 Welcome everyone. I believe that we are ready for our discussion to look at the issues affecting emerging models for sustainability and recovery from the impact of COVID. Can I ask that we all mute if there's anyone with audio on to kindly mute so that we don't have any disruptions? Thank you very much. So I'm joining you all from Accra Ghana today. My name is Nana Fajimi. I'm the Executive Director of the West Africa Civil Society Institute WACSI. It's an organization with a mission to strengthen mission oriented nonprofits in West Africa and other parts of Africa to make them more effective, efficient, sustainable and resilient. WACSI is a member of the TechSoup Global Network and we cover 17 countries in Western Central Africa working with TechSoup. The TechSoup Global Network itself has an incredible international reach with more than 60 nonprofits who together serve about 1.3 million nonprofits, offering critical collaboration insights and over time, more than $1.9 billion in technology and financial resources. TechSoup Global Network's mission is to be a dynamic bridge that leverages technology to enable connections and innovation solutions for more equitable planets. Now, we work closely with TechSoup. TechSoup itself, if you look at the work that TechSoup has done, TechSoup global mission is to look at leveraging technology and 80% of the nonprofits that TechSoup serves are small with less than 1 million in budgets. I am happy to introduce to you our colleagues on the panel who will be leading us in the discussion. Melvin Chibole joined TechSoup as a Managing Director Africa this month after nearly 10 years as a leader with the Kenya Community Development Foundation, which is also a TechSoup Global Network partner. Melvin brings more than 14 years progressive experience working with development organizations situated in Kenya, but with a global presence and reach and Melvin is joining us today from Nairobi, Kenya. Just as I mentioned, drives VMware's social impact strategy, which is focused on non-profit digital transformation, VMware software, powers and worlds complex digital infrastructure, the company's cloud app modernization, networking, security and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Just as VMware's citizen philanthropy approach to giving, inspiring VMware 33,000 plus global employees to be active citizens in their communities and just as it's connecting today from the San Francisco Bay Area. Hi, Erin Valdafelta is VP of Social Impact at OCTA. She's passionate about empowering organizations and individuals to use their talents and expertise for good. She has helped build wonderful look at scale and lead social impact practices at both mature and early stage high growth companies with a focus on the media and technology sectors. She is also connecting today from San Francisco. And then we have Emma. Emma Togni is a marketing manager at Social Technology, Social Techno Social Enterprise, which leads TechSoup Italia. It's also a partner in the TechSoup Global Network. Taking care of customer success and cherishing relationships with people, stakeholders, communities. This is crucial to her as well as a well-structured long-term marketing strategy. And Emma considers her career as a continuous improvement, never ending part of listening to people and learning from any situation. Emma joins us from Milan in Italy. So my colleague panelists will be leading us in a discussion that will look at how we can strengthen organizations, especially the smaller ones that are of crucial importance for enabling locally led interventions. We will be looking at how just as small organizations are like small businesses, the backbone of a community, and the ones that are the ones that really enable a community to thrive. That is how nonprofits are also oriented towards immediate needs of a given community. They know what is working in a community, have a credible, incredible insight as to the path going forward and what needs to be done. And looking at our very challenging current international aid system where we have systemic imbalances and inequity, it is important to ensure that small organizations in the Global South have the technology and the resources that they need to respond and be resilient and to have the voice to participate in this space. So all of this is important and we want not only to look at what it is that we all bring to the table, but also the added benefits of the partnership and the network approach in providing the kind of infrastructure that is needed to help nonprofits transition to the cloud, as we all know, and other areas where that this may be challenging, and to continue to serve those that they support, which is the critical aspect of this. So I would like to now look at the issues that we want to discuss. Now, like many sectors, the civil society sector is likely to get smaller as a result of the current crisis that we are all very much aware of. In fact, if we look at the recent report from the Charities Aid Foundation, more than nine in 10 nonprofits worldwide continue to be negatively impacted by COVID-19, with about a quarter not sure that they can survive another 12 months this year. So this is a critical issue. The threat of a pandemic-induced ending for small organizations is even more severe. So we want to look at what are some of the new innovations organizations are looking at, what is emerging, how are long-standing ones helping others to become stronger, and what are the partnerships that are working towards all of this. So I would like to now let us hone in on some specifics and give some context, paint a picture of what we are faced with currently. So Emma, let me start with you. Early was one of the earliest and hardest hit places, and it would be great if you could kindly share with us in a few minutes what's the current situation today and what kind of early technology responses were the most effective in Italy. Hi, everyone. My name is Emma and I'm the head of marketing and communication at TechSoup Italy. We are a social enterprise established in 2014, and now we reach out to 18,000 nonprofits nationwide. So as a country in Italy, we are passing through the second wave of pandemic that is in some ways less worrying in terms of victims, but certainly challenging for the stability of our economic system. Actually, many operational and organizational models in all sectors, from public to private, have proved to be