SOCIAL
As the world’s digital infrastructure company™, we recognize the critical role we play in connecting our communities and those most in need to the opportunities of the digital world. We support our employees to give back to the causes they care most about. We also respond to pressing local and global issues through our Employee Matching Gifts Program, the Equinix Employee Relief Fund, Crisis Response donation campaigns, and other volunteer initiatives, which are all funded by the Equinix Foundation as of September 2022.
Our Brightest Achievements in 2022
By expanding and deepening our reach in our communities, we successfully accomplished much more than we thought possible, including:
Launched the Equinix Foundation with a US$50M commitment in funding
Tracked 22,760 employee volunteer hours
Supported the launch of the Pathways to Tech program
Donated US$2.04M from employee donations, company match and corporate grants
Raised US$440k for Ukraine relief
Made 22 Equinix Employee Relief Fund grants totaling US$66k
Achieved 23% in employee engagement through service and/or giving
Empowering Employee-Led Service
Our employees are the life blood of our company, and our biggest and best point of community impact begins with them. The employee-led Equinix Community Impact Program empowers our workforce to give back to their communities through service and donations, supported by our volunteer and employee donation matching programs. By teaming up to give back, we develop valuable connections that improve employee engagement and retention.
Re-Envisioning Our Annual Month of Giving
Every October is Impact Month, a time when Equinix employees join forces globally to serve their communities through a month of volunteer service and fundraising efforts to support the causes that matter to them. The Community Impact team organizes several signature events throughout the month for Equinix employees to participate in.
This year we worked hard to update our Impact Month programming to align strategically with our corporate priorities and objectives. As a result, 2022 was a record year in all categories, with almost 1,500 employees participating virtually and in person in over 140 events, raising over US$260,000 and providing over 8,706 service hours. Our impact stretched across 529 causes, a 15.5% increase from the prior year.
We also leaned on our Global WeAreEquinix teams and EECNs to organize giving campaigns and volunteer activities. Our 2022 theme “United” signified how much of an impact we make when we unite as a company to make a difference.
“Equinix Impact Month demonstrates the power of interconnection and community and is driven by the grassroots work of Equinix employees who are constantly inspiring and mobilizing others to do good work.”
– Sujata Narayan, Director, Equinix Foundation
Here are some of our proudest achievements from Impact Month 2022:
WeAreEquinix Bay Area
WeAreEquinix Bay Area hosted ten impact events throughout October, including a playhouse build, a Second Harvest food sorting event, a Diwali Celebration that raised US$15,500 for Shadhika and an info session with First Tee Oakland.
WeAreEquinix Singapore
WeAreEquinix Singapore held events in support of Club Rainbow Singapore, a nonprofit that helps to empower children with chronic illnesses and support their families by providing compassionate and relevant services. The team organized giving campaigns, charity walks and other activities to send 29 Equinix cyclists to participate in the Ride for Rainbows event, raising more than SGD$13,000 for Club Rainbow.
WeAreEquinix Italy
WeAreEquinix Italy gathered global recipes to create a digital cookbook, sold in Italian and English. To purchase the book, employees were encouraged to donate to Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus. WeAreEquinix Italy raised more than US$2,500 for the organization on top of creating an amazing cookbook with delicious recipes.
WeAreEquinix Switzerland
WeAreEquinix Switzerland partnered with Stiftung Altried to support physically and cognitively impaired individuals by taking them on an exciting boat excursion to the Uetliberg.
WeAreEquinix Japan
WeAreEquinix Japan organized several trash clean-up events throughout October, held in offices around the city of Tokyo and virtually for remote employees.
WeAreEquinix Poland
WeAreEquinix Poland renovated rooms at a local children’s shelter by building furniture, painting walls and helping with other construction projects.
WeAreEquinix Virginia
WeAreEquinix Virginia volunteered at Boulder Crest to support veterans, conducting home inspections, cleaning the lodge and cleaning out chicken coops.
All EECNs United!
In 2022, our Equinix Employee Connection Network (EECN) groups continued to engage in the Community Impact strategy. FaithConnect united all EECNs around a single issue to help eradicate human trafficking. They partnered with Australian-based nonprofit A21, whose mission is to abolish modern-day slavery through awareness, intervention and aftercare. Three sessions with A21 gathered over 600 people and collected US$9,425 for A21 programming and initiatives. We also participated in A21’s annual Walk for Freedom where employees all over the world walked to raise awareness of human trafficking.
Equinix Employee Relief Fund
In its third year, the Equinix Employee Relief Fund (EERF) continued to facilitate substantial employee support for one another. In 2022, employees donated over US$30,000 to the EERF, and 22 grants were awarded totaling more than US$66,000. Our aim with the EERF this year was to align giving with current events to better meet employee needs. In doing this, we added a category of giving for “civil unrest,” and we implemented an immediate response program to support Equinix employees who were victims of hurricanes in Florida.
