Together, Cisco Social Impact Investments and the Cisco Foundation aim to catalyze a vibrant ecosystem of changemakers working to positively impact people and communities around the world.
Our vision
A world of equitable, resilient, and empowered communities where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential and thrive
Our mission
We partner with organizations to create and scale innovative, digital solutions that promote a healthy planet and advance the well-being and self-reliance of underserved communities globally.
We accomplish this by harnessing the breadth of Cisco’s offerings of strategic guidance, catalytic funding, technology donations, and support from Cisco’s employee community.
Theory of change
Our Theory of Change illustrates our guiding principles, our offerings, and how these offerings drive measurable outcomes and impact toward our vision and mission.
Our investment model
Cisco's Social Impact Investment strategy is unique. We are intentional about investing in potential. We focus on getting in early - providing critical seed funding to promising nonprofits. As a technology company with a long history of innovation, we aim to fill a critical gap in funding by:
- Assuming the greater risks of investing in high-potential new ideas and solutions. We provide patient and catalytic capital for ideation, innovation, and experimentation to create tech-enabled, tech-delivered solutions.
- Providing ongoing support to help our partners test and validate those solutions. Then to replicate those solutions to multiple geographies, scale reach to more people, and drive deep impact
- Selecting client-centric, proximate partners who work hand-in-hand with the communities they support
- Funding partners across all stages of our investment lifecycle:
Stage 1: Create and Design
Stage 2: Deploy and Test
Stage 3: Replicate and Scale
Stage 4: Achieve Viability and Exit
Our priority social impact sectors
We focus on investing in innovative, tech-enabled solutions to the challenges and opportunities that matter most to communities in need, prioritizing four social impact sectors:
Crisis Response
Mobilizing to provide essentials to communities in need and those in crisis, including food, housing, secure connectivity, and disaster relief
Education
Supporting students, teachers, and schools by increasing engagement, building skills, promoting subject mastery, and expanding their capacity to thrive
Economic Empowerment
Transforming communities through skill development, long-term career opportunities, entrepreneurship, and access to financial products and services
Climate Regeneration
Building an inclusive, regenerative, and resilient climate future through education, regenerative agriculture, conservation/protection, and clean energy solutions
What we look for
We fund high potential organizations that have the capacity to scale innovative tech-enabled solutions for maximum social impact.
Our selection criteria include:
- Social impact sectors: Fit within one or more of our priority social impact sectors: crisis/critical human needs, education, economic empowerment, and climate regeneration.
- Technology: We direct funding toward solutions that apply technology to deliver programs and services, and/or support organizational insights and operations - to connect the unconnected and close the digital and data divide.
- Replication: We look for solutions that can be replicated beyond the initial geography in which they are developed and implemented.
- Scale: We aim to support solutions that have potential for scale.
- Impact: We fund organizations that have a commitment to tracking progress, validating impact, and reporting transparently.
- Market demonstration and ecosystem impact: We look to support solutions that demonstrate market potential and/or will have result in ecosystems level impact.
- Organizational capacity and proximity: We look for organizations with strong management capacity, inclusive teams, and that are proximate to the communities they are supporting.
- Viability: We aim to support organizations and solutions that can be financially viable, and to ensure sustained impact beyond our lifecycle of engagement.
Types of funding
We bring the best of Cisco to our partners through a mix of funding, technology, strategic guidance, and employee volunteerism.
Cash grants and impact investments
- Our unique investment model is designed to fill a critical gap in funding for high-potential organizations – identifying those with early-stage, tech-enabled solutions that we believe have the potential to scale exponentially and deliver extraordinary impact across our four priority social impact sectors.
- Global Impact Grants (GIG): Funding to non-profits leveraging technology to deliver programs and opportunities that can be replicated and scaled at a country, regional, and/or global level. Learn how to apply.
- Habitat for Humanity grants: providing support to build homes for families in need around the world. (By invitation only)
- To learn more about our grantee partnerships, meet our current partners and then explore blogs on their impactful work.
Cisco technology grants
- Technology Grant Program (TGP): Awarding Cisco’s best-in-class technology to qualifying nonprofits. Learn how to apply.
Strategic and technical advisory services
We also offer strategic and technical advisory services from Cisco’s global employee community. These pro-bono consulting services support our partners across a range of areas, from solution design and testing, to security, governance, strategy, organization structure, marketing, and more. Advisory services are provided via both 1:1 consulting and by teams.
Employee volunteerism
Employees may also volunteer their time for individual and group volunteering as needed.
Measuring Social Impact
Accurately measuring progress and validating true impact are core to how we support our partners and drive exponential social value.
We work collaboratively with our partners to jointly establish key performance indicators and associated targets; support data collection, analysis, and validation; and provide advisory services and other support to enhance impact evaluation capabilities.
Together, we track various levels of impact including individual impact, community/ecosystem impact, and organization impact including:
- Social impact on individuals, communities, and ecosystems for each of our priority social impact sectors.
- Replication of solutions beyond initial geography
- Scale of reach and engagement
- Financial viability and additional funding secured
In 2016, Cisco set an ambitious goal to positively impact 1 billion people around the world through our Networking Academy initiative and Global Impact Grant program. In December 2023, we were thrilled to share that we exceeded our goal – more than a year earlier. Learn more about how we impacted one billion lives.
Case studies and blogs
Power an inclusive future for all
We combine our technology, people, and broader networks to address society's greatest challenges.