ineffective and inadequate to address the measures generated by the pandemic. And at the same times, new waves are being sold to reconfigure activities, services, products, especially with the help of digital, no longer seen as an option, but as a strategic solution. During the pandemic, we saw we have seen the emergence of the north of its sector in all its greatness as a real link between public and private, between institutions and citizens, and a real point of proximity for people and families in the community and in the territories. As a social enterprise, the most demanding challenge was actually to listen to new emerging needs and to reorganize ourselves to provide pick and smart response. In terms of technology, the most concrete needs were mailing at the level of access to hardware and tools for remote working. Secondly, people are for support at the level of digital skills, but not only to use certain tools, but to rethink through the technology, through the delivery of their services. So changing the delivery, the delivery of services, changing a whole structure of the organization. That's why the digital is challenging at all levels, because it involves people, processes, technologies, and all together. So we are working closely with no profits to, you know, to make this step forward. Great. Thank you very much, Emma. Melvin, what about you? What are you hearing from community civil society organizations in Kenya, looking at immediate and long term needs, and not just the technology tools? Can we hear from you in a few minutes? Okay, thank you. And again, my apologies I was not able to join and this does not speak in any way to my tech serviness. One of those things that can just happen. But again, as Emma stated, and probably I need to put this into perspective. When I was, initially I was meant to be a speaker representing one of the networks within TechSoup, but I've since transitioned to TechSoup as it was. And I might have issues with the tenses. But again, most communities, especially the communities in the frontline, the thing that they were most affected by is restrictions in terms of movement. Because the government had to put in a curfew and restrictions of places that you could read it. So the immediate ones who are first of all just the livelihoods. They weren't able to really get the daily things like food. They're unable to communicate to their families because the restrictions happened fairly quick and without much organizing. So the first thing that we witnessed initially was how do we get to the frontline organizations that we support so that they can reach to their constituencies. The process of just seeing and mapping out first starting with communication. Then after communication is just ideally providing what you might call talk time vouchers, so that we're able to speak to each other. Then after that now we started the process of trying to understand the needs of the organizations because they were valid. And just to put this into perspective, at some point COVID was not the biggest issue within communities. They had more pressing issues. So COVID just came in and was one among the many others that we were addressing because there were floods happening at the same time in most parts of the country. We had the locust invasion. So again, it's just again we're trying to see what would be the best route informed by the decisions made by those communities in light of us looking at localization agenda. I think you're muted. Nani, if you guys can hear me, you were muted, maybe try that one. I'm being muted. They said I'd be muted by the moderator. Okay. So, yeah, I was saying, I was talking about specific actions that you then took, looking at the context within which you were just give us one or two examples of some of the actions that you took. I think that's in response to support the organizations you were working with. Yes, Emma, please go ahead. You are muted now, Emma. Okay, I can just go. So the first thing that we needed to do as I said, it was just making sure that most organizations had their talk time vouchers or what you call air time vouchers to communicate among themselves in just trying to see what are the priority issues within the communities. So that was the first thing that we did then when I was still working at KCDF. Then the second thing again we looked at, again, was just to ensure that those communities able to access some of the tools that we are providing at the time that is the online tools. But the biggest issue that we encountered was most of these organizations, even in terms of the digital maturity journey. They're still on desktops, not even laptops, so they can't even access some of the offices where they usually work. So the first thing that you have to do is again to provide first airtime voucher as well as smartphones. Because again, sometimes you might think that it's common for all communities to have smartphones, so again just to enable collaboration. Then we went a step further now to start providing hardware. Because again, in terms of us trying to move them very fast, again, you start with the most basic tools, because they're used to desktops and they're working from home and outside providing laptops. And even as we continue with that process now we started the process of digital upskilling, either through the courses that we've offered and the text, the LMS platform, and we're able to even repurpose some of the courses that we had to address specific issues within COVID. But again, it's a process that we still tend to think that we've not fully dealt with. And again, at that time is when also TechSoup came in, now TechSoup the organization, there was a small fund that we were able to marshal to almost have more communities access the hardware part of it. As you continued now doing the digital upskilling. Great. Thank you very much. Emma, can you give us some actions that you took as well as a TechSoup project? We are taking action in two areas. The first one is investing in people, especially in their digital skills. So we responded by hosting 30 webinars led mainly by IT experts who volunteered to share the digital know-how. We have actually witnessed a beneficial exchange of competencies and knowledge between the public and non-profit sector. So this is something that we have never seen before, likewise the impact we generated because we trained more than 3,000 operators from the civil society. The second