“We lost most of our money and had to leave all our belongings with no possibility of getting them back. This grant helped us to feel safer in a new country with our child and provided us with the necessities we needed to start over.”
– Employee Relief Fund Grantee
Equinix Employee Matching Gifts Program
In 2022, we continued our hybrid efforts of engagement with both virtual and in-person opportunities. This resulted in 22,760 employee service hours and US$2.04M in employee giving, corporate matching funds and grants. This year, our engagement rate was 23% for our volunteer and donation matching programs.
“I feel both very fortunate and proud to work in a company that encourages us to get involved and give back. Furthermore, when working with the various charities we have committed to, their appreciation drives me to want to do more.”
– Team Lead, Customer Success – Dublin, Ireland
Grassroots Employee Efforts for Ukraine and Beyond
While our donation and volunteer efforts are primarily focused on the communities where we operate, we support our employees to get involved wherever they see a need. In 2022, we saw a surge of employee-driven initiatives in support of Ukrainians impacted by the war. Employees in the Netherlands worked together to refurbish unused laptops and monitors so 200 Ukrainian refugees in Amsterdam could reconnect to school, relatives, job opportunities and information. Another group of employees in the Netherlands drove and delivered an ambulance with medical and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine, while a U.S. employee organized an office donation drive for his contacts in Ukraine as well as Ukrainian soldiers. A few of our Polish team members traveled to the Poland border many times to help transport those fleeing Ukraine, providing food and supplies, and helping set them up with housing. These are just a few examples of the passion and drive that fuels our Community Impact program.
Advancing Digital Inclusion
Equinix is a connector at our core. We connect people to each other, businesses to their customers, and communities to new opportunities. As essential as human connection is, digital connection has become a prerequisite to prosperity—and while every person is deserving, there is unequal access.
The Equinix Community Impact initiative exists to ensure more equitable and inclusive access to the technology, connectivity, education and skills needed to thrive in today’s digitally driven world. We do this by harnessing the passion of our employees and dedicating our resources to the specific needs of the communities where we work and operate.
We have been investing in digital inclusion since 2015, partnering with organizations working on affordable connectivity, technical career development, digital literacy training, and making technology easier and safer to use. In 2022, we continued our support for nonprofit organizations working to bridge the digital divide, including World Pulse, CLAP-TECH and BigHope.
“With Equinix’s support over the past seven years, we have developed classes that provide women worldwide with technology stipends and training.”
– Jensine Larsen, CEO and Founder, World Pulse
BigHope
BigHope is a nonprofit that brings Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) curriculum to children across Texas. Equinix has supported BigHope over the years with funding and volunteer time around preparing youth for digital opportunities in the future through mentorship and by giving them practical experience with computer science and engineering concepts. In 2022, we continued our support, and at our annual Connect sales conference, we brought together our Sales team and partners to help pack 16,000 STEAM Kits for BigHope kids.
“We’re working towards creating a more inclusive opportunity set for young people in communities that are traditionally underserved. The robotics and engineering projects that we’re doing in the classroom with students help to enrich all the other curriculum that they need to be successful people in life. If we can educate and excite our youth at an early age and encourage them to pursue careers in technology, then they can really start to rebuild and revitalize the communities where they live.”
– Oren O’Neal, engineer, retired NFL player, and founder of BigHope
Other initiatives related to digital inclusion include our alliance with CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™. Since 2020, Equinix has participated in its Racial Equity Fellowship to advance policy change. In 2022, we transitioned the first group of Fellows back to their jobs at Equinix and selected two more Fellows to serve for the coming year.
CEO Action for Racial Equity Fellowship
Equinix selected Meridian Witt, Senior Business Analyst at Equinix, to be one of the first three Fellows to represent the CEO Action for Racial Equity from April 2021 to April 2022. The CEO Action for Racial Equity Fellowship is a first-of-its-kind, business-led initiative that mobilizes CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion signatory organizations to advance policy change at the federal, state and local levels. Meridian’s work centered on the Closing the Digital Divide agenda. Focused on developing sustainable and scalable public policy with corresponding corporate engagement strategies to address the digital divide’s disproportionate effects on Black Americans, Meridian was a key stakeholder within the digital inclusion pillar tasked with engaging select Fortune 500 government affairs organizations. During the Fellowship, Meridian also moderated Fellowship panels on the Digital Divide and Asian-Black Solidarity and became a policy liaison for a national group of digital divide advocates.
The Equinix Foundation
The global pandemic put a spotlight on the inequity of digital access alongside society’s dependency on digital connection and literacy for work and education. Building an inclusive digital economy—where everyone has equal opportunity to thrive—requires equitable access to digital services, learning and training for everyone, everywhere.
