Welcome to the neighborhood: introducing the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation

Today, we celebrate a major milestone in Zendesk’s history. We have the good fortune of announcing that the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation is a real, live nonprofit organization that will help us expand our commitment to being good neighbors everywhere we operate, worldwide. We’re launching this Foundation with $1 million in funding, which we’ll use to lay the groundwork for our long-term global corporate social responsibility initiatives.

This initiative would not be possible without the amazing support of our customers.

Since 2012, Zendesk has tied its growth to its community engagement by donating the amount of revenue generated by our Starter subscription plan to our corporate social responsibility efforts. That model of giving allowed us to donate more than $1 million to such outstanding organizations as charity:water, St. Anthony’s Foundation, Dry July, COSMIC, and Temple Street University Children’s Hospital.

The Zendesk Neighbor Foundation takes it a step further. The Foundation will receive ongoing funding through a one-of-a-kind model in which, for the initial year of subscription, Zendesk will contribute $1 per month, for every net new agent seat sold across all paid subscription plans.* This includes both our customer service platform and our live chat product, Zopim. This allows us to expand the wonderful connection between all of our customers and our community engagement.

This new fundraising model will help us support organizations addressing issues of poverty, homelessness, and healthcare; improving education and promoting gender equality; workforce development; and technical literacy. It is these pillars that support the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a global effort. The Foundation will provide financial and strategic support to not only organizations in the community around our San Francisco headquarters, but also to the company’s 10 other offices in 10 countries worldwide. By doing this, we can extend the community involvement that began in our headquarters to the neighborhoods around the world in which we’re rooted.

We’ve always believed in forging long-lasting, meaningful relationships with our customers, our partners, and our local communities. Today, this highly desirable trifecta has finally come together, and we’re looking forward to doing great work with all of you!

Learn more about the new Zendesk Neighbor Foundation

* $1/month for 12 months for every net new agent as of the end of each calendar month. Applies to new agents on all paid subscription plans for the Zendesk customer service platform and Zopim live chat service (including the Zendesk Starter plan).