Responding
to crises
Goal
Provide life-saving resources in times of crisis - from mental health crises to natural disasters to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twilio 2021 Impact and DEI Report
The role of business in society
At Twilio, we believe business should leave society better than we found it. We know that’s a tall order. So we’ve designed our company to integrate social impact into the way we structure our teams, measure our results, and reinvest our revenue.
For us, serving all of our company stakeholders starts from the inside out. We know that the work we do to serve our communities must come hand-in-hand with supporting our employees and our customers.
Our 2021 Impact and DEI report shares how we use our products, people, and capital to help build a better world. Learn how we worked to build vaccine equity, continued our journey to become an antiracist organization, supported our team through change, and protected users on our platform.
Read the reportImpact Areas
How we're driving positive change
We focus our impact efforts on three areas where communications and customer engagement can make the biggest difference. In each impact area, we support our customers, grantees, and employees to make change.
Responding
to crises
Responding
Spotlight
Child Helpline International built a modern crisis hotline platform to better protect children from exploitation and connect them to resources that can help.
Building better
lives
Building better
lives
Goal
Support people in improving their long-term outcomes and wellbeing–from alleviating food insecurity to closing equity gaps.
Spotlight
World Central Kitchen connected people experiencing food insecurity over SMS with restaurants whose doors had closed to access hot, healthy meals.
Inspiring action
for good
Inspiring action
for good
Goal
Activate human generosity and innovation to create lasting positive social impact–by fostering a culture of service and encouraging people to give back.
Spotlight
GlobalGiving activated millions of people to donate to community causes with tailored emails featuring nonprofits focused on subscribers' top issue areas.
Helping Vaccinate The World
The journey to end the pandemic
In 2021, vaccines brought hope for ending the acute phase of the pandemic. However, not everyone could get a shot or wanted to get one. So we set a bold goal to help 1 billion people over two years get access to vaccines and trusted COVID-19 information through Twilio products and funding. From expanding vaccine availability to combating misinformation and setting appointments, we directed resources towards nonprofits that engage underserved communities.
- 324M people accessed trusted vaccine and COVID-19 communications through Twilio products and funding
- 1,270 organizations use Twilio to power vaccine-related communications
- $18M in grant funding committed for vaccine equity
- 1,000 Twilion volunteer hours committed
Our Partners
For me, Twilio has been the stand-out technology company that has really put action behind words to support vaccine equity. Twilio has led not only through substantive funding, but equally through the team’s energy, creativity and sheer dedication to get a product to market that actually aims to change things for the better.
Janti Soeripto
President & Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children US (she/hers)
2021 Impact by the numbers
From helping over half a billion people connect to social impact organizations, to delivering $66 million in financial support to nonprofits, these are our key results from 2021.
Product
511M
people helped by 7,624 social impact organizations using Twilio (+92% YoY)
Capital
$66M
provided in grants, donations, product credits and discounts to social impact organizations (+106% YoY)
People
$2M
donated to charitable causes by Twilio employees and matched by Twilio
17B
messages sent for good using Twilio across 195 countries
$124M
provided in all-time grants, donations, product credits and discounts to social impact organizations
7,553
hours volunteered by Twilio employees through WePledge 1%
A New Approach to DEI
Building an antiracist culture
The landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion is evolving. We believe that antiracism is the key to facilitating transformational change across the business and the industry. At Twilio, antiracism is an umbrella term for actively identifying and eliminating racism and oppression by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes, so that power is shared equitably. In 2020, we made a commitment to become an antiracist organization and kicked off our antiracist journey.
In 2021, we assembled a global DEI team and publicly shared our new antiracism strategy. We socialized antiracism among various teams and started taking steps to translate the concept and importance of this work globally. With CEO Jeff Lawson at the helm of this work, we laid the groundwork for Twilio’s antiracism learning journey, coordinated workshops for executive leaders and are now positioned to roll out antiracism education more broadly, so that Twilions view their decisions and actions through an antiracist lens.
We also leveraged antiracist thinking to view our DEI data differently. While many companies position representational data at the forefront of their annual reports and celebrate reaching milestones, we believe in spotlighting the actions we have taken based on this data. We call this our “move, not prove” philosophy. We know that who holds power and positions of influence matters, which is why we focus on representation across our population of leaders. In this report, we dig deeper into how DEI data influences our strategy and workplace initiatives.
*Based on our Q4 2021 Employee Engagement Survey
At Twilio, antiracism is a CEO-driven and top-down strategy that is rooted in antiracism education for all Twilions, especially our leadership team. Here are some stats that demonstrate our progress in 2021:
100%
Of executive team
participated in two antiracism workshops
86%
Of VPS and Above
went through an in-depth antiracism workshop
83%
Of twilions
understand how Twilio is becoming an antiracist company*
50%
of ERG programming
focused on promoting antiracism
Our antiracist journey:
2020
Commitment to become an antiracist company
2021
Build and launch of global antiracism strategy
2022
Rollout of antiracism education and framework
Driving antiracism through our Employee Resource Groups
Our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are an integral part of our antiracism strategy and support us in finding, keeping and retaining talent from diverse communities. Voices from our ERGs help us to grow our business and culture ethically, and challenge us to manage our policies, programs, and processes through an antiracist lens.
In 2021, we dedicated 50 percent of ERG programming on promoting antiracism in the workplace. We have been educating leaders on how to use our ERG engagement framework to ensure that these groups weigh in on important policy decisions that have company-wide impact. As we advance in our antiracist journey, we will support and position our ERGs to amplify our DEI efforts and continue to hold us accountable in living our antiracism commitment.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, our community has experienced a sharp increase in anti-Asian harassment and violence. So many of us felt angry and fear for ourselves, our children, and our elders. The Asians @ ERG sponsored a Hollaback! workshop to train bystanders on how to intervene when they witness an anti-Asian hate incident. I thought it was a wonderful way to not only acknowledge our collective pain, but it also gave all of us, allies included, practical tips to diffuse such situations. It taught me that our community alone should not and cannot #StopAsianHate, it truly takes a village.
MyLoc Dinh
Senior Commercial Counsel at Twilio (she/hers)
Expanding WePledge 1%, our employee impact movement
Through WePledge 1%, Twilions voluntarily commit 1% of their time and/or financial resources to charitable organizations that are meaningful to them. 2,314 Twilions have taken the pledge, and 3,389 employees have participated in WePledge 1% giving and volunteering programs.
In 2021, we amped up our efforts to get more companies to join us—with great results. More than 25 organizations are now bringing WePledge 1% to their companies, with the potential to support more than 50,000 employees in how they give back to their communities.
We built our WePledge 1% community not only to increase the number of hours our people were dedicating to giving back to causes they care about, but also to create a space where they could share insights, learn from each other, and act as catalysts for change.
Tesa Pagulayan
Social Impact Specialist, Atlassian Foundation (she/hers)
Protecting customers on the platform
We believe that protecting customers who use our products, and the greater communications ecosystem, is critical to our overall impact strategy. We invest in ensuring data privacy and security, removing bad actors from our platform, and enabling wanted communications.
We also put programs and procedures in place that allow us to maintain transparency and accountability about how we’re doing. From designing for accessibility to preventing hate groups from using our platform, we are committed to doing our part to improve the industry overall and maintain high-quality experiences for our customers and the people they serve.
Take a closer look
Learn more about how our employees, grantees, and customers made a difference in 2021.
Read the report