Twilio 2020 Impact Report
Building communications
to change lives
Meet the impact heroes creating a
better world with Twilio
Twilio 2020 Impact Report
A hotline providing life-saving mental health support. Video visits with a healthcare provider. Text reminders to register to vote. In the hands of nonprofits and social enterprises, digital engagement and communications technology can change lives for the better.
In 2020, Twilio activated our products, people, and capital to do good. In a year when so many people could use a helping hand, our social impact customers, employees, and grantees rose to the challenge to serve our communities. This report details our programs and results in social impact, diversity, equity, inclusion, environment, and governance.
2020 impact
by the numbers
From supporting people through digital channels to activating employees to create change, our team and customers created significant impact in 2020. These are our key results.
Product
Capital
People
Impact Areas
How we’re making an impact
We focused our impact efforts in three areas where we’ve seen our unique assets and customer engagement platform make the biggest difference. In each impact area, we support our customers and grantees to make change.
Impact Area 1
Responding to crisis
Goal
We focus on supporting our nonprofit customers and grantees to help people in acute crises, or those facing an immediate threat to their wellbeing, get the help they need when they need it through crisis helplines and hotlines.
Impact Area 2
Inspiring action
Goal
Whether organizing communities, advocating for causes, or contacting public officials, our customers and grantees mobilize people to create positive social change. Twilio also engages our employees to support causes they care about.
Impact Area 3
Building better lives
Goal
Our impact partners help people at risk improve their long-term outcomes by connecting people with resources to build better lives. Improving access to education, financial benefits, healthcare, and other support fits in this impact area.
Over 6,000 impact organizations use Twilio
Read the full reportThanks to Twilio, we can now have a real-time dialogue with a woman who’s fleeing from armed actors in El Salvador with her kid. She wants to know where’s safe, who can she trust, if there’s a safe house—and we’re able to respond to her.”
Responding to COVID-19,
building a global giving movement,
and protecting voter rights
Covid 19
Rising to the needs of overlapping crises
When the pandemic struck, nonprofits and local governments had to rapidly transition to digital programming for telemedicine, distance learning, contactless emergency food distribution, and contact tracing. Organizations helping people recover from the crises of sexual assault, suicide prevention, substance use, and humanitarian conflicts saw significant increase in demand.
In response, Twilio helped in the following ways:
- Funding for COVID-19 relief: Donated $1M to rapid response efforts and $2.9M to crisis lines facing increased demand due to COVID-19 via the Impact Fund
- Supporting public health: Powered 28 contact tracing initiatives, supporting close to half the U.S. population
- Connecting patients and doctors: Powered more than 1 billion telemedicine video minutes
- Providing employee assistance: Instituted a $1,500 work-from-home stipend for employees, flexible schedules, no meeting Fridays, and COVID care leave
WePledge 1%
Creating a global movement for employee giving
Inspired by Pledge 1%, Twilio.org launched the WePledge 1% program in 2019, activating employees to commit 1% of their time, income, or equity, to social impact causes. This year, we open-sourced our playbook to companies and individuals everywhere—and invited the world to join us.
- Getting involved: 7,871 employee hours volunteered
- Supporting causes: $1.1 million donated in employee gifts and matches
- Building the movement: Zoom, Atlassian, and Okta joined WePledge 1%
U.S. Elections
Building a stronger democracy
Through our Voices for Democracy initiative, in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. election we supported organizations working to create a more inclusive, representative democracy. We provided grant funding to organizations driving voter turnout, educating voters, and fighting against voter suppression in historically marginalized communities. Many organizations also used Twilio’s platform to adapt to COVID-19 by building digital voter engagement strategies, helping inspire record participation.
- Voter engagement grants: Twilio gave a total of $500,000 in grants to Black Voters Matter Fund, Democracy Works, Moms Rising, Protect Democracy, and Woke Vote to secure the elections and engage marginalized communities in voting
- Empowering historically marginalized communities: Our grantees engaged 10.5 million underrepresented voters with election information and protected and secured voter registration data for over 120 million voters
- Powering voter activation: DoSomething.org, Democracy Works, and other civic engagement nonprofits used Twilio to send voting resources and election reminders to millions of subscribers
Read the full reportOur goal isn’t to reduce the call volume—it’s to increase our ability to answer the call volume. We want to be able to talk to everyone who wants to talk to us, and we need centralized, efficient, and seamless technology to do that.”
Investing in racial equity
and environmental sustainability
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Striving to build a diverse and equitable workplace
In 2020, Twilio made a commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization, leveraging our product, people, and resources to create a more just and equitable world. We are dedicated to thinking carefully about how we show up in the world and fight against inequities in our systems, processes, and products, while holding ourselves accountable.
- 38.7% employees identified as female (+6 points since 2019)
- 5.5% of U.S. employees identified as Black (+2 points since 2019)
- 6.5% of U.S. employees identified as LatinX (+1 points since 2019)
Though we celebrate our progress, we know this is just the start. As we look forward, we remain committed to building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Twilio.
Environment, Social, and Governance
Taking good care of our company and our planet
At Twilio we believe that what we do matters, and how we do it matters even more. This is why we’re committed to transparency in our ESG work.
In this report, we’ve shared our full carbon footprint for the first time: 17,427.95 tCO2e, measured in units of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). We also reported our water usage in locations managed solely by Twilio: 600,000 gallons. We will use these baselines to continue to reduce our emissions and usage moving forward. These represent 2019 results, and we’ll publish our 2020 numbers when the measurement is complete.
In 2020, we refined, implemented, and shared company policies around human rights, privacy, business ethics, and more. We also updated our Acceptable Use Policy for our products to ensure our technology is not used to promote hate and violence.
Get Involved
Discover the stories behind the impact
Learn more about nonprofit heroes that used the Twilio platform to make a difference, from The Trevor Project, to the International Rescue Committee, United Way, and more.
Take the personal 1% pledge
WePledge 1% provides a simple framework for personal and employee giving. Take the pledge yourself, get ideas to give back, or bring WePledge 1% to your organization.