Classy’s vision is to create an environment that unites the best interest of its community, financial partners, customers, and team members. One of the ways we do this is by creating a team experience where everyone is truly invested in their work. For Classy, our work means helping nonprofits become as successful as they can in raising money for their missions. To give team members a personal investment in our customers’ success, Classy recently announced that 100% of employees will be offered equity in the company. Spearheading this employee experience vision into 2022, is Ann Catrina-Kligman, Classy’s new Vice President of People.

What Providing Equity Means for Classy Employees & Customers

The ability for all employees to own equity gives everyone a stake in Classy’s growth. At the same time, it shows that Classy has a stake in each employee’s growth and reminds them why the work they do matters. We want everyone to feel ownership and pride for the work they accomplish at Classy.

Ultimately, employee ownership shows that Classy trusts, cares about, and invests in its people at the highest level. When our people are motivated to succeed, we are in the best position to serve our nonprofit customers through excellent service, new ideas, and insights that continue to keep our fundraising platform innovative. By making each employee feel aligned to company success, we create a community of 300 individuals ready to help any customer today and in the future achieve their goals with Classy.

Classy’s Investment in Employees

Classy has fostered a community of impact, which makes employee ownership in the company’s success that much more rewarding. Let’s look at a few of the ways Classy has invested in becoming an impactful community that employees want to be a part of.

• Classy became B Corp certified in December of 2020. This declared a passion and social responsibility to focus on all stakeholders, including employees.
• Classy reincorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation in April of 2021. This further emphasized its commitment to all stakeholders.
• CEO Chris Himes shared that Classy will offer equity to all employees in October of 2021. Now, all employees of any level have stock options. He shared, “As Classy thrives, it must pass on more benefits to the employees who are responsible for its success.”
• To continue to elevate its investment in its employees, Classy welcomed Ann Catrina-Kligman in November of 2021 to lead the employee experience as the VP of People.

Meet Ann, Leading Classy Into 2022 and Beyond

Ann brings a breadth of experiences innovating and reimagining work by building and delivering employee-centered experiences that make it easier to communicate and collaborate while fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging. Classy’s employee-owned model is a foundational element of her strategy.

Ann has a long history in the technology space as a former leader on the Human Resources teams at Zendesk and Salesforce. Her experience sets the stage for the next step in her journey to support Classy and its giving platform for nonprofits.

Get to know Ann. We asked her to answer some timely questions to better understand her vision for Classy and its culture.

Q: What have you learned about leading people through the pandemic?

A: Navigating unprecedented change in real-time taught me that having a growth mindset is no longer a nice-to-have. We’re all navigating changes that haven’t stopped. The most recent example that comes to mind is going into a long Thanksgiving weekend with hopes for safer gatherings with family and friends. We returned the following Monday to a new COVID-19 variant.

The minute we think we know something, the world will shift. The key to strong leadership in times like these is adapting to constant change. It’s all about flexibility and proper work-life integration. I believe in giving talented individuals the autonomy to choose what they do and how they do it in a way that results in value for all.

In the same vein, it’s undeniable that there’s an extreme focus on connection and wellbeing. You can argue they are at the core of each element I mentioned. Leaders need to focus on benefits beyond medical and dental to retain valuable employees. We need to ensure they feel seen and appreciated by their workplace.

In my prior roles and now at Classy, my goal is to create an environment where people can bring their whole selves to work. I want people to do the best work of their lives while staying connected to those close to them outside of the office. Ownership in the company is one of many ways this can come to light.

Q: What is your vision for the employees of Classy and our internal community of talent?

A: I’m most excited to deliver an employee experience that helps people feel a sense of belonging and focus that drives them to a fulfilled career. My plan is in no way going to be dependent or static on the state of the world because the one constant right now is change. I’m prepared to bring people together regardless of location or time zone.

There’s a lot I’m looking at to digitize the employee experience. Without our headquarters as a physical home base, we have the chance to build an experience irrespective of physical space.

We will continue to ensure that every employee feels a sense of belonging and connection to the company’s trajectory. We can organize a few meaningful moments during the year that fuel all day-to-day activities that happen online. I see these moments as dedicated time for planning, reflecting, and celebrating together.

I need to note that without a diverse and inclusive workplace, none of this is possible. I’m passionate about prioritizing this in the employee experience at Classy. Every employee can be true to their unique identity, and embrace shared perspectives and connections at the same time.

Q: How will employee ownership bring value to current and new employees?

A: Not only do we care about our employees at Classy, but we consider them stakeholders in our success. Not only are they doing work that matters, but they are beneficiaries of the impact made by our organization. That’s exactly what providing equity to 100% of employees means to us. Every employee is reminded of that when they see our success benefit their futures.

Leaders looking to implement an employee-owned model can better attract and retain diverse talent by demonstrating their impact. Organizations need to exemplify their values in every conversation, interaction, and business decision. Splashing values and an appealing mission statement through a website doesn’t cut it.

There must be authenticity in these promises to pull in amazing talent. Communicating what you stand for showcases how every employee plays a critical role. The sentiment must carry on beyond the first 30, 60, or 90 days on the job.

At Classy, we are successful when our customers are successful. That success is directly correlated to our employees’ growth. Our employee-owned model helps us celebrate that together beyond in-office perks. It includes true ownership, influence, and impact on the future of Classy.

Living Out a Connected Employee Experience

By investing in our people and offering every employee equity in the company, we believe we will help our customers become more successful. And, as a result, have even more impact on the communities we serve.

If you’d like to be part of the Classy community, take a look at our available career opportunities. Or, explore our Impact Report to learn more about how we realize our mission to mobilize and empower the world for good through an employee-first approach.

You can look forward to hearing more from Ann and our Classy people team here on the blog and over on LinkedIn.

Connected by the common goal to deliver a world-class supporter-centric fundraising platform for the social sector, Classy is proud to celebrate Soraya Alexander and Shantanu Bose in their new roles as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering.