area is, as Melvin was saying, lack of IT infrastructure and network. So as a country we need to take a step forward to show you a social problem. So for the first time we took part as a strategic partner to a program promoted by Cairo Foundation and ASUS where we have been able to donate devices and connection to students in two regions in the north of Italy to enable them for remote schooling. And this is an excellent example for that creating a network on the territory that involves several subjects is a winning operating model to solve big social problems. And the third and the last area is communities. The shared awareness in Italy now is that we can only defeat the pandemic on the territories. So we in the non-profit sector need to think as a network. So we as TechSoup supported this hybridization between profit and non-profits, I mean, by offering a digital space where people could get to know each other, entering to see and talk to each other, start projects together. For example, we went live streaming every day for 52 days during the first lockdown. And the followers of our live streaming were often no-profits organization that later on started working together on projects and getting to know each other online. Great. Thank you very much for being that specific waxy that I work with. Also, being a TechSoup partner conducted some research on civil society's response to the COVID situation, provide the technological resources to support them to strengthen their capacity and increase their resilience. One of the projects is looking at supporting hundreds of civil society organizations in six countries in West Africa and by providing them the resources, the support, the training that they need to work with it. And this support reveals what some of you have talked about the deficiency regarding hardware infrastructure. And so TechSoup did support from the fund that it's got given additional support to provide that hardware donation and help address the gap. So these are some of the wonderful things that is done. And it does take me to my next question because we are working with partners and this is enabled by the kind of partnerships that we have with organizations like VMWare and Okta. Now that we have set the context and looked at how non-profit organizations have been affected and how they have responded, I'd like to find out more and I believe all of us would. How VMWare and Okta supporting TechSoup's international response and what are some of the things that you have done? What are some of the kinds of new and proven investment mechanisms that you are using? So Erin, can you tell us how Okta has been engaged with this particular mission? Thank you. You know, I think what we heard Melvin, Nana, Emma, what we heard you talk about in terms of what you're seeing on the ground and what you're doing to support. Those are things that funders and companies and quite frankly our employees at companies like Okta, like VMWare want us to be connecting with and supporting especially now. And I think that the short answer is that TechSoup gives us a vehicle to do that. You mentioned 1.3 million non-profits in the TechSoup ecosystem around the world. There's no other way to reach those organizations for a company like ours. And so the first thing I'll say is just that there's a tremendous value in partnering with organizations like TechSoup from a company perspective because we get so much leverage. We get to have a way and a path to connect in to supporting organizations on the front lines in places like Kenya and places like Italy where we may not even have operations. So there's a tremendous value in having an intermediary like TechSoup do that work and have built those connections already. Taking a step back just to set some context from the corporate side, from the tech side, our mission is to enable any organization to use any technology. We're in the identity and access management space. We essentially care about making sure organizations can give access to the right tools at the right time to the right people. And so digital transformation is what we live and breathe as a company. We work across many sectors. My team on the social impact side of course tries to support nonprofits and NGOs around the world with our technology. And so for many years now, the sort of North Star focus of our social impact and philanthropy efforts has been around nonprofit digital transformation. And how do we how do we not just help the organizations that use our products but actually help more organizations around the world undergo this transformation that that we all know needs to happen. And as we as we dug into that over the years we've recognized that it's really hard for nonprofits to fund tech. And it's hard for some obvious reasons, like tech is still seen as overhead. It's hard for some more nuanced reasons in terms of you know, am I love what you're saying about digital skills and the focus on that. There's a real need for more folks in the sector to have the right skills but more importantly the executive leadership of nonprofits and the boards of nonprofits need to understand how technology can drive mission. And so there's a there's a huge need for investment here, and it's not something quite frankly that a lot of funders have been interested in doing. It's not very sexy, especially when you start talking about infrastructure, you can't put your name on it, and it takes a really long time to see a result and so we've. And I think Jesse would agree with me we are both very passionate about this sort of invisible issue of nonprofit technology and infrastructure, and I think what we've seen not just in nonprofits but with every sector. This year and since the pandemic is that there's been a forced rapid digital transformation for everybody. You have to suddenly figure out remote work you have to figure out devices and connectivity you have to figure out in the nonprofit case. Digital fundraising and digital service delivery, and it's all happening now, and it's urgent. And, you know, the needs are only growing around this and so I think in that moment and in that frame for us at octa we really recognized an opportunity to do more through tech soup to reach organizations that we couldn't reach on our own. And so two things very specifically that we've done. One is tech soup talking about innovative financing models so tech soup for those that don't know they're there in the middle of a