Jones Social Impact Award. She organized a group of 9 colleagues from Exmouth, UK and Gdansk, Poland to visit the Polish border with Ukraine for 5 days. These teammates volunteered over 200 hours during their visit. They worked with World Central Kitchen to provide meals to refugees, purchased groceries, visited refugee children at an orphanage and helped a family find accommodations.
In addition, Agnieszka set up a Crowdfunder and fundraised nearly £9,000 which was used to purchase clothing and food for refugees, and laptops and other electronics to help refugee children continue their education. For winning the award, a $10,000 donation was made to Ukrainian Children Inc. to help aid in Ukrainian refugee relief.
Looking forward in 2023
2023 is shaping up to be an exciting year for the Thomson Reuters social impact team. We are thrilled to launch our 2022 Social Impact & ESG Report, continue to celebrate Earth Day, and host our third IMPACTathon. We look forward to sharing our progress and achievements with you as we work towards creating a more sustainable and equitable future.
We’re excited to continue to inform the way forward in 2023 – together.
