Social investment strategy

Our approach is to invest in early-stage, technology-enabled solutions developed by nonprofit/nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that demonstrate meaningful and measurable outcomes for underserved individuals and communities, scale to reach more people, and replicate to multiple geographies.

Our investments enable our nonprofit partners to design and deliver technology-enabled solutions to improve how they operate in and reach underserved communities. They also support conditions for the communities our partners work in to thrive. We invest along a continuum of needs encompassing crisis response, critical human needs, education, economic empowerment, climate regeneration, and sustainability.

Cisco’s four social investment sectors are:

Crisis response/Critical human needs

We seek to help overcome the cycle of poverty and dependence and achieve a more sustainable future. We support organizations that use technology to address critical needs of underserved communities—food security, stable housing, clean water, and disaster relief—because those who have their basic needs met are better equipped to learn and thrive.

Access to education

We invest in solutions that can increase equitable access to education, while improving student performance, engagement, and career exploration. We support education solutions for school-age children that emphasize science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as literacy. We also consider programs that teach environmental sustainability, help overcome barriers to accessing climate change education, and invite student engagement globally to positively affect the environment.

Economic empowerment

Our strategy here is to invest in solutions that provide equitable access to the knowledge, skills, resources, and opportunities that people need to support themselves and their families toward agency, stability, resilience, independence, and economic security. Our goal is to support solutions that not only enable individuals and families to thrive, but also participate in and contribute to local community growth and economic development in a sustainable economy.

Climate impact and regeneration

In 2021, the Cisco Foundation committed to invest US$100 million over the next 10 years in innovative climate solutions that drive forward net zero or circular/regenerative economies, and community education and engagement around climate, eco-awareness, and working toward individual habit change and effective collaborative action. This could include supporting partners that reduce, capture, or sequester emissions; increase energy efficiency; create green jobs; and create community climate resilience.

Social investment approach

Early stages of new technology development tend to be where funding is most needed and where we can make the biggest difference. Being a technology company, we understand the power of technology to reach as many people as possible, and we strive to reach the most vulnerable to help ensure equitable access to client-centric, effective solutions. We provide patient and catalytic capital to high-potential nonprofit organizations, helping them apply technology to:

• Experiment to create innovative solutions targeting individual and community needs
• Implement proof-of-concept pilots to validate viability of solutions
• Improve the delivery, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their products and services
• Scale to reach more people
• Replicate to multiple sectors and geographies globally
• Validate social impact
• Make progress toward financial sustainability
• Use data for better decision-making

We apply an all-in approach, tapping into the full complement of Cisco resources and assets. Beyond cash grant investments, we donate Cisco technology to help our nonprofit partners securely deliver essential programs and offerings to the individuals and communities in which they operate. We also want to equip our partners for sustained impact beyond our lifecycle of investment. To this end, we lend our staff time and expertise, providing ongoing consulting services, advisory support, and technical expertise in a variety of areas including:

• Business planning and strategy development
• Organizational management structure and leadership capacity
• Financial sustainability planning
• Impact evaluation and reporting
• Governance and operational structure

Our investment approach also combines innovation and experimentation with rigorous impact evaluation. We work closely with the nonprofits we fund to measure their effectiveness and impact. This measurement also provides partners with insights on how to improve their services and assists them in raising funds from other sources. We measure both breadth (number of people reached, communities engaged, etc.) and depth (the impact their programs are having). Depth is measured with a standard set of metrics for our four investment focus areas, as well as custom metrics specific to our partners’ social objectives.

We also strive to ensure that solutions we support serve communities that need them most. We intentionally target underserved population groups, which includes low-income individuals, underrepresented minorities, and/or vulnerable populations (such as women and girls, youth, racial/ethnic minorities, and refugees or internally displaced persons).

Social investment strategy