The following is an excerpt from our FY24 Purpose Report, celebrating 40 years of impact at Cisco. Data and metrics are reflective of Cisco’s fiscal year 2024, ending on July 31, 2024.
We envision a world of resilient and empowered communities where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
In 1997, the Cisco Foundation was established by a gift from Cisco Systems, Inc. to help address basic human needs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the past 27 years, that localized support has grown to a global mission across multiple areas of need.
Today, the Cisco Foundation and our corporate Social Impact Investments together leverage our people, technology, and funding to promote a healthy planet and increase the wellbeing of people and communities everywhere. We provide catalytic capital to high-potential organizations for ideation, innovation, and experimentation of tech driven solutions, and we help scale those solutions for measurable and sustained impact. These efforts are underpinned by technology donations, capacity building support, and more.
We invest along a continuum of needs in Crisis Response, Education, Economic Empowerment, and Climate Regeneration. This investment model was critical to achieving Cisco’s goal to positively impact One Billion Lives, and it continues to guide our approach today. In fiscal 2024, our early investments drove ecosystem-level impact, and we saw nearer-term positive results from investments in new solutions, such as AI for Good. Together, we aim to catalyze an ecosystem of changemakers and create positive impact globally.
Learn more about Cisco Foundation’s legacy, strategy, and impact in the FY24 Cisco Foundation Report.
Leveraging AI for Good
As our world and workforce continue to evolve with AI, our strategic approach and investments must evolve alongside it. Today, our partners are actively creating, testing, and applying AI to bridge the digital and data divide, and we’re proud to support our partners’ critical work, including:
- Bridges to Prosperity’s Fika Map uses ML to identify the most impactful places to build trail bridges for maximum education, health, and economic opportunities.
- charity: water’s AI-powered algorithm uses data from rural water pump sensors to predict when water pumps are likely to fail.
- CareerVillage’s AI-powered Career Coach provides qualified career coaching to more students and teachers at scale.
Improving Education
We support students, teachers, and schools around the world—helping to increase engagement, build skills, promote subject mastery for students, and teacher professional development. For example, we partner with Human-I-T to expand access to Internet connectivity at home and provide refurbished devices for Los Angeles and Detroit schools. We also support Glific.org—an open source, two-way communication platform that bridges the gap between nonprofits and their beneficiaries. With Cisco’s support, Glific education partners are leveraging technology to improve teacher capacity and student outcomes across Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
Supporting Sustainability
In 2021, the Cisco Foundation committed US$100 million over the next 10 years to support climate solutions. Our funding applies a diversified, blended approach: climate impact investments in early-stage, for-profit climate startups and climate venture capital funds, and grant funding for nonprofits.
One of the Foundation’s clean energy impact investments was made in support of Jaza Energy, which works to integrate solar powered hubs and telecommunications towers.
Our Foundation’s climate grants also support protection of natural ecosystems. For example, we supported Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance to promote a regenerative bioeconomy and protect 86 million acres of rainforest where 600,000 people from 30 Indigenous nationalities live. We also supported Kara Solar, an Indigenous-led organization in South America that provides solar river transport solutions, community energy grids, and training programs for local technicians.
Driving Economic Empowerment
Our investments support skills development, entrepreneurship, and access to financial services that enable individuals and families to achieve economic security and contribute to local community growth.
Our skills-to-career partner Defy Ventures equips formerly incarcerated individuals with skills to obtain jobs or start businesses. Our support helped them engage 7,000 individuals, launch 175 new businesses, and achieve an 84% post-release employment rate. In addition, our entrepreneurship partner, Agora Partnerships, created an interactive platform to help small and medium businesses across Central and South America build innovative climate solutions to improve efficiencies and outcomes.
Read the full FY24 Purpose Report
To learn more about the progress we’re making to Power an Inclusive Future for All, visit our Cisco Purpose Reporting Hub.
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