Global Impact Sourcing Award

ScaleHub offers work opportunities to people who would otherwise have limited options for earnings, or may be from marginalized communities due to location, gender, age, cultural and/or socioeconomic backgrounds, or may be underrepresented in the workforce, or are economically or socially marginalized. Our impact sourcing efforts can be viewed through the delivery of our collective intelligence service, which provides document and image processing to enterprises and suppliers worldwide. ScaleHub's service combines artificial intelligence (AI) with human intelligence when it's needed complete tasks otherwise unable to be completed by AI alone. We leverage crowds to complete these human-in-the-loop (HITL) activities—whether delivering work directly to global, public crowdsourcing marketplaces or to impact sourcing partners that focus on particular skill sets, or a combination of the two.

We first started purposely reaching into marginalized populations in 2018. Since then, the labor market has undergone a certain amount of upheaval. Some of this was due to the pandemic, some was due to the growing acceptance of remote work, and some was due to the phenomena of 'the great resignation' and quiet quitting. Despite those things, companies still have customers to serve, and jobs still exist because there is work to be done. What impact sourcing did was to deepen the labor pool. When numerous large industries and small businesses report severe shortages of qualified personnel, the usual approach will not work. By almost any definition, impact sourcing requires looking into parts of the workforce that may be considered unusual. Domestically, about one-third of new US employees are from what the federal government defines as an economically challenged group. We provide the level of training that is necessary to address any skills gaps, particularly when it comes to being comfortable with different technologies used for communicating with customers. That is augmented by mentoring and coaching to increase employee confidence.

Although HireMee is set up as a private company, it operates as a social enterprise with the goal of leveling the playing field for young graduates that have limited employment experience and/or are economically disadvantaged and seeking employment. The HireMee founders realized that most employers conduct recruitment activities at colleges located in major cities and that job seekers from smaller cities and towns miss out on these recruitment opportunities. The online HireMee platform was created to bridge this gap and can be accessed free of cost by anyone from anywhere, and individuals who complete the HireMee free pre-hire assessments are automatically connected to potential employers through the platform.

Avasant has been actively involved in Impact Sourcing since 2008. The Rockefeller Foundation funded Avasant in 2011 to highlight key policy initiatives and incentives that could help to scale the Impact Sourcing sector. The Foundation later worked with and was a grantee of the Rockefeller Foundation's Digital Jobs Africa Initiative (DJA) in 2015 and educated service providers over two years about the benefits of creating jobs under Impact Sourcing. Through education and partnership, the Avasant Foundation created over 1,300 ICT-enabled jobs in Africa. Its Avasant Digital Youth Employment Initiative provides deserving youth with job-related skills training to enable employees in the leading ICT BPO industries in the Caribbean.

At Foundever we are committed to providing equitable and inclusive opportunities for our associates and in the communities where we live and operate. With an expansive global footprint, we recognize our opportunities for a positive social impact creating sustainability. By targeting recruitment activities in less advantaged or remote areas, or actively seeking potential associates who might be excluded from the job market, our efforts add a social and ethical dimension that can reap huge benefits for individuals and communities. We support impact sourcing through various initiatives and programs such as talent development programs for our associates and work experience programs.

At Kelly we firmly believe there are many talented Americans who are qualified to fill the record number of job openings if they are given access and training. And when we provide equal access to meaningful work, we help businesses succeed and we change lives. We doubled down on these efforts over the past two years through our Equity@Work initiative. We're dedicated to building a more inclusive workforce, one where equitable access to work and growth for those who seek it is a reality—not a distant target.

A for-profit social enterprise established in 2009, B2R (Business-To-Rural) Technologies is one of the most-respected Impact Sourcing service providers in India, and the first Indian Impact Sourcing Service Provider to adopt the Global Impact Sourcing Standard (in March 2020). B2R chose as its area of work the remote, socially conservative Indian border state of Uttarakhand in the Himalayan foothills, where nearly 18% of the population lives in poverty and income levels were a dismal US$20 (INR 1500) a month, earned from seasonal low-yield farming and intermittent tourism.

Virtualahan offers a wholistic approach to address the high unemployment rate of disadvantaged communities, particularly People with Disabilities. We also serve solo parents, out-of-school youth, Indigenous People, recovering addicts, and People Deprived of Liberty. Our impact formula includes skills training for in-demand online jobs like lead generation, graphic design, customer service, social media management, content marketing, video editing, e-commerce, and basic website design.

Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPESA) is a not-for-profit company that serves as the representative national industry body and trade association for those Global Business Services (GBS) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) operators in South Africa serving the international and domestic markets. BPESA's purpose is to promote and market South Africa to the world as an attractive location to offshore their service contracts or centres, thereby stimulating local job creation, particularly for unemployed, marginalised youth communities.

Isahit is a socially oriented platform that gives digital work to women based in Africa, South America, Europe and Asia. Isahit's ambition is to reduce poverty by giving work to disadvantaged people. Our target is women that earn less than $2/day. Our community of HITers, mainly women, do digital micro-tasks on our crowdsourcing platform, allowing them to earn additional income to realize their various life projects.

StepWise Inc. is an impact sourcing service provider with offices in the US and Kenya. With more than 15 years' experience delivering value to more than 300 customers across five continents, StepWise is one of the founders of the impact sourcing movement. As the first B-Corp certified in East Africa, StepWise uses the power of technology to train and equip persons from historically underserved communities, particularly the youth, women and Persons with Disabilities, to compete and succeed in the 4th Industrial Revolution.