As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we recognize our responsibility in ensuring equitable and inclusive access to all the digital world has to offer. We also acknowledged that we could be doing more. In late 2022, we launched the Equinix Foundation to be more strategic in our philanthropic investments, harness the passions of our employees, and scale our impact in the communities where we work and operate.
The Equinix Foundation is an important part of our Future First sustainability strategy, helping to pave the way to a more accessible, equitable and sustainable future for communities around the world. This new endeavor provides funding and volunteer support primarily to organizations working to advance digital inclusion in the broadest sense, while also assessing opportunities related to environmental sustainability. The Equinix Foundation also funds our Employee Matching Gifts Program, Equinix Employee Relief Fund and crisis response donations.
“The Equinix Foundation is an important vehicle to deliver on our ‘In Service To’ commitment—to one another, our customers, our investors and the communities in which we operate. “
– Charles Meyers, Equinix CEO
Enabling Pathways to Tech
Part of our commitment to advancing digital inclusion is centered around increasing equitable access to the jobs and skills needed to pursue a career in the tech sector.
In support of this goal, in 2022 we launched the new Pathways to Tech program, giving Equinix employees the opportunity to share their unique experiences and career journeys to educate youth about different ways to enter the data center industry. Through classroom presentations and mentorship provided by Equinix employees, as well as live and virtual tours of Equinix offices and data centers, the program generates awareness among young people of the many opportunities available in the data center industry and the tech sector broadly. It also provides community youth with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and skills, including lessons about how the internet works, to better equip them for tech jobs in the future.
In the first year of the program, dozens of employees around the world participated, including team members from Texas, Virginia, California, Dubai, Mumbai and Tokyo, among others.
“Wow I didn’t know who Equinix was before this or that they offered so many different opportunities. I can now see myself pursuing a job in the data center industry.”
– Pathways to Tech session participant
In addition to the Pathways to Tech Program, we also seek out partnerships with organizations and institutions that provide education and skills training to grow and diversify the pipeline for tech jobs. In 2022, we supported several such initiatives, including the Global Inheritance Leading Ladies Initiative that connects young women from marginalized communities with business and educational opportunities to develop their leadership skills and help them reach their full potential in STEM fields. Equinix hosted two Leadership Immersion Days for the Leading Ladies Initiative at our corporate office in Ashburn, Virginia. Other partners include CLAP-TECH, the Northern Virginia Community College and NOVA Foundation.
Preparing Students through CLAP-TECH
Employees in our Hong Kong office have partnered with CLAP-TECH, a group that collaborates with education and industry partners to prepare middle and high school students for tech jobs of the future. Equinix team members worked with local CLAP-TECH schools to offer meaningful workplace learning opportunities, support the development of industry-recognized qualifications and advise on skills mapping, enabling educators to embed relevant STEM curriculum into students’ learning journey.
“This past year we’ve been able to take CLAP-TECH students on tours of our Hong Kong data center. The kids are very delighted to see what a data center is and where it comes into play in their daily lives.”
– Fatima Tsang, Senior Director, Sales Strategy & Operations
Equinix Digital Infrastructure Scholarship Program
In Loudoun County, Virginia, where we have one of our main U.S. operations, Equinix has teamed up with the Northern Virginia Community College and the NOVA Foundation to create the Equinix Digital Infrastructure Scholarship Program. This annual scholarship program launched in 2021 to provide the framework needed for students to enter the growing data center industry through NOVA’s Engineering Technology Career Studies Certificate Programs. In 2022, Equinix has added mentorship and paid internship opportunities for NOVA’s Engineering Technology students and recently hired two interns into full-time roles.
Investing in the Digital Transformation
The role we play in connecting our communities and those most in need to the opportunities of the digital world is multifaceted. In addition to empowering employee-led service, advancing digital inclusion and enabling pathways to tech, we aim to leverage our technology, resources and expertise to accelerate the digital transformation of the social sector. We do this by seeking out partnerships with nonprofit organizations or social enterprises that would benefit from our digital infrastructure platform and services.
Scaling Open-Source Innovation for Sustainable Outcomes
Since 2017, Equinix has partnered with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL) to provide subsidized access to state-of-the-art computing resources for open-source developers working to advance cloud native computing. In 2022, we grew the service value of our support from an average of US$1 million annually to approximately US$3 million to allow more innovators from throughout the CNCF community to access powerful, on-demand infrastructure resources in 25 metros across the globe, including New York City, Silicon Valley, Amsterdam and Tokyo. The projects supported by this effort use the Equinix infrastructure for large-scale automated testing of new hardware and software, taking advantage of our powerful network, compute resources and programmable APIs to automate infrastructure deployments.
In addition to the directly-sponsored projects, in 2022, the Equinix Metal® team began participating in the CNCF’s Technical Advisory Group on Environmental Sustainability. This newly formed industry group aims to examine the resource footprint of cloud native computing systems and provide a forum for measurements and improvements on compute efficiency and resource consumption.