As we look back on 2022, just as with every passing year, we like to ask ourselves a few simple questions: Have we at Prowly made a social impact? It has been an exciting year of rapid growth and uncharted success, but have we kept to our standards as an ethical business? As we expand, are we leveraging our ever growing corporate social responsibility?
It’s good to keep these things in perspective, to see what we’ve done, how we’ve grown, and what more we could do in the future to make our world, our company, and our community a better and healthier place.
The Weight of CSR
What we’re talking about here is CSR, our Corporate Social Responsibility, because as we grow our capacity to make a social impact grows along with us. We always come back to that word, Responsibility, and try to keep that in perspective.
CSR has changed over the years, it has evolved. Once it was believed that a corporation’s only responsibility was to generate profit, but we’ve grown past that.
Then CSR came to mean sustainability and reducing the negative impact of profit generation, but we can do better. Through our CSR initiatives, we have the power to make a real positive social impact. Through charity, supporting sustainability, and our work with NGOs, we can ensure that Prowly remains an ethical business.
Our world is rapidly changing, we can see it each and every day, and it is ever more important to always do what we can to protect our own ethical business practices and ensure our efforts continue to contribute to society. And, as always, this comes down to our people.
Why we care about CSR
CSR begins with people, with our company culture here at Prowly. What we promote here, what we believe in, defines our social impact on the outside. From our beginnings to now, we celebrate diversity and focus on inclusion. Our aim has been to build and promote a culture that is open, free, creative, bold, safe and easy-going for anyone and everyone. We prioritize honesty and kindness and always try to stay open-minded. Independence is both our challenge and our greatest strength.
We can see all of this as we look back on this past year and look at what we’ve accomplished together. Our values, our culture, drive our social impact. From this roadmap we can look towards the future and consider what more we could do and what we could do better.
Learn more about what it takes to manage CSR essentials in this article.
Our 2022 CSR initiatives in review
Prowly’s positive impact can come in big and small packages. So let's take a closer look at what CSR initiatives we’ve taken up in this past year. Knowing what we’ve done, we can get a better idea of where and how we can make a positive social impact in the future.
At Home
For a start, we’ve always liked to keep all of our merchandise eco-friendly, sustainable and cruelty free. We try to support small local businesses, keep our social impact close to home where we can see and feel the positive change. We also see the benefit of supporting NGOs with the technology and services they need to succeed in their work. We’ve long offered 50% off on all Prowly’s annual plans for NGOs.
Local Charities
These are a good start, but there is always more we can do. So let’s take a look at how we’ve given to charity. We are and hope to remain a technological partner of WOŚP, the biggest, non-governmental, non-profit, charity organization in Poland raising money for pediatrics and elderly care. And for a few years now, we have supported the initiative “Wigilia dla Seniorów” (Christmas Eve for Seniors), which includes a gift collection for seniors and an event that attempts to bring together Warsaw's elderly and other self-reliant residents who might otherwise spend Christmas alone.
Global Concerns
These initiatives have kept things close to home, but as we grow we can expand our global reach. The invasion of Ukraine has left many adrift and has created a great many unmet needs, so we made steps to help where we could. In that light, we cooperate with the global gifting platform, SnackMagic, and make a $5 donation for every redemption of our gift to this organization, supporting hospitals in Ukraine with critical supplies as the struggle continues.
We managed to take this a step further and from February 24 we began providing all companies and NGOs helping Ukraine with free access to Prowly software. Up to this day, over 20 organizations have benefited from our support.
Help for Ukraine
For the Refugees
Once again, we try to keep these efforts close to home, where we can see our social impact. And the war has brought many people in need to our very doorstep. So for three whole months our Warsaw office was converted into a temporary home for refugees. In cooperation with @Dom Ukrainski and @Fundacja Centrum, we helped nearly 30 people find permanent places and adjust to their new reality.
For the Children
This provided much needed inspiration, so we looked for more places we could help. And so Prowly sponsored 20 daycare slots in several nurseries in Warsaw to help enable Ukrainian women to get back on their feet. Thanks to the fact that the children can be looked after, their mothers are able to start working and make ends meet.
For People
We also found the time to help a talented artist from Bucha. Mrs. Natalia is a 72 year old member of the Ukrainian Union of Artists and Designers and a former teacher in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Kiev. She lost everything during the war. So Prowly got her new painting equipment, thanks to which she can support herself while pursuing her passion.
Inclusivity
This year, a new team was formed within the company — Prowly’s DEI team, inspired and created by our colleagues and devoted to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in our workplace. Our internal values reflect the impact we might make in the world around us.
To support the LGBTQ+ community, Prowly made a donation to the Diversity Poland Foundation to help them start a project for suicidal prevention of LGBTQ+ teenagers. We hope that this is a start down a long road to inclusivity not only in our own business, but in the community we share. Promoting a culture that is open, free, and most of all safe for anyone and everyone.
These acts, big and small, remind us that we have the ability to make a real positive impact on people’s lives. They keep us human, focused on people. These initiatives help those in need to maintain or rebuild their independence and help keep us centered on our core values as an ethical business.
Learn how Prowly can help companies communicate their own CSR activities here.
Conclusion
As we can see from a close examination of what we’ve achieved, our works grow outwards from who we are as a company. What Prowly is and what Prowly continues to be as we grow, expand, and change has and will continue to define our acts of charity, our work with NGOs, our focus on sustainability. It has and will define the nature of our CSR initiatives and guide our social impact.
It is important to remember, as we look back on all we’ve done, that this is just a beginning. This past year has presented unique chances for us to experiment, to see just how far we might extend our reach, to see just how deep of a positive social impact we could make. Through these experiences we can chart a map for further improvements to come. There’s a long road ahead of us, our goal is always to grow, to change and to better meet our growing responsibility.