growth capital campaign trying to raise I think $11 million total to support their own digital transformation and to support their the build out of their own infrastructure to be able to serve many more nonprofits even then the 1.3 that they serve today and to serve them better. You can invest in that with a grant, but you can also invest in that as an investment. And so they're actually for the first time I think in the sector, have a direct public offering and are raising debt as a part of this growth capital campaign to enable new kinds of investors, large and small individuals can can invest as well as large organizations like like VMware and octa, but to fund their digital transformation and I think this innovation. It certainly is helping them raise the capital that they need and have it be open and unrestricted so that they can use it as they need to. But it's also I think really exciting because it's proving out a new model for how nonprofits might be able to get around some of these challenges around funding technology and funding infrastructure with a new mechanism so we're really excited and proud to be a part of that, that innovation. The second thing that we're doing is investing in research through TechSoup. And this was actually going on before the pandemic hit but it became very, very, I think even more important to do once, once, you know, once this year happened, but basically investing in global research from TechSoup's 1.3 million nonprofits to try and understand where the gaps are in digital readiness and particular around data and particular around skills, and to be able to slice and dice that and look at that by region sector by you know sort of issue area and have a much clearer sort of actionable blueprint and framework for funders to follow to say if I care about this kind of nonprofit in this place in the world doing this kind of work. Where can I make an investment in the smartest way possible to support their digital transformation to support their digital readiness. So that that survey is still being. I think the numbers are still being crunched but the results of that should be coming out very soon and it, it's going to really help, I think point funders large and small to more areas that they can help on these topics. So I'll, I'll actually ask just that there's there's a lot more that TechSoup is doing in the in the innovation realm I would love to have just to talk about it because she, she almost knows more about it than anybody. So I'll kick it over to her. Yeah, thank you very much and just about to you know, please. Tell us about what you're doing. Thanks Nana. Thanks Aaron. So I wanted to sort of talk a little bit more about two things that VMware has partnered with TechSoup on and it's around their digital assessment tool and their coven recovery fund and you know I was thinking about this session earlier and really these are the two sides of the same coin around how are you building, you know your organizational resilience. And so one of those is really understanding and being able to identify the need that organization has and then the other is around, you know, the question of the day is how do you fund it. So I'll start with the first side of the coin around TechSoup's digital assessment tool. And, you know, Aaron talked a lot about collaboration, collaboration, Emma talked about the sort of the importance of the network in your community. And so support for this tool came out of collaboration across companies so VMware, Okta, Adobe, Cisco and Box. And TechSoup's tool really helps a nonprofit identify where are you, where do you need to go and what are those next steps in organizations digital journey. And it's built upon their digital maturity framework that really helps an organization map where you are on the spectrum across several categories. And so you could be ad hoc in one area, functional, standardized, optimized and then adaptive. And the two things that really stand out for me about this tool is the first is we all recognize there's many tools out there. Right. And so an organization can choose which one really meets their needs. And then TechSoup's case the intent here was to link the ratings that come out of it. So I talked about the standardized or functional and to create actionable and achievable next steps. Right. And especially thinking about the smaller NGOs where, you know, historically you may be under resourced in this area. And then the second that I really appreciate about the tool is the recognition of sort of stepwise stepwise progress. Right. And this idea that it breaks these out into categories around an organization's digital transformation. And you can really start to tackle and say, okay, I want to be standardized here, maybe functional there. And I reckon it really recognizes those unique needs and I feel like Melvin really spoke to that at the beginning right where each organization has such a diverse set of needs. So you. So that is the first side of the coin of like understanding what an organization might need in that tech realm. And then of course, the other side is how do you fund it. And so, you know, the benefit of a tool like this is really being able to go to a funder like Aaron spoke to and being able to express a specific need in that technology space having as opposed to having it being this amorphous. We want to digitally transform. And on the same token is TechSoup's really provided an avenue for funders to say I want to support this. And they've done. I support this and then nonprofits can apply for those funds. So pilot of this is TechSoup's COVID recovery fund. So this was set up this year in response to helping NGOs who had to do that rapid pivot right to remote work to remote service delivery during the pandemic. So what this tangibly means is there's a fund and companies like VMware have invested in it, and then NGOs can apply for resources to put to to use towards the hardware needs. We heard Melvin and MS speak about, as well as software and other resources like courses. So in the US, more than 800 small and medium sized NGOs have applied for support through this. And then also to is several members of the TechSoup global network and developing countries have partnered with TechSoup to be able to provide this in region. So examples of this are West Africa Civil Society Institute and Kenya Community Development Foundation. And this is a way to as we talked as Nana spoke to at the