Meet Soraya Alexander, Classy’s New COO

Prior to being appointed COO, Soraya was Classy’s SVP of Marketing and Customer Growth. Over the past three years, she has played an integral role in the success of Classy’s 6,000 nonprofit customers across the country. Her focus has been on helping these customers realize their full potential for online fundraising, showing how a seamless donor experience and frictionless technology can not only help them reach their goals, but exceed them.

Soraya’s dedication to the growth of our nonprofit customers contributed to the activation of 46,000 campaigns on the Classy platform in 2020 and $1 billion raised from over 9.4 million donations—of which, nearly 4 million were recurring gifts.

In addition to her commitment to our customers’ success, Soraya’s creativity has pushed our marketing team to new heights. Here’s a small sample of assets that were created recently under Soraya’s leadership to support our customers’ fundraising efforts and fuel their missions:

• Classy’s Giving Tuesday Resource Center
• The Smart Guide to Strong Year-End Fundraising
• The Recurring Donor Sentiment Report
• The State of Modern Philanthropy 2021

Meet Shantanu Bose, Classy’s New SVP of Engineering

As SVP of Engineering, Shantanu’s strategic planning for growth will continue to largely impact the evolution of Classy’s giving platform. Over the past two years, his balance of technical evolution and innovative product enhancements has opened Classy’s eyes to new technologies, allowing our customers to unlock generosity in more meaningful ways and drive action toward impactful change in society.

Learn how Classy customers are using our product enhancements to better serve their beneficiaries from our 50 Best in Classy organizations, and take our free assessment to uncover new opportunities for your nonprofit based on benchmarks set by over 4,800 organizations.

We Asked, They Answered

Q: Tell us about your journey with Classy over the past few years and how it led you to this new role on the executive leadership team.

A: I spent time navigating back and forth between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors before coming to Classy, always with a focus on customer engagement and technology. Joining this team a little over three years ago felt like finding home.

My role evolved from leading product marketing, to taking on responsibility for our larger marketing team, and then expanding to include a focus on customer growth. Those opportunities allowed me to help our Classy customers realize their full potential for online fundraising, and drew me closer to our mission to mobilize and empower the world for good.

My goal was then, and still is, to help ensure nonprofits have access to best-in-class technology that allows them to raise more funds and drive greater positive change. My new role as COO will allow me to continue working with our own team and our broader customer base to ensure we are creating an exceptional experience for our customers, and supporting them as they accelerate their impact and future-proof their fundraising.

A: I started at Classy scaling the platform for enterprise customers by introducing exciting new capabilities, such as ClassyPay. Over the past two years, our focus has been to transform the giving experience by doubling down on security, scalability, and an accelerated migration to a mature microservices distributed architecture.

Navigating these product enhancements and ongoing technical evolution allowed me to better understand our nonprofit customers and deliver on their wants and needs. In this new role as SVP of Engineering, I will continue to address these opportunities from a strategic level so we can better support their goals.

Q: What motivated you to step into this role and what do you hope to achieve? 

A: My position, like every position at Classy, is designed to serve as a resource and advocate for our customers. The Classy team considers ourselves to be a natural extension of the nonprofit organizations we support, and that mindset guides all of our internal discussions, debates, and decisions.

Our job each day is to build great technology that helps our nonprofit customers unlock the generosity of their supporters in intuitive, engaging ways, and to help these customers leverage our technology to advance their incredible missions.

A: Over the past couple of years, I’ve been so inspired by the team I get to work with every day at Classy. After getting to know both the broader engineering team and the rest of the executive leadership, I truly felt like Classy was the perfect opportunity for me to do the best work of my career.

With a balanced focus on infrastructure and platform evolution, I want to bring the best online fundraising experience to our customers. Our core focus is to help grow donation volume, which aligns directly with our customers’ incentives—the more successful our customers are, the more successful we’ll be.

Our sophisticated software helps nonprofits raise more by maximizing conversion rates and retention rates, without placing huge technological demands on our customer teams. We are technologists who bring that value to our customers. I want to continue serving our Classy community in this way by staying ahead of the latest innovations in conversion and payments and evolving our product to anticipate and deliver on the needs of the sector for years to come.

Q: What’s your personal connection to the nonprofit sector?

A: I’ve spent a good part of my career in the social sector and currently sit on the Board of Directors of a San Diego nonprofit that provides surf therapy and mentorship for foster and adoptive youth who have suffered complex trauma.

This sector at large is tackling the world’s most intractable problems and fighting for resources and attention to make headway. I’ve experienced it firsthand. It’s why I’m so passionate about the work we do at Classy. Every decision is made with our customer and the greater good in mind. We aren’t always perfect, but we are intentional and consistently striving to be better.

A: I’ve had the pleasure of being closely involved with many nonprofits over the years, including opportunities like mentoring high school students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and serving on the board of Hire Our Heroes, an organization aiming to expand job opportunities for veterans.

Seeing the impact of their work firsthand was very inspiring and opened my eyes to the value of Classy’s technology. Building intuitive, innovative products to help our customers move the needle on their missions is critical to their success. That motivation remains top of mind for me day in and day out.

Q: What’s ahead for Classy that excites you the most?

A: Classy is growing quickly, and much of our growth is coming from our huge investments in our product and engineering organizations, which means the velocity of innovation we can deliver for the sector is increasing.

We are spending a lot of time thinking about what great giving experiences look like as the world keeps changing—everything from really elegant donation pages that maximize donor conversion and retention rates, to cryptocurrency and NFT giving, to amazing hybrid events, to workplace giving.

Not everything will make it to our product roadmap, but staying curious and creative on the full breadth of possibilities allows us to be really thoughtful and holistic with what we are building.

A: It’s so exciting to see how rapidly our industry is changing and I think this is just the beginning. We saw so many innovations during the pandemic in the way nonprofits were able to raise money, and it was incredible to see their success.

At Classy, we want our technology to meet the evolving needs of our customers by almost disappearing into the background. The focus should really be on the nonprofit and the work they’re doing—donating should feel seamless.

