If you should know anything about Bridge for Billions, it’s that our overarching goal is to democratize entrepreneurship. We want anyone who has an idea for a business, especially those with a positive social impact, to have the opportunity to make their business come to life — no matter where in the world they may be from. And it’s with that singular vision in mind that we seek out partnerships with organizations that can help us reach a broader audience of people who can benefit from our platform.
Accenture’s global corporate initiative, Skills to Succeed, empowers employees to volunteer their time in support of equipping people globally with the skills needed to get a job or build a business by 2020. To this day, the program has impacted 3 million people globally, from teaching young children how to code to ensuring all workers can thrive in the digital economy.
“One of the company’s goals was to combine the excitement of working with a startup up and the value of making a social impact – which set Bridge for Billions as the perfect candidate!”
In order to implement the initiative effectively in Spain, Accenture was looking to develop a skill-based volunteering program with a technological aspect.
Finding ways to make skill-based volunteering easy and accessible to employees helps administrative teams to successfully carry out global programs like Skills to Succeed. But employees also respond much more positively if these experiences are personalized and include one-to-one contact.
To drive interest in volunteering, one of the company’s goals was to combine the excitement of working with a startup and the value of making a social impact – which set Bridge for Billions as the perfect candidate!
So in 2018, we decided to partner with Accenture Spain to create a nation-wide online mentoring program, open to employees year round. And because the timeline can be tailored to each employees’ own schedule through our online incubation program, they can choose to mentor a startup project whenever they want, wherever they want.
Not only does working online makes it very easy to connect and have a highly personalized experience with a volunteer, but our platform also helps tracking volunteer hours, program stats, and social impact.
And once you take limitations like time and location out of the equation, but keep the one-to-one aspect that makes volunteering so inspiring, you allow more mentors to develop teaching skills, empathy, open-mindedness, agility, creativity, and initiative, all while boosting company pride!
The Accenture mentors are given the opportunity to support a team of entrepreneurs for 4 months, as they work through our proven incubation methodology. By mentoring early-stage startups, they learn how to work more collaboratively as a team, connect with people from all corners of the globe, and develop better communication skills.
In fact, 100% of the mentors so far have said that they gained new business and technical expertise! Moreover, thanks to this partnership with Bridge for Billions, the Accenture Foundation has been able to implement a fully online volunteering platform which has allowed them to efficiently monitor their employees’ contributions.