beginning is really being able to have local and a rentions and solutions coming from local communities. So that's just a quick snapshot of two of the things that VMware has done with TechSoup. Thank you very much, Erin and Gessa. I think that what you have talked about really gives us the whole picture of how the partnership works, who to work with within within within the ecosystem to reach the smaller organizations. What exactly to do the research, the mapping, the tracking to know where to support, what to support, how much to support the core investing. And the ownership of the whole program to make sure that we do have that kind of equitable development working with technology and within and for development. I think that that really is great. I would like to kind of ask Melvin if you can speak a bit to the online courses aspect as well because this is another area where organizations receive support. Smaller organizations and can really boost their resilience and within the technology space. And so, so can you speak a bit to that as well. Yeah, definitely. Thank you again for the opportunity. We should not lose perspective that these changes are painless. They're very painful to most organizations. Either because they're because of education levels because of poverty because of basic things like even broadband connectivity. So even as you're looking at these courses, and we've been fortunate enough to have Microsoft again coming to partner with tech soap in terms of providing some digital skills courses. But that still is not enough. Because the first things that organizations look at to make sure that their lights are all would be small things like how do they say tell their story. How are they able to start fundraising, especially if raising resources locally, amongst their own constituents. So some of these courses as I said initially we had to repurpose them fairly quick, so that you almost address both verticals. And in the rest tech, they can also use that kind of those kinds of resources also to almost boost their organizational development and workflows. So this course is, I would say, since we launched in the last two years or so, we've seen a steady growth almost 40% increment month on month. And this is new to this part of the world, especially in the global south and I'm speaking largely about Africa. I'm trying to almost permeate through that. And for people to almost get them. We are, and I'll say this about Africa, we are, we are an oral society. We like sitting together and communicating and getting almost immediate feedback. So that was one of the things we are trying to do to almost move this kind of learning, more to digital learning. And the reason why again this course has become important is because of fast scalability, because you can reach quite a number of people at the same time. And again, it's it's self based. The assumption is not that everyone will come in at the same level. So people come in or opt in opt out based on the needs that they want, but the second thing is replication. As has been said again, takes up is a has a robust global network, and we call it a network of values, because what we have in Africa or what we have in Kenya might be very different from what Emma in in Italy is doing. We almost have a crowdsourced crowdsourced space where different courses with different languages can can mean learners can take them. And that provides a very rich, almost a gene pool of resources and we are trying to see how best you can even increase these courses. It's not just about tech, but on the very different things like digital exclusion. We know as much as again technology has been a growth factor we know again, the push factor is that it will create a lot of inequalities, especially in the global south, because most organizations will not be able to scale as fast as you as you'd like. Again, with the issue of again digital transformation and digital adoption. Again, if you don't put safety nets as we go along, then it creates even bigger inequalities, things like digital trust. Those are some of the things that we've started now, looking at in terms of pushing some of the courses and just having interactions and again, we will not just provide just the online courses we also sometimes have to work through our partners. Again, how do we also bring in the issue of blended learning, where some concepts are fairly difficult to understand. So it's a pipeline that we continue seeing how best we can bring in courses that are not just relevant but also contextual to the different spaces and the global network that we service. Thank you very much Melvin. I think that as we have spoken, we've talked about different things that TechSoup offers, the kind of support that it gives to smaller organizations, the kind of invaluable support and partnership that VMware and Okta brings to the work that is done into the mission of these organizations. There may be companies or corporations that may be interested in supporting coming into this space and would want to increase their ability to directly support small organizations. So, particularly from Erin and Jessa, and I think that, let me start with Erin. What kind of advice would you have for some of these organizations? And when you speak to this, kindly also mention the challenges that you have faced and how you have worked with it, or worked to resolve it and working with TechSoup because we don't want to assume that this is all a fairytale and wonderful. And great things and positive and of course it is but there are also some challenges and what is important is that you have worked to try and resolve these and be able to get results. So when you speak to this, kindly give the advice and also tell us how you have tackled any challenges that you may have. Thank you Erin. I think that if you're a company or funder trying to reach small nonprofits, in particular where you don't operate, I think the biggest challenge is proximity. We all agree that we want solutions to come from local leaders, that we want power and agency to come from local communities. It's really hard to build those relationships when you're very far away and you don't have those paths built. So again, I go back to the approach that Okta is taking in large part with our philanthropy is to work through trusted intermediaries, through trusted networks, through trusted ecosystems. And TechSoup is one of the best examples of that that we have