Q: How does Classy being a Certified B Corporation impact your approach to leadership?

A: Classy operates as both a Certified B Corporation and a Public Benefit Corporation, because we believe in the power and obligation to consider the impact to all stakeholders when conducting business. 

We consider four primary stakeholders when making all meaningful decisions: our customers, our employees, our community, and our financial shareholders. This compels us to think holistically about the impact of our business practices and leads us to make decisions that keep us on a path to good. 

The great thing about how we structure our operations is that our customers are at the forefront of everything we do. We primarily look at the impact our customers are able to have by using our products. For our customers to succeed, we have to ensure our staff is empowered and supported, as they are the frontline champions of our customers. We look at the engagement we have with our communities through things like dedicated volunteer time for staff. Finally, we have structured our revenue model to only allow us to succeed when our customers succeed in their fundraising efforts, so our interests are completely aligned to our customers’ success. This approach helps clarify and focus all big decisions, and allows us to be part of the good we seek to advance in the world. 

Q: How has Classy’s Product and Engineering team evolved and where do you see it going?

A: At Classy, we build incredible technology to help supporters give to causes they care about. This intersection of technology and impact allows us to attract world-class technologists who are passionate about using their skillset to mobilize and empower the world for good.

We have made huge investments in our Product and Engineering team. They currently make up one-third of our full-time staff. Each with the goal to thoughtfully expand our platform and sustainably scale our codebase to help strengthen the work of our customers.

And this investment doesn’t stop here. As our customers continue to grow, Classy will continue to prioritize being a product-led organization that meets the needs of nonprofits—not just today, but in the future—so they can continue to solve our world’s most complex challenges day in and day out.

Looking Ahead

Classy has been serving the sector for over ten years, and we have a long and exciting path ahead.

If you’re interested in joining our interdisciplinary team that offers the best fundraising technology available, please view and consider our open roles.

That’s because nonprofits have risen to the occasion amongst a global pandemic, humanitarian injustices, environmental disasters, and economic distress.

For many of us, the first question we ask when we hear about someone or something in trouble is, how can I help? The answer is often donating to nonprofits who are responding to the crisis at hand. When we feel helpless, nonprofits make us feel like we can make a difference. 

Classy’s mission is to mobilize and empower the world for good. We promise to connect people with the causes they care about through engaging and intuitive giving experiences and to help nonprofits be more relevant to supporters over time by providing technology and insights.

As nonprofits step up, we must too. 

To us, the answer is not only building world-class fundraising technology that allows nonprofits to raise more but also holding ourselves accountable for doing good in the world. As a Certified B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation, Classy considers the virtuous relationship between the customers who use our technology, the employees who help build and service it, the community and environment in which we exist, and the financial partners who make it all possible.  

The Stakeholder Model

The premise of the stakeholder model is to equally balance the needs of each stakeholder and never at the expense of another. It complements the Public Benefit Corporation status in that voting board members must consider the impact any decisions made would have on all stakeholders. 

As you’ll see in the report, Classy’s stakeholder model was challenged this past year. As the world shifted, priorities were pulled in every direction. 

We wanted to meet our employees’ health and wellness needs in a remote environment for our staff. For our customers, we wanted to build reliable technology for nonprofits on the frontlines of COVID-19, for social justice organizations responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, and to provide extra strategic fundraising support to the nonprofits who had important missions but weren’t in the news.  

About the Report

The Impact Report is organized by Classy stakeholders. The data dives into our measured impact of the last three-quarters of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. The Impact Report methodology is proprietary to Classy. Still, it is inspired by the B Corp Assessment, the industry-leading certification for businesses committed to a better world. 

Since this year also marks Classy’s 10-year anniversary as a software company, we recognize this milestone throughout the report by telling the stories and celebrating the work of our incredible nonprofit customers who stood beside us throughout the years. 

Some standout statistics from our Impact Report include: 

• Nonprofits using Classy’s platform saw an average checkout conversion rate of 23%
• 68.8% of Classy customers grew their recurring donation volume in the past year
• Overall, Classy customers experienced a 314% increase in recurring giving subscriptions initiated
• 73% of Classy’s staff have been granted stock, stock options, or stock equivalents
• 55% of Classy staff connect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts to their intent to continue working at Classy

Thank you for participating in our first Impact Report and supporting our community. We believe in the power of transparency and partnership, and invite you to ask questions, challenge us, and converse with us in our collective drive to build a better world.

Eric joins the Classy team from Medallia, a Saas-based customer experience management platform. He brings over 20 years of technology experience,13 years of which were with SaaS products across various verticals, from finance and retail to hospitality.

His deep focus on customer experience will mesh seamlessly with Classy’s commitment to a customer-first mentality. He will lead our new product development, keeping the nonprofit top-of-mind. This will ensure that Classy continuously delivers cutting-edge technology that meets our customers’ needs to drive more funding and, ultimately, more impact.

Meet Eric Pannese

Nonprofit Started, Nonprofit Focused, Always

Driving action for the greater good is not just the outcome of our products but the core of who we are at Classy.

Like much of our staff, Eric is no stranger to the social sector. He served on the board of Meals on Wheels San Diego County and Rancho Penasquitos Little League, giving him a proper understanding of what fundraising professionals need to succeed.

The Future of Classy’s Giving Experience Platform

Our mission is impossible without a substantial investment in technology. From experience on the front end of our platform to our powerful integrations, Eric will lead our product management and design teams to expand our offerings to the nonprofit sector thoughtfully.

Get a Sneak Peek of What’s Ahead:

Expanded Payment Options

Venmo and Paypal will be integrated with Classy Pay this fall, making Classy one of the first platforms for offering both payment options.

Embedded Checkout

Nonprofits will now have the option to embed a checkout form directly on their website, streamlining a supporter’s checkout journey while donating online and increasing conversion.

