Twilio.org Announces Second Round of Grants Supporting Nonprofits Engaged in Crisis Communications

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17, 2019 — Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform, today announced that the company’s social impact arm -  Twilio.org - has awarded an additional $3.65 million in grants to 26 United States and global nonprofits to help expand their impact by enabling life-saving crisis communications.  

The additional grants are a continuation of Twilio’s Crisis Response and Prevention Initiative which was launched in August 2019. As part of the initiative, Twilio announced that it planned to provide a total of $5 million in grants from the Twilio.org Impact Fund by the end of 2019 to nonprofits in the United States and globally who are using innovative communications technology to address the following areas:

• Abuse (physical, sexual, technological, financial, verbal, psychological, cultural) 
• Substance abuse
• Sexual assault
• Suicide prevention and mental health
• Natural disasters

The grants have been made through the Twilio.org Impact Fund, which has awarded nearly $10 million to social impact organizations since its inception. These grants are possible through Twilio’s commitment to allocate 1% of its equity as part of the Pledge 1% initiative to support social impact. The nonprofits will use the grants for projects such as expanding the technical development of their communications infrastructure, hiring additional personnel to support increased client caseload, integrating chatbots and communications channels like SMS, developing new client-facing applications, and implementing GPS location tracking tools to quickly distribute resources to people in crisis. 

An initial grant of $1.2 million was awarded to five organizations as part of the August 2019 launch. 

The follow-up round of $3.65 million in grants has been awarded to the additional 26 nonprofits listed as follows:

“Communication is crucial for providing timely assistance to help people get through some of the hardest experiences in their lives,” said Erin Reilly, chief social impact officer of Twilio. “Our goal with this program is to help these organizations support more people in crisis as effectively as possible.” 

More details about the 26 recipients of the latest round of grants can be found in a blog posted by Erin Reilly that can be found here. 

For more information on the Twilio.org Impact Fund, visit twilio.org/impact-fund.

ABOUT TWILIO.ORG 

Twilio.org works with nonprofits and social enterprises to fuel communications that give hope, power and freedom. By connecting social impact organizations, passionate software developers and the full power of the Twilio platform, Twilio.org ignites positive change on a local and global scale. To date, more than 3,000 charities and nonprofits have used Twilio to send more than a billion messages for good.