found. There are others that we work with if you're passionate about the work of very, very large NGOs and what they do around the world. Net Hope is another wonderful intermediary to look at if you're passionate about nonprofit startups and new solutions, new tech solutions to challenges. Fast Forward is a wonderful intermediary we also work with that focuses on that sort of nonprofit tech startup ecosystem. So there are many, many intermediaries. I think what they do again is they help with leverage. So one partnership or one investment into one organization gets you a relationship and an investment in many. The other thing that they do is translation. There is a vast chasm sometimes between the world of, you know, high growth tech companies based in Silicon Valley, and the realities of what nonprofits on the front lines are dealing with in our communities around the world. And we can all do our best but it really accelerates the learning and accelerates the impact when we have somebody that can sit in between and sort of be a bridge to translate. So that's another, I think, real asset to these organizations like TechSoup. And I think one other challenge if you are a company in particular who chooses to invest in intermediaries like a TechSoup. It can sometimes be hard to communicate, especially to your employees, like what the impact is. It's a lot easier to tell a story of impact to your employees. If you have a partnership with a local school down the street, and you can, and you can go there and you can know the students and you can share photos and stories of the impact you're having. So there's a bit of a, it's the impact story is a little bit harder to tell. And I think that the way to address that and what we've done to sort of to get around that is to, you know, leverage TechSoup to build relationships, not with folks like you and Melvin and Emma and bring you all in and tell those stories together very much like we're doing today. So it's a little bit more work, but I think it's absolutely worth it. So that's my advice. Thank you. Yes. Yeah, thank you. You know, I think I appreciate Nana, you asking that question of sort of the, because I think, right, a lot. This is messy. And we get to sort of put a bow on it and talk about the success stories. And, you know, I think this year in particular, I really have appreciated the inherent tension between scale, and also sort of customization and meeting those unique needs. Right. And I think that that it, that will always be a natural tension. And so it sort of advice that I have to other companies that are thinking about sort of serving smaller organizations is to really have that flexible framework that allows you to have those guide posts, but also really holds true to listening and understanding and not making assumptions that that one that it's all sort of that one size fits all. So a tangible example of this is with our VMware's pro bono program is sort of we have a flexible framework around discovering and understanding that need, designing within that particular context and use cases, then implementing and always of course keeping in mind that maintain aspect of it really so it's a sustainable solution for an organization. And then with that you're able to slide in and being able to really think about that unique context. And that sort of is able to balance both of both worlds, but just acknowledging right it's tough. And inherently there are also trade offs that come with it. Indeed. Thank you very much for for your responses to this question. I we've got some questions as well. And, and I'm opening the floor. I would read some of the ones that we've got through the chat. And please, if you have any questions that you want to put in the chat you can do so, or you can we can also call on you to speak. I think that we do have a colleague who is working with us to do that. So, one of the questions that I have, and, and I would ask for now I would ask Aaron, and, and, and, and Jesse, and if you want to speak to this. What advice would you have for funders or companies who want to get started with supporting grassroots organizations and resilience. So, any specific I think this person really wants, I mean they are ready to go and support organizations, you know, the front line so what's what kind of specific advice would you have for for funders or companies want to support organizations looking at their resilience. It's very simple, make your donations unrestricted and make them multi year, wherever you possibly can. Great, thank you just straight to the points. Yes. Yeah, I would plus one that and I think too is also, you know, in the recognition of community, I feel like we've heard that spoken about throughout this conversation is really thinking about your community of employees and acknowledging sort of the talents that they have and especially the local context. Right, so I think also to is not just seeing it as an isolation of someone in my role or an errands role making all those decisions but really seeing it as how do you engage the entire community to be to be active in this in building resilience. Yeah, and from the, from the organizations points that that I would say that look at supporting long term, working with the organization in partnership to strengthen their institutions in the long term I think that's one of those things and supporting that kind of operational funding to build the institutions and that is one of the things that we lack the most. So, so that kind of support is very helpful and technology is the technology capacity is part of it. Another question that we have and I'd like Melvin and Emma to respond to this is, what are some of the most inspiring things that you are seeing rise up from the community in local innovation or response to COVID. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Emma go ahead please and then Melvin. So actually, what we learn and many no profits as well is that the most rewarding effort is always deciding to listen and answer to punctual issues, because that minimum valuable response that you deliver for one person and one organization if it's done smart. There can be scale up to respond to bigger issue issues and pandemic and it's manifold the consequences are certainly the main issue now so and also the availability and the flexibility of people to test and prototype new ways to deliver services and to their daily activities as well. So, I would say availability flexibility test. Thank you, Emma. Melvin. Again, the only silver lining to this COVID is it has it has shown the resilience of communities for them to be able to almost handle and respond to some of the emerging needs from a man is themselves from one of the consequences if it's paid for if it's privatization of who needs what more than the other. And again, and for the longest time we've always thought of these large organizations being the intermediaries that would be forward facing with communities but because of all these restrictions, then communities have almost gotten the confidence and the mind shift that they can address some of the issues. And again, just appreciating that, even as TechSoup, this has been almost a learning experience from us. I mean for us, because ideally we would deal with organized groups would deal with organizations that are register, but we also became frontline staff in terms of addressing it issues because now we're almost removing the intermittency of local organizations and responding directly. And it has forced us to also think perhaps we also need to look at beyond organizations that there do people who do good who'd want to be supported with some of the products or some of the services that we have so that they reach directly to the people who are most affected. And again, I would give you an example for instance, when I was still at KC, the biggest one that was was I thought was fairly useful was one organization, which is called a positive which basically provides support to people living with HIV and AIDS. And I would appreciate that when COVID came, most of the facilities were turned into COVID centers. So people with Aidan and communicable diseases or communicable diseases were left stranded. And what Tech did in terms of just organizing and using SMS and just showing these patients where they would get lifelong drugs by just again mapping out and saying this is the place where you can go and say for instance if it's a Tuesday you can go to this particular facility they'll be offering that kind of support. And you start seeing the centrality of technology not just as a function within an organization, but one of the key components in pushing an organizational development or reaching out to the most innate. So you almost start removing technology as these mystery and and and giving life to it in terms of real life examples. Thank you very much Melvin. We have a question around shifting the power we've been talking about equitable development and saying that this is all really that's the main goal. And for us for reaching out to smaller organizations working mission oriented organizations and working with them. Now, the question is, what does that mean to each of us to shift power I will start with myself. I think it means valuing the knowledge that organizations, particularly from the global south, bring into the development space, because we do have a lot of knowledge and and valuing that knowledge and being interdependent in our for each other strengthening each other and in the work that we do. And I think that this is this is a perfect example working with technology there's a lot of that that could be done so that for me is the answer and I'd like to ask each of you to speak to that as well so whoever is ready just jumping. What does it mean for you to shift the power. Yes, Emma. I'm really challenging the status quo, and also valuing as you were saying, valuing the, the richness of small organization because they are the real proximity to people and community locally. Yeah, I would say within the lens of corporate philanthropy for us at VMware, it's really been around sort of our citizen philanthropy approach where it's democratizing the access to all of our charitable assets. So it's not just one leader, for example, historically in a position of power and privilege being able to decide where all of those resources go, but that it's democratized to all of our people of those 33,000 employees rather company, and really being able to shift the access and opportunity of it. Thanks. Aaron. I would say similar to Emma, challenging the status quo, and in a corporate philanthropy setting, I think the challenging that we need to do is to just stop and and ask the question, does it need to be done this way. And the more we can do that in terms of our processes, in terms of the way we've always done things and really like in those pauses, get out of the way. To me, that's how we kind of functionally start to shift the power. Thank you, Melvin. To me at the very basic level of shift the power is the issue of voice. Who are we looking at in terms of who are in the room and who are not in the room, because it's very easy for you to, to almost have an echo chamber. So, it is sincerity of change. Do you really want to change some of the long held beliefs that perhaps that we have privilege and privileges. Now I want to debunk this privilege is not just about global sort of global not. It's about how we view communities or how we view even ourselves. And would we also be holding power in terms of being privileged in terms of tech and pushing digital transformation. Yet we know that almost 60 70% of communities in Africa will be disenfranchised by the same and seeing how do we start now looking at what are some of the issues that we are putting is it delaying and having a hybrid system. Is it more of investing in terms of the very basic tools like laptops, it might sound obvious, but it's not obvious to this part of the world, and seeing are we able to almost dump down our recent and and be empathetic to some of the issues that are being faced and it's not enough to just quote statistics that the broadband connectivity is 80% might be 80% but some 15% of communities that are privileged enough to be able to access some of these resources. Thank you. I like what somebody is talking about the about not just refacing, but reframing. What is the frame, and within which we are looking at all of these things and how we are addressing it. So that that I think is really very important and there's a very critical question about allies, because we have said that we must work with different people. So who are the ally who is missing in this space now that we should be reaching out to. I would want to respond to this. Are there any allies that we think we are missing in this space, or we don't have enough of we have everybody we need. Definitely