Announcing our 2023-2024 Box Impact Fund Grantees
As we kick of a new fiscal year, we’re thrilled to announce six outstanding organizations that we’ve selected as our 2023-2024 Box Impact Fund grantees. In it’s third year, the Box Impact Fund supports organizations pursuing digital transformation projects in one of our three Box.org theme areas: child welfare, crisis response, and the environment. Each grantee will receive a $25,000 grant for a total of $150,000 to help fuel critical missions and digitally transform the nonprofit workplace.
We saw a significant increase in applicants this year with hundreds of nonprofits and charities all around the world outlining compelling projects for consideration. This reinforces for us the importance that initiatives like the Box Impact Fund can play in enabling organizations to test new programs, develop critical efficiencies, deliver more services, or move a project to the finish line. Past projects have included everything from digitizing thousands of paper adoption records, to connecting immigrants to critical health resources, to focusing on food waste, and working to mitigate climate change. We are truly inspired seeing so many organizations striving to create greater impact.
This year we had an exciting addition to the grantee selection process. We invited our Box employees (Boxers!) to review and score applications as part of our Global Impact Day, our annual day of service. We are grateful to every applicant — for your time sharing your ideas and proposals, and most of all for your passion to make a difference in our communities around the world. You’ve left us all inspired and in awe of your work.
And now, we are thrilled to celebrate our 2023-2024 Box Impact Fund grantees. Below you’ll learn about these organizations, their work, and the projects they will be pursuing with the grants:
Child Welfare
Foster America transforms systems that serve children, youth, and families by innovating for a more just, equitable future. Foster America envisions a future where families have access to resources on the community level, before a crisis occurs, preventing systems involvement. The organization will use the funds to create a social platform that will connect foster youth, offer emotional well-being check-ins, and provide therapeutic tools aimed at preventing mental illnesses, building resilience, eliminating isolation, and enhancing the well-being of foster youth through digital innovation.
"This grant allows Foster America to work with MIT Media Lab and Affective Computing Group to facilitate co-design sessions aimed at developing technology to support child wellbeing. We are so thankful for the support of http://Box.org and our partners who believe as we do -- that every child deserves to thrive.” Marie Zemler Wu, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village empowers orphaned and vulnerable Rwandan youth to build lives of dignity and contribute to a better world. With this grant, the organization will integrate important student data into one system, improving how they serve their students.
“The Box Impact Fund's support will have immense benefit for us and our students. We will be able to create an integrated data management system that will provide a 360 degree view of each student's journey and enable us to use data to nurture our students holistically. This system, and the Box Impact Fund, will help us fulfill our mission to empower vulnerable youth to lead thriving, self-sufficient lives. We are grateful for their partnership.” Richard Niyibigira, Country Director
Environment
NatureServe has been the authoritative source for biodiversity data throughout North America for over five decades, leveraging the power of science, data, and technology to guide biodiversity conservation and stewardship. With this grant, NatureServe will enable a two-way data exchange with scientists and conservation agencies to share real-time information as they focus on protection for plants and animals.
“With today’s unprecedented biodiversity crises, the planet is at risk of losing many plants and animals before we even know where they are. As rapid changes threaten life on Earth, NatureServe is keeping a pulse on the planet. We are tracking the plants and animals whose future depends on conservation action. This grant from Box Impact Fund will allow us to work with over 1,000 scientists across 60 conservation agencies to exchange data on those plants and animals in real time through a data exchange platform. This platform will make it possible to put accurate, up to date information into the hands of decision makers as they make crucial decisions to protect our planet’s vulnerable plants and animals.” Regan Smyth, Vice President of Data and Methods
Brain Builders Youth Initiative is on a mission to empower underserved communities in Nigeria through innovative and sustainable solutions, focusing on clean water access and environmental sustainability. With this funding, Brain Builders will deploy solar powered water ATM kiosks which will provide a reliable clean water source with minimal environmental impact, while alleviating the burden of water related illnesses.
“This Box Impact grant resonates perfectly with our 2024 theme as an organisation "Our Year of groundbreaking Innovations." It is also the key that unlocks our vision for a digitally transformed future in which clean water access is a reality for all. This underscores our commitment to driving positive change in the communities we serve." Abideen Olasupo, Global Director
Crisis Response
International Refugee Assistance Project(IRAP) is a global legal aid and advocacy organization working to create a world where refugees and all people seeking safety are empowered to claim their right to freedom of movement and a path to lasting refuge. IRAP is driven by the belief that everyone should have a safe place to live and a safe way to get there. With this grant, IRAP will develop a global, public hub where legal aid providers and refugee advocates can access relevant legal resources to more effectively advocate for displaced individuals seeking refuge.
"Asylum seekers in the U.S. are five times likelier to receive asylum with legal representation. Too often, the answers to how an immigration process is supposed to work is buried in a government manual or internal memo. Through years of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation, IRAP has obtained thousands of U.S. government documents detailing pathways to safety. With Box.org's support, IRAP will simplify and scale access to legal information found in these documents, making it easier for legal practitioners to support displaced people as they seek lasting refuge." Aish Shukla, Chief Technology Officer
Sesame Workshop is the global impact nonprofit at the intersection of education, media and research helping children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. Families in more than 150 countries are reached with playful early learning so they empower each generation to build a better world. Sesame Workshop will utilize this grant to develop an AI coding scheme to extract insights from a play-based assessment.
“To help better understand the emotional well-being of children affected by crisis and conflict, Sesame Workshop (SW) and its partner, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), are developing a play-based assessment of children’s emotional well-being. With funding from the Box Impact Fund, SW will leverage the power of AI to develop a coding scheme that will support the efficiency of this assessment and make it more actionable in crisis contexts. This transformative tool will enable SW and its partners to better understand children’s emotional well-being and deliver responsive programming that will deepen impact for generations.” Kim Foulds, Vice President, Content Research and Evaluation
Congratulations to our grantees, and we look forward to supporting these projects and the incredible impact these organizations will continue to have in the days ahead.
Interested in learning more about how we support nonprofits? Box provides more than 11,000 nonprofit organizations with the capacity-building resources they need to innovate and fulfill their missions. Over the past year, Box has provided over $39 million in-kind through Box product discounts and product donations to nonprofits. Visit Box.org to get your organization running on Box.