Recurring Giving

We will continue to invest in innovation in recurring giving so donors can engender long-term loyalty and ongoing support for causes they care about. This includes launching new recurring frequencies that include bi-weekly, weekly, and daily recurring frequency options in addition to the existing annual, semi-annual, quarterly, and monthly recurring frequency options.

Large-Scale Events

For nonprofits whose revenue relies heavily on events, Classy is investing in a more robust virtual events platform, including hybrid event capabilities. This will also include the launch of Campaign Templating, which allows an organization to create a foundation for all associated campaigns so you don’t have to start from scratch. This is especially helpful for nonprofits whose chapters run affiliate events, virtually, in-person, or both, across the country. Other enterprise events features will include tools for managing transaction and participant engagement on the day of an event, communication tools, and other features that enhance the supporter experience.

Keep Up With the Data and Trends Informing Fundraising Today

Alongside our technology innovation, we’re on the pulse of fundraising data that will shape giving experiences that move the needle for our current and future nonprofit customers.

• Download Classy’s 2021 State of Modern Philanthropy Report based on benchmarks from 4,800 nonprofit organizations.
• From there, see what’s on the minds of today’s recurring donors in our 2021 Recurring Donor Sentiment Report.
• Measure your current fundraising metrics against our data and get guided results in our Fundraising Benchmark Assessment.

Unlocking Generosity Through Classy

From our B Corp and Series D Funding announcements to welcoming a new Chief Executive Officer and influential board members this year, we’re continuously doubling down on our commitment to our product. If you’re interested in joining our interdisciplinary team of technologists to build the best fundraising technology available, please view and share our open roles here.

We quickly understood that these groups, which we named Classy Communities, were the heartbeat of our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement at Classy. We jumped at the opportunity to create resources for them to operate and thrive.

Classy Communities are Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Traditionally, these are voluntary, employee-led groups that foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with organizational mission, values, goals, business practices, and objectives.

Laying the foundation

It was important to us that we tie Classy Communities to the greater mission of mobilizing and empowering the world for good.

So we differentiated groups from Classy Communities via a simple application process. Simply put, Classy Communities need to have:

1. Members
2. Meetings (consistent)
3. A mission statement
4. A volunteering agenda
5. An employee engagement plan

From there, the People Team provides support and a forum for sharing best practices.

Benefits of Classy Communities

The benefits of nurturing our Classy Communities are apparent both for Classy and our employees.

DEI: Classy Communities are open spaces that foster inclusion, belonging, and advocacy. They allow and encourage vulnerable conversations (both live and over Slack) and have been invaluable to maintaining real connections in a remote environment. We also turn to Classy Communities for input and insight on key DEI initiatives.

Development: Classy Community leaders get to call the shots! They gain valuable leadership experience in the areas of public speaking, project management, cross-functional collaboration, budgeting, and vendor management. Plus, their peers look at them as experts.

Access: Classy Communities give burgeoning leaders of all styles and demographics the chance to shine in front of the Senior and Executive Leadership Teams. Community leaders present their work on a quarterly basis and this visibility enables them to make names for themselves faster.

Engagement: Employees who have friends at work are 7 times more likely to be productive engaged in their role based on this recent study. Moreover, we learned that 62% of employees equate Classy’s DEI and Community initiatives with their decision to join (or stay at) Classy!

Here’s what our Classy Community Leaders have to say about the experience:

We think the key to thriving Communities is to give employees the tools and get out of their way. Small investments and a little support can go a long way!

When it comes to sustainability, Classy’s core competency is our ability to empower the environmental nonprofits who use our platform to activate their online fundraising. Organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, the Clean Air Task Force, the Trust for Public Land, the Arbor Day Foundation (to name a few) are on the frontlines of the sustainability and climate crisis. We keep their missions in mind as we build reliable, secure, and robust fundraising tools that drive sustainable revenue to fund their missions.

We focus on product quality and innovation, but we also consider how we, as a technology company, can build a more sustainable world. We’re excited to share how we’re approaching sustainability in hopes others might learn from our journey, or better yet, weigh in with their advice on how we can improve.

A big piece of our sustainability strategy is in partnering with Project Green, a community of Classy employees passionate about integrating sustainability into Classy’s stakeholder groups—our customers, our staff, our investors and partners, and our community. 

Customer Success Manager Ali McElroy leads Project Green and has helped grow the community from five core employees to 20 active members and over 100 who regularly contribute to the Slack channel and engage in Project Green-led activities. The community, which has representation from every department at Classy, initially focused on employee engagement and education and identified areas to greenify the office space. 

During the process to obtain our B Corp Certification, we partnered with Ali and Project Green to take a more serious look at how we could fulfill our vision to create a more inclusive and sustainable world for all. Through research and many conversations, we solidified Classy’s sustainability charter and corporate commitments. 

Classy’s Sustainability Commitments 

1. Enable and empower a culture of environmentally conscious stakeholders
2. Achieve carbon neutrality 
3. Achieve supply chain sustainability 

Project Green’s mission statement is to mobilize and empower all Classy stakeholders to create a sustainable future. They do this by: 

1. Influencing corporate sustainability policies and practices
2. Educating and engaging employees
3. Leading by example with our customers and vendors

We’re proud of Project Green’s contributions as they’ve moved beyond just education and towards inspiring action. In partnership, we are committed to achieving the following milestones:

Influence Company Policies and Practices

• Corporate Green Policy: Achieved
• Environmentally Preferred Vendor List: Achieved
• B Corp Certification: Achieved
• Measure our carbon footprint for FY21 and compare it to the previous year’s baseline: In progress
• Provide company policy recommendations to monitor and reduce emissions: In progress
• Evaluate existing company incentives and their environmental implications. Propose new incentives: In progress
• Implement a lightweight screening process for bringing on or renewing new vendors: In progress
• Expand the minds of buyers at Classy to seek out environmentally conscious/B Corp/sustainably-minded companies when selecting new vendors and partners: In progress