not definitely not and again, I'm happy that Erin and just on the call. But again, even when you're talking about tech companies, are we able to almost have candid conversations so that the support to organizations like TechSoup is not just a branch of the larger organization. It's almost CSR to bring it to the to the core of the organization and saying that yes, as much as nonprofits is not our core vertical in terms of resources but it's important to reach to to almost a last mile of sorts. So some of the communities are there movements that we can start having, whether it be organizations or activists that can come in and say yes, these are some of the pain points that we have, we don't trust IT firms enough, we do not trust nonprofits enough. Could we now, as you said, can we start now almost refraining what what what we might do governments again shrinking space is always there. I mean other places where we can now start having government coming in now not just as a regulator, but almost as an enabler. So I think those are some of the ones that we tend to think we believe behind more often than not. One or one other group that I also often think of is actually IT tech. I don't know whether I should call them experts by people who have the knowledge in tech and from from Africa, from the global south, who could really be a part of this discussion and really contribute because they live within the context and they can design the solutions that suits the context and whether how much they are a part of all of this so so that I see that missing. And I think that's one of the areas as well. Now, this is a very interesting one what is a burning question we have for each other. As finalists, what is a question that we would like to ask each other now I don't think that we may have questions for all of us, each of us for all of us. But maybe one question each that we would have to take away because we don't have a lot of time but one question that we could take away think about and ask me engage respond to just one question. I have one. Yes, it's what I asked everybody these days, I would just ask the group what makes you hopeful right now. It's been a really tough year right. But what makes you hopeful. Great. What makes us hopeful. I was going to have a response to that as opposed to another question. But, you know, I, I think on that I just want to sort of in that light just sort of I think if we come back to our personal lives I just feel like the daily joys. And I feel like this year is really taught sort of around that like simplification and maybe to Emma's point about the MVP right in the minimum viable product and sometimes the simple joys are, you know, around, you know, things that you might have taken for granted right or made assumptions and I think you can extrapolate that analogy to, you know, this work we're doing around digital transformation collectively and really celebrate those, the things that have gone well that are, it might be small, but add up to a greater. Yeah, I really, it looks like we've really run out of time it's just three o'clock now and I don't want us to take for granted what everybody I mean take for granted everybody's time I believe that people. Their time is really one that is worthy. I just want to thank all of us for making the time to be a part of this. Can I ask that we send our questions to each other, because I think it's still important for us to look at this one of the things I would like to say is clearly our interest in this has shown us that we do have a contribution to make in having more equitable development and empowering the tech component or small organizations in partnership with organizations like TechSoup, Okta, VMware, they've shown us that I mean it's possible. So, as we go forward as we look at the work that we do at different missions. Let's bear this in mind and look at all the different ways that we've talked about that we can contribute to ensuring that we strengthen these smaller organizations look at some of the innovative things that they are doing work with intermediaries like TechSoup. To make sure that we indeed reach the organizations that we've been working with the smaller organizations and have the kind of equitable development and the shift in power that we have been talking about. I'd like to thank you all very much for being a part of this. Thank you. And I am not sure whether I'm the one who has to exit as all out of this. So this, well, I'm not, it's not too clear how we exit. So I don't know. Let me just. We wait until we are the last people standing. It's not clear because you know you can't see anybody else. So it's not clear how we exit. But anyway, I mean I think that I really enjoyed the session and really thank you all for your collaboration. I think that one of the questions for me would be how we really get this kind of partnership out, you know, spread it wider within the ecosystem. Because there's so little of it in terms of looking at that kind of support to organizations to make them more resilient. There's so little of it and I really appreciate the VMware, Octa kind of path and TechSoup itself as a network and its partnership with its organization, with members within TechSoup. I find that to be my question. I think how do we kind of spread the message and the practice of building this kind of innovative partnership. So since we are still online, Melvin and Emma, you also didn't get the chance to raise your questions. So maybe you can speak to that as well. I would ask what would be the characteristics of the nonprofits of the future? Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good question as well. And actually quite fluid looking at the kind of social movements that we have now. So it might be even more difficult to think of how to work with these. Melvin, you have a question as well for us to think about. Just to ensure because again COVID is not the last pandemic. How are we going to some of the things that we've had and maybe COVID is just almost a trigger to show us our true know how can we make these kind of conversations more enduring. I would be more than happy for either Erin or Jason to tell me can you come and present to our staff members on the impact. Because again part of shifting the chain is opening doors where we will not necessarily be able to access. Yeah. Okay, so on that note, let me thank you all for your time. It's been wonderful. Thank you. You as well.