Social Impact Program for Crayon Partners aids NGOs

Digital transformation is typically associated with efforts by businesses to drive better productivity, efficiency, and ultimately profitability. However, Crayon sees another potential application of transformation: one that drives social benefit for meaningful change. This is realised through its Tech for Good Program, which serves to empower meaningful innovation and achieve the greater good through affordable, impactful solutions and technology partnerships.

Similar to businesses, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are digitising to remain effective, efficient, and relevant in delivering support to their communities—from managing volunteer resources to running fundraisers. According to the Asia-Pacific NGO Digital Capability Report 2023, staff satisfaction is closely linked to an organisation’s technology environment with over 60% of organisations expressing satisfaction when the environment is functional or leading.

Across Asia Pacific, NGOs are increasingly recognising the critical role of technology in enabling their missions, with many organisations actively seeking ways to enhance their digital capabilities.

New Digital Ways Bring About New Digital Challenges

But in the same vein as their private-sector counterparts, NGOs struggle to maximise digital technologies. Cybersecurity remains a significant challenge for NGOs across the region, with one in six Asia Pacific NGOs experiencing a cybersecurity incident in the past year.

While cybersecurity awareness varies across the region, with some markets showing higher adoption rates of security measures, the overall picture shows room for improvement. Only 44% of Asia Pacific NGOs have implemented multi-factor authentication on their internet-facing systems, and staff cybersecurity training remains inconsistent across the region. This leaves many organisations vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, where a single breach could easily undo years of community work and divert precious resources.

The lack of skills and knowledge continues to hinder NGOs from unlocking digital technologies’ full potential. Digital capacity building remains a top priority across the region, with organisation seeking ways to enhance their staff’s technological capabilities while maintaining focus on their core missions.

Understanding the critical role of technology in driving the greater good, Crayon has been empowering NGOs through its rhipe for Change program since 2019. Following its integration with rhipe in 2023, the program rebranded as Tech for Good, enabling partners to fully leverage the combined strength of rhipe’s established regional channel expertise and Crayon’s global resources and innovative solutions for change.

Even before Tech for Good, the company had achieved significant milestones, most prominently in becoming the first Asia Pacific distributor in the market with Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact (TSI) program in 2019 and now the region’s largest Microsoft TSI partner. This allows partners to offer discounted and donated Microsoft software solutions tailored to the NGOs’ unique needs.

“We extend our value-driven and partner-first approach to corporate social responsibility, seen clearly through Tech for Good. Not only is it geared toward enhancing the technology capabilities of NGOs and helping them focus on their mission without financial strain, but we also do it in a way that empowers partners to succeed and be agents of change,” explains Rhonda Robati, Executive Vice President of Crayon Asia Pacific.

The result? Tech for Good supports more than a thousand NGOs across Asia Pacific.

Enabling Partners to Drive Both Growth and Social Impact

For partners, bridging this technology gap lets them have a hand in building social resilience while creating new business opportunities. This dual benefit improves employee satisfaction through mission-driven work while tapping into the growing nonprofit technology sector. The nonprofit technology spending market continues to expand across the region, driven by increasing digitalisation needs and the growing recognition of technology’s role in achieving social impact.

Crayon’s Tech for Good bridges partners and vendors with NGOs to empower meaningful innovation and achieve greater good through affordable and impactful solutions. Its commitment to society is reflected not only in the NGOs it supports but also in the partners and vendors it collaborates with. Through rigorous due diligence assessments, Crayon ensures partners comply with international regulations and its own standards addressing labour and human rights risks.

But it is through Tech for Good that Crayon’s values to promote and support societal causes through partnerships shine.

An example is H20 Technologies, in which it collaborated to develop an amphibious vehicle called the Salamander that transforms disaster responses in island nations such as the Philippines and Samoa. It also teamed up with ONGC Systems to provide Ability First, an NGO focused on maximising the potential of people with disabilities, with a cybersecurity assessment and devised a framework aligned to the Essential Eight roadmap that enables it to move forward.

The commitment that drives the success of Tech for Good

What makes Tech for Good successful? Robati believes this is driven by Crayon’s commitment to People, Purpose, Planet, and Prosperity. This is executed across four key pillars:

• Advocacy – Promoting the adoption of advanced technologies, tailored to nonprofit needs
• Facilitation – Democratising the use of technology by streamlining access and ensuring affordability
• Education – Providing training and resources that help NGOs maximise their use of digital technology
• Aggregation – Bringing together stakeholders to create a cohesive ecosystem of support

Beyond Tech for Good to enable the greater good

Apart from driving meaningful change through its partners with Tech for Good, Crayon also collaborates directly with NGOs. This is seen through its work with NGO Aiforgood Asia, pouring their combined efforts into saving forests and wildlife.

Fauna & Flora, the world’s oldest international wildlife conservation organisation, faced the challenge of forest degradation in Vietnam’s Mu Cang Chai forest. Together, Crayon and Aiforgood Asia developed a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) computer vision-based solution that utilises remote sensing and machine learning to detect cardamom crops in satellite imagery, which was tested in the northern region of the conservation area with the outcomes evaluated based on feasibility and cost.

The project’s success has far-reaching implications for conservationists and governments as it demonstrated the effectiveness of remote sensing and machine learning. More importantly, this serves as a foundation for an AI solution that can help prevent forest degradation and protect critically endangered species such as the western black-crested gibbons.

Crayon’s Tech for Good program exemplifies how partners can have a hand in building social resilience and accelerating innovation in NGOs. By working closely together, Crayon strives to empower partners to be part of a larger movement that enables the greater good.

Learn more about Crayon Tech for Good program here.

Read the original article on Channel Asia here.