Educate and Engage Employees

• Classy Roots Newsletter: Achieved  
• Composting Co-op: Achieved
• Project Green Book Club: Achieved
• Earth Week activities: Achieved
• Green Hacks: Achieved
• Succulent Planting Party and Mug Exchange: Achieved
• Project Green Pulse Survey: Achieved
• Influence green-living habit change in all employees, measured via a survey: In progress

Lead by Example With Customers and Vendors

• Volunteer events: Achieved
• Customer stories and highlights: Achieved
• Create a strategy for engaging and empowering our customers who are already doing the environmental work: In progress

Technology and Sustainability 

While the plan has us energized to drive impact, we’re equally excited to deepen our sustainability efforts in the years to come. We know that one of the most significant factors contributing to our carbon footprint is the fact that we are a cloud-based company that uses a ton of energy from data centers. If we want to play a part in climate sustainability as a whole, we have to figure out our role in advocating for data centers to become more sustainable, says McElroy. 

Without a physical product or a material supply chain, we think a lot about the other technology companies like us that may have the same questions or feel like they have the same blockers. That’s why we’re charging ourselves with growing our community beyond just Project Green and looking at ways we can build more relationships with customers, B Corps, vendors, and sustainable businesses who can share their insights with us and offer new perspectives. 

Sustainability as an Employee Benefit

In speaking with Ali, who was elected as leader of Project Green by her peers for her commitment to the cause, attention to detail, and humble approach towards servant leadership, it’s easy to see how everyone can play a part in building a more sustainable future. Ali has witnessed how Project Green members have built confidence and influence through the community and grown into leadership roles at the company because of it. 

The most successful endeavors often start from the ground up, by the people who believe in an important cause. It can be overwhelming to consider all of the things we could be doing better to be more environmentally friendly or eco-conscious. If you are an employee at a company that doesn’t have an environmental group and wants to start one up, our advice to you is to start somewhere. While it can be intimidating, the greatest benefit we’ve seen is the ability to do the learning together. None of us are experts in this area but by taking the first step and diving in, you’ll sure learn fast.  

In 2020, we received feedback that our company promotion process wasn’t working in the way we initially intended. There were inefficiencies, redundancies of efforts, and inconsistencies in what it really meant to promote and up-level a Classy employee. We knew we had to change our process to mirror how the company had changed and evolved over the years.

Enter Classy’s Promotion Tiger team: a cross-functional, collaborative task force of passionate employees and leaders who were committed to improving Classy’s process for employee promotions. Our promotion process was not any one person’s responsibility to own, but Classy as a whole to help solve.

In addition to the tiger team, we collaborated with our vice president of product and design to apply a design thinking methodology to tackle our challenges. Commonly used in product and design organizations, design thinking is a process for creative problem-solving with a human-centered, empathetic core. It encourages organizations to empathize with the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. 

Design Thinking Process 

Our People team (who had never used a method like this before) felt like we were embarking into uncharted territory, which was both very exciting and scary at the same time.

Here’s what we did:

1. Empathize

Before we could define the problem, we needed to hear from those actually involved in the process and gather feedback to understand the true concerns from those who have experienced them. We took two main steps:

1. Survey: We sent a brief survey to employees, managers, and leaders to provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback (e.g. How would you rate our current promotion process on a scale of 1 to 5? What is working with the process? What isn’t?).
2. Focus Group: We invited some of those employees to a focus group to dig even deeper into the feedback, explore both positive commentary and constructive criticism of the process, and discuss those thoughts live with the group.

2. Define

Using the information gathered, we sat down to understand the root cause of the feedback and define the actual problem. We went through each piece of feedback and tagged it to a recurring theme. In the process of doing so, we learned that many of the pieces of feedback stemmed from other underlying issues. Rather than tackling each comment in a silo, we wanted to tackle the root causes of the feedback. We ended up creating a project scope document outlining the two key feedback themes:

1. There is an opportunity to streamline our promotion process to create a more efficient, transparent, and smooth experience for all stakeholders. 
2. There is an appetite for increased education and training for our managers on how to better identify how to recognize, reward, and elevate talent. 

3. Ideate

We then worked with our tiger team to come up with ways we could tackle the problem. We spent a few hours listing ideas under each theme until narrowing it down to what felt both ideal and realistic, resulting in five major takeaways for next steps. 

We realized we couldn’t solve everything at once, but honed in on the small, but impactful changes we could make now. At the same time, we are keeping the other ideas in our backpocket to review at a later date in our next iteration. 

4. Prototype

From a cloud of ideas came an actual concept for a revamped employee promotion experience which we outlined in a new process document that was shared with all of our managers. Our main action items included:

1. To help create a more streamlined experience, we added more structure to our process and simplified our promotion request form to make it less painful and more meaningful for managers to fill out. 
2. To help increase education for managers, we plan to host an info session before every promotion review and also weave educational tips on how to recognize talent in our other programs.  

5. Test

We applied the changes to our process and launched our revamped promotion cycle in December.

What We Learned 

Q: What is design thinking and why is it useful?

A: Design thinking is a process for creative problem-solving with a human-centered, empathetic core. It encourages organizations to empathize with the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. 

We have only just started testing our new prototyped process, but the goal is to continue to go back and refine our challenges and test new solutions to meet the needs of our employees.  We learned that something as small but mighty as revamping how we promote employees felt better with input of all of our stakeholders.

It’s also okay if you can’t make all changes at once or meet the concern of every person. Going through this process allowed us to create a blueprint for the future and continue to evolve our process as we grow with our employees.

Like in any tech company, software engineers transform dreams often developed on a post-it or whiteboard into a virtual reality. At Classy, software engineers are the reality-makers behind the dream of building a world-class product that fulfills Classy’s mission to mobilize and empower the world for good.

While many understand that software engineers work with computers and build out code, there is so much more to their job. The work is complex and can vary greatly from engineer to engineer. To share more about what happens behind the scenes of building out Classy’s product and servicing the nonprofit organizations we work with, I sat down to speak with Amin Tahriri and Eloise Terry, two of Classy’s amazing engineers, and discuss what it’s like to be in their shoes.