A core element of Webhelp's Group strategy is to build an Impact Sourcing model for global scale. Since being founded 21 years ago, Webhelp has remained devoted to developing sustainable and impactful business practices across our group. As a global outsourcer with a footprint in over 50 countries, we are uniquely placed to implement systemic, scalable, and sustainable Impact Sourcing practices.

As a non-profit company, CareerBox identifies and trains candidates from underprivileged townships and places them in entry-level digitally enabled jobs. Its partnership with CCI Global has enabled CareerBox to deliver on the promise of 100,000 lives being changed through job creation and permanent employment. Since inception, CareerBox has placed around 35,619 unemployed and previously disadvantaged candidates into permanent jobs, proving to have a positive impact of 142,000 lives being changed in and around local communities. Approximately 66% of placements were unemployed women.

Eclaro has 3 offices and over 650 employees in Metro Manila in the Philippines, along with a non-profit school (kindergarten through college) run with 4 campuses and over 2,600 students. Eclaro has hired 175 impact workers since the beginning of 2017, with programs designed to hire even more impact workers over the upcoming years, including client-sponsored scholarships for underprivileged students to attend Eclaro Academy at no cost.

Under its 'Business for Good' philosophy, IndiVillage employs more than 300 individuals from rural Indian communities in centres in Raichur district in Karnataka and Yemmiganur in Andhra Pradesh, delivering image and data annotation, natural language processing, and content optimization for leading technology and e-commerce companies. Over the last decade, IndiVillage has impacted over 35,000 lives through sustainable community development initiatives such as access to clean drinking water, improved livelihoods, better healthcare, and standardized education.

Having incepted in Africa and operational for well over 2 decades in 19 countries within Africa, TechnoBrain's ethos is to empower lives and provide exposure in building digital talents and digital literacy, employing people from marginalized and underprivileged backgrounds. This process has influenced the name PRIDE for the initiative — Poverty Reduction through Information and Digital Employment.

ISS aims to be the best service organization in the world, and that is only possible if ISS is also an inclusive employer. As a major employer in the Netherlands, ISS ensures that vulnerable and/or underrepresented groups in society are facilitated when it comes to finding work and continuing to work at ISS — helping to become an employer of choice while improving client satisfaction through social return on investment (SROI).

Televerde is a global sales and marketing company specializing in inside sales and demand generation, operating nine engagement centers around the globe, six of which are staffed entirely by females incarcerated inside three U.S. prison facilities. Today, 70 percent of Televerde's workforce is incarcerated, with the model designed to prepare incarcerated women for professional positions once they leave prison.

Sutherland's social impact mission is to positively impact one life or family for every person employed by the company, fulfilled through Exposure, Investment, and Impact Hiring — targeting young people ages 17-25 living at or below the poverty level, single parents 17-25 with children at home, and individuals who are blind, deaf, or on the autism spectrum.

RRD's journey with impact sourcing began in 2014 when the company started working with impact sourcing vendor B2R, operating in villages in the foothills of the Himalayas, delivering world-class services to global clients without compromise on quality, security, or infosec. Program goals include business value, social & community impact, gender parity, environmental sustainability, and corporate citizenship.

Harambee has taken a strategic ecosystem view of how to drive impact sourcing across the entire BPO sector in South Africa, partnering strategically with the sector's industry body, Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPESA), and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), playing a meaningful role in reshaping the country's BPO strategy.

Samasource is a social business on a mission to train and hire low-income and marginalized people to work in the digital economy, delivering high-quality training data for AI teams at companies like Microsoft and Google. Since 2008, Samasource has trained and hired 10,000+ women and youth in Kenya, India, and Uganda, supporting over 46,000 people through their salaries, with 50% of its East African workforce being female.

RuralShores is a unique social enterprise model formed in 2008, created to benefit rural India, urban India, and corporates alike. In its 9-year journey, RuralShores has brought transformational change to the rural Indian economy by training and employing rural youth and empowering underserved rural women and People with Disabilities with sustainable BPO employment.

In 2016, Intuit adopted a sourcing strategy named Mission Hope to intentionally bring customer care jobs to underserved U.S. communities suffering economic downturn after prior prosperity, positioning its customer care partners as premium employers offering stable jobs and benefits that turn short-term work into a career.

Teleperformance has recruited disabled and socioeconomically disadvantaged youth under the age of 26 in developing countries for many years. In 2014, Teleperformance committed to creating 5,000 Impact Sourcing jobs over five years; by 2016 that goal was surpassed with over 25,000 hires, and the company now trains and employs approximately 50,000 individuals worldwide through its Impact Sourcing program.

Avasant has been actively involved in Impact Sourcing since 2008, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2011 to highlight policy initiatives that could help scale the sector. Through education and partnership, the Avasant Foundation has created over 1,300 ICT-enabled jobs in Africa and provides youth job-related skills training in the Caribbean's leading ICT BPO industries.

Founded in 2001 with operations in Cambodia, Laos, and Kenya, DDD is recognized worldwide for having pioneered Impact Sourcing. DDD addresses the education and skills gap among disadvantaged youth through its Work-Study Program, and more than 2,500 youth have graduated from the program since inception, indirectly improving the lives of an additional 5,000 individuals.

Impact Sourcing is Microsoft's preferred sourcing strategy, aligning its mission with its procurement strategy while extending the model to its own large multi-national suppliers. In fiscal year 2017, Microsoft supported Impact Sourcing projects in 14 countries, including the United States, Kenya, Uganda and India, for services such as back-office work and facilities management.