Amin is an engineer on our Donor Experience Pod. This “pod” is a group of folks from our engineering, product design, and product management teams. Eloise started with the Classy team after we entered the full-time remote environment due to COVID-19. We started the conversation with the basic question—what do you do?

A Glance at Pod Structure

Eloise: I’m on the Organization Experience Pod (also known as the Org Pod). We’re tasked with building and supporting any customer-facing software that Classy provides. The main piece of this is Classy Manager, where our customers can manage their Classy campaigns and fundraising data. But we also dabble in supporter engagement and Classy Pay Admin, and occasionally other pieces of the product depending on needs of the product management and engineering teams.

Amin: I’m a software engineer on the Donor Experience Pod. As the name suggests, my pod’s focus is ensuring the best experience possible for people who contribute to one of our clients’ important causes. I help create and maintain software applications and services, which involves designing new software components, investigating issues, and writing code. In addition, I contribute to maintenance and continuous improvement of our tools (e.g. automation, logging and monitoring, etc.).

Kelly: Very cool. So how do the pods work exactly?

Eloise: Each pod operates fairly independently from the others so we each have all the resources we need for our day-to-day work. The Org Pod has a dedicated product owner, three developers (including myself), and a test engineer. We also welcome two customer care representatives who give us insight into our customer needs and wishes. 

Of course I have no bias, but the Org Pod is truly the best pod at Classy. To function among the chaos that is product development, we’ve found a good balance between hard work and social time, like Zoom happy hours while we all work remote. We set a standard of transparency and accountability within our team that allows us to work swiftly and efficiently.

A Day in the Life

Kelly: Sounds like you all have found a way to really develop a strong team mindset and work style. How do you begin your day?

Amin: I usually start my day by checking messages on Slack. My favorite channel is one where colleagues post photos of their dogs. With furry cuteness out of the way, I join our pod’s daily standup meeting to catch up with my team.

Eloise: I recently got a full standing desk at home, so my first thing is to jack it up to standing so I can move around and wake up. I’ll make some tea or coffee, check my calendar, and scan emails to get an idea of what the day will look like. If other Org Pod folks are online, I’ll shoot them a good morning message and then get to work! 

Kelly: Everyone loves a little cuteness and coffee in the morning. How do you typically break out the rest of your time after the stand up?

Amin: A rough breakdown of my role would be about 20% investigating, research, and design; 15% having discussions and meetings;15% peer review; and 50% development.

Eloise: I mostly break my time out the same way.

Kelly: So you all spend quite a bit of time doing things outside of just coding. How do you keep it all organized?

Amin: At Classy, we use agile methodology with two-week sprints. We hold three scrum ceremonies every sprint to discuss and point tickets in our backlog, review and reflect on the previous sprint and discuss potential improvements, and plan our next sprint.

Eloise: Practicing agile software development essentially means our customers are continuously seeing improvements in our products, and our team can make adjustments as needed rather quickly. At the beginning of each cycle our pod meets to put together a list of about two weeks’ worth of items. We’ll spend the next two weeks developing, testing, and iterating on that work before it gets released to our customers. Then we meet to reflect on the cycle and identify areas we succeeded in and those we need to improve on. 

Challenges and Enjoyments

Kelly: What would you say is the most difficult part of it all?

Amin: I’m most comfortable when solving problems rigorously and with precision, but not every aspect of the job is conducive to this type of approach. In those cases, I sometimes struggle with or second-guess decisions. An example might be when I’m prioritizing between tasks that deliver immediate business value versus tasks that improve our platform long-term. Thankfully, I can always rely on help and direction from more experienced engineers and product managers.

Eloise: Often, we have competing priorities between what our team wants to accomplish, what the company hopes to deliver, and what our customers have asked for. Being a small team means we can work fairly seamlessly together, but it also means we’re limited on what we can do in a given timeframe.

Kelly: Teamwork makes the dream work, right? To ask the opposite question, what are the things you find most enjoyable about your role?

Eloise: Problem-solving is my favorite activity, and software engineers at Classy do a lot of problem-solving. The products we provide are very complex and we have a small engineering team behind all of it. In order to succeed, we really have to work together, which is my favorite way to work (that sounds corny, but it’s true). Even though we’re all remote right now because of COVID, our team still meets every day to connect, and I’ll often spend several hours on video calls with teammates working on problems together or asking for advice.

Amin: My favorite part would have to be learning. At Classy, we have many different services and applications using various technology stacks. Plus, we’re always upgrading and adopting new technologies. There’s a lot of opportunity to learn and improve.

Kelly: “Always be learning” is one of our Classy core values, and it sounds like you’re definitely applying it to your work regularly. So my last question for you two —why Classy? What is different about working here compared to your previous companies?

Amin: I feel the Classy engineering team offers the benefits that one might find at a startup, as well as benefits of working at a large company. There are definitely opportunities to contribute to the platform in a major way while existing processes and structures help making those contributions easier and more fun.

Eloise: I feel like everyone says this, but the people. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company whose employees care about the success and happiness of their customers as much as we do at Classy.

Kelly: Thanks for your time today, Amin and Eloise. I loved learning more about what happens behind the scenes, and think other folks will find it interesting too. We appreciate all the work you do here at Classy to make our product better every day!

Donors are also answering the call to support nonprofit efforts in the midst of this great societal need. Almost a quarter of AmericanPeer-to-peer fundraisings (24%) say the coronavirus has caused them to give more in 2020 than the previous year, according to Why America Gives 2020.

As January quickly approaches, let’s take a moment to celebrate the strides taken and milestones achieved by the Classy community and their supporters in 2020.

Check out the graphics below to see how nonprofits on the Classy platform are on track to collectively raise over $900 million with the biggest giving day of the year, December 31, still to come. You’ll also find other noteworthy achievements, impressive totals raised, top cause categories, and more.

Editor’s Note: On December 31, 2020, nonprofit customers on Classy raised $44.4 million, exceeding our projections and raising over $1 billion collectively in 2020.

Donors Rally and Take Action in 2020

While December remains the largest giving month on Classy due to the holiday fundraising season, Americans began to realize and experience the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier in the year and rallied behind nonprofits’ relief efforts, resulting in April becoming the top month of growth year over year on the platform.

Top Motivators for Giving

The heightened focus on human service and health-related causes comes as no surprise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the way organizations either directly or indirectly addressed its effects. In fact, nearly three in five Americans (59%) say the pandemic has affected their charitable giving this year.

The Power of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising platforms enables your nonprofit to expand its reach exponentially by tapping into your network’s network. Nonprofits have also been using the Classy for Facebook integration to further their reach and empower their fundraisers to raise more, as it allows your supporters to easily duplicate their Classy fundraising pages to Facebook. They can then raise money through both their Classy fundraising page and their Facebook fundraising page, with the campaign progress remaining in sync across platforms.

This allows your fundraisers to rake in donations from their extended Facebook networks and be able to capture these smaller donations, even from long-time contacts they might not have even expected to donate. But in order to cultivate larger and long-term donors, you need a sophisticated fundraising platform that enables you to create branded, beautiful campaigns designed to convert. Maximize your success by promoting your branded Classy campaign pages to attract donations and activate fundraisers, and then supplement your strategy with the Classy for Facebook integration so your supporters can easily extend their reach onto the social network.

Takeaways From the Top Campaigns

Check out some of the things we loved from these top peer-to-peer campaigns.

Camp Kesem’s Kesem 2021 Campaign

Camp Kesem National provided structure for their chapters and their fundraisers in this peer-to-peer fundraising campaign without boxing them in. Chapters were free to fundraise with their own style, communication, and activities in order to best rally their communities to support children who have been impacted by a parent’s cancer.

Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s Fundraise for BCRF Campaign

In addition to using vibrant, consistent campaign and button colors that match the campaign’s branding, BCRF included a short video on their campaign page highlighting powerful testimonials from women impacted by breast cancer, connecting with donors. They also highlighted passionate fundraisers and their creative fundraising ideas to inspire their community.

Bethany International’s Fund a Student Missionary Campaign

Bethany International creatively leveraged peer-to-peer to attract a high number of recurring gifts and motivate supporters to rally behind their three-year mission at locations around the world.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley’s 2020 Holiday Campaign

We love how Second Harvest of Silicon Valley clearly showed visitors how to take action. They showcased a flowchart in a custom block to clarify the steps to fundraising success, so supporters knew exactly what they had to do.

World Central Kitchen’s Fundraise for World Central Kitchen Campaign

World Central Kitchen boiled down the issue they’re addressing in this peer-to-peer campaign into one clear, succinct paragraph on their campaign page. This brevity and straightforward language keeps the information digestible as visitors move through the page.

Recurring Giving Allows You to Scale

While an astounding $12,500 recurring gift may not be standard, even smaller monthly gifts maximize your donor lifetime value (recurring donors are over five times more valuable than one-time donors), and provide a steady stream of revenue that can sustain your organization through uncertain times.

Continue to express your appreciation for your recurring donors. And if you’re not already, prioritize recurring giving in 2021 as a fundraising pillar that will help you scale.

The Future of Events

Get creative with your event ideas and optimize all fundraising strategies to boost your results, including adding a virtual component even when in-person events make a return.

Takeaways From the Top Events

Below are just some of the elements we loved from these top events in 2020.

Special Olympics New Jersey’s 2020 Plunge at Seaside Event

Special Olympics New Jersey designed a custom headline image for their hero block to add visual appeal. Instead of a simple text headline, this branded logo makes a bigger splash on the page and draws your eyes in.

Cleveland Clinic’s VeloSano 7 Event

VeloSano 7 transitioned to “Virtual VeloSano” in 2020, enhancing and emphasizing their Virtual Fundraiser program. VeloSano highlighted a Get Involved page on their homepage, outlining how individuals could get involved, anytime, anywhere, and in any way that they choose. They showcased fundraising tips and promotions to engage participants throughout the year. They also highlight an Impact Report to showcase how 100% of participant-raised dollars are being used to fund lifesaving cancer research. These assets clearly defined what it meant to participate, the impact you could make, and clear instructions on how to fundraise.

Navy SEAL Foundation’s 2020 NYC Benefit Dinner

Navy SEAL Foundation created a custom headline image as well that immediately grabs visitors’ attention. They also used a powerful hero image in the background with correlating colors, so the combination of the two images was both visually engaging and consistent with the organization’s branding.

City of Hope and Lowe’s’ Miles for Hope 2020 Event

This corporate event honoring Bill Boltz, Lowe’s executive vice president of merchandising, was a great use of Classy’s registration with fundraising campaign type. The page clearly defined City of Hope’s mission to eradicate cancer and diabetes through groundbreaking scientific research and unparalleled patient care and provided detailed event information on how to register, track your training through Strava, communicate with other participants, and share your success with campaign hashtags.

Special Olympics Maryland’s 2020 Maryland Plunge Event

The 2020 Maryland Plunge event page included everything from incentives to FAQs, with clear instructions to visit the Plunge Maryland website for more information.

The page also focused on helping participants find a team to join, featuring and recognizing a number of athlete leaders to choose from. The attention to detail and community-centric feel of the page encourages donors to get excited about their teams.

As virtual events remain an important component for nonprofits in the new year, download the Virtual Events Toolkit today for creative ideas, the anatomy of a standout virtual event, marketing best practices, and our favorite examples of successful virtual events.

A Year to Celebrate

As we head toward the biggest giving day of the year, American donors continue to show up for the causes that need them, even during financially pressing periods. Remain confident that your important work and the willingness to push forward in your efforts will launch your team and organization to further heights in 2021 and beyond.

Classy Family,

Today, I’m excited to announce that Classy is officially a Certified B Corporation. We’re proud to stand with socially responsible companies that have blazed the trail before us, like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, AllBirds, Lemonade, and many others.

In a way this milestone was a long time coming, as we’ve always thought about business a bit differently. In our view, the very nature of our work necessitates it, making giving easier for nonprofits and their supporters.

We believed then, as we do now, that a company will find its greatest success by marrying purpose and profit. For us this means an unwavering dedication to our clients and the broader social sector, combined with a stakeholder-led approach to business decisions. This philosophy has led to programs like the Classy Awards, now the largest impact awards program in the country, and ClassyGives, an innovative volunteering program for our team and clients.

Now we’ve taken things one step further with our B Corp Certification, which is the highest standard of social and environmental performance out there for business. It was tough to get, and it’ll be tough to maintain (the way it should be). But we believe that becoming a Certified B Corporation will ensure that our founding principles hold true as we continue to grow.

Our Score and Our Stakeholder Promise

The B Corp Certification process is comprehensive and challenging, with over 200 questions about your business that you need to fill out and verify. Only 4% of the 120,000 companies who have gone through the process have been successfully certified—which is why we are tremendously proud to not only pass the certification process, but launch with a score of 115.3 (with the minimum being 80).

Classy was assessed across five areas: governance, customers, workers, environment, and community. With the certification comes a promise to each one of our stakeholders.

• For our customers, we will strive to deliver unquestionable value to you and your supporters. Before we were Classy, we were fundraisers ourselves, trying to humbly raise money for cancer research. We’ve been in your shoes and that’s why we understand firsthand that your time is limited. You need to increase sustainable revenue, and your supporters deserve an exceptional giving experience.

• At the heart of Classy is our team. You are driven by passion and a commitment to our mission, and we want you to feel like every moment you’ve invested in Classy has provided you with growth, accomplishment, and purpose. We are committed to fostering a safe and inclusive environment where all team members can thrive.

• To our investors, through your commitment to Classy, you are enabling thousands of organizations working on the front lines to address today’s social and environmental challenges. We’re focused on maximizing your investment over the long run and creating meaningful value in the world from your support.

• Our community is central to our efforts to make giving easier and help advance the social sector. As a purpose-driven company ourselves, we must practice what we preach. This is illustrated through the Classy Awards, the Collaborative, and ClassyGives, as well as our recent environmental commitments towards a more sustainable future.

Bigger Than Us

Classy started as a passion project to raise money for a cause that we cared deeply about. Now we want to help create a world where anyone, anywhere, can easily support the causes they care about. To us, becoming a Certified B Corporation will help get us one step closer to this vision.

But we know we can’t do it alone. So I invite all of you to join us on this journey—to challenge us if we falter, and to challenge yourselves (and your companies) with a higher standard of social and environmental performance.

For Classy, this is day one in a way, and I’ve never been more excited to see what the future holds.

Onward and upward!

Scot Chisholm

This type of recognition is a testament to the strength of our social enterprise mission and stakeholder values, and I couldn’t be more proud of the entire team and broader Classy community for this achievement. Make sure to check out the press release and the official list.

Classy started as a simple way to raise money for a cause that we cared deeply about. When the process was a lot harder than we anticipated, we were left asking ourselves, “Why does giving need to be so hard?” So, we evolved our passion project into a tech company and launched in 2011 to solve that problem on a larger scale.

For the next nine years, we dedicated ourselves to making giving more accessible and helping our nonprofit partners not only raise more money, but do so in a more sustainable way. The collective result has been nearly $2 billion raised on Classy for myriad social and environmental causes. And, as our team will tell you firsthand, we’re just getting started!

As first-time entrepreneurs, we also had much to learn about growing a business. But the great thing about starting something from scratch is that you can follow your intuition about how the business should be built and what values should guide you.

That freed us to pursue things like our early Pledge 1% commitment to stakeholders, the #ClassyGives program that sends employees around the world to volunteer, and the launch of the Classy Awards—the “Oscars of Philanthropy”—all born from our team’s dedication to our social mission and stakeholder values.

This dedication became the glue of our culture in many ways, reinforcing a “lead by example” mindset and propelling our growth. And grow we did. Over those nine years we went from two people to 200, and from a handful of amazing nonprofit customers to over 4,000!

We also learned that if you’re not careful, it’s easy to develop a “growth at all costs” mentality which will quickly disconnect you from the very things that got you there. While Classy is far from perfect, our team’s dedication to our social mission and stakeholder values through all of this growth is the single thing that I’m most proud of after our first nine years in business, and it’s what we’ll use as our anchor for the next nine years and beyond.

Classy is proud to stand with the companies on the Real Leaders Magazine “Top 100 Impact” list. It gives me hope that the business world is moving in the right direction. It wasn’t long ago that companies like Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop, and Patagonia were complete outliers in the business community, mocked for their willingness to consider more than one stakeholder.

Today, thousands of companies around the world are building off of the foundation that these early pioneers set and are literally rewriting the definition of business from the ground up. Even the Business Roundtable recently declared that the purpose of a corporation should extend well beyond shareholder value. It’s a great start, but there’s a lot more work to be done.

Moving forward, our team at Classy is more committed than ever to sharing our efforts with the broader community so we can learn from, and grow with, each other in a more sustainable way. So, congratulations again to all of the companies on the Real Leaders list this year! The Classy team is inspired by you and we hope to collaborate in a more unified fashion in 2020 and beyond.

As the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur Of The Year has been at the forefront of identifying game-changing entrepreneurs for more than three decades. The program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Howard Schultz of Starbucks Coffee Company; John Mackey of Whole Foods Market Inc.; Pierre Omidyar of eBay, Inc.; Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn Corporation; and Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc. We’re honored to have Scot recognized among so many other notable business luminaries in San Diego.

Now in its 32nd year, the program has expanded to recognize business leaders in more than 145 cities and over 60 countries throughout the world.