It’s that time of year again. As the weather turns cooler and the leaves change color, we gear up for the holiday season, which means gifts for loved ones, clients, business partners, and team members. 

With every purchase, we can support great businesses and worthy causes, spending dollars with organizations committed to serving people and the planet. As a certified B Corp ourselves, Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic®) takes this responsibility seriously, and we wanted to share some of our favorite corporate gift options with you. 

Whether you’re looking for one-off gifts for your team or clients, something fun for someone special on your list, or a great nonprofit to donate on someone’s behalf, we’ve got you covered. 

Sweet Treats

The closest thing to a sure thing, just about everyone loves something sweet. And there are some great options from some wonderful companies for you to find the perfect gift. 

One of our go-to employee gifts comes from Yonkers, NY, a company that became famous for its innovative open hiring model. Greyston Bakery makes some of the best brownies you’ll ever eat, and we recommend the Indulgent 8 box, which features some of their most popular brownies. 

Another sweet treat to add to your list comes from another mission-driven B Corp, The Lancaster Stroopie Company (Stroopies). They employ female refugees, offering meaningful employment, English classes, and transition services as they adjust to life in a new country. Order a Deluxe Pack (and try the Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel) and enjoy a cup of coffee from one of our recommendations later in this blog. 

One final amazing sweet treat comes packed with a double benefit, delicious chocolate, and helping a community ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Based in downtown Asheville, French Broad Chocolate was badly flooded and their downtown tasting room remains shuttered. From their bonbons to their chocolate bars, you can’t go wrong with anything from this B Corp, but our choice is their incredible hot chocolate mix. 

Coffee & Tea 

Just like sweets, coffee & tea are generally a safe bet for most of the people on your list. And some great companies are doing incredible work throughout their supply chains. They also happen to brew some really tasty beverages. 

Here in our home state of Georgia, we are lucky enough to have two amazing B Corp coffee roasters, Thrive Farmers and Cafe Campesino, who started one of the first coffee-buying cooperatives. Both companies pay fair market value to farmers around the world for some of the best coffee you’ll ever drink. We recommend Cafe Camepsino’s Historic Grounds blend, whose proceeds support the creation of the Americus Civil Rights Museum. 

Outside of Georgia, there are also a couple of great Black-owned, certified B Corp, midwestern coffee companies doing incredible work. BLK and Bold, with new investor Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders, makes a delicious Cold Brew. And Last Mile Cafe, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, donates 10% of all revenue to charity. Our pick is God’s Gumbo, a yummy blend from Ethiopia, Honduras, & Colombia. 

And for the chai tea lover on your list, check out Sachai Tea, a B Corp out of Birmingham, Alabama. Their team works directly with their farmers in India to deliver a delicious variety of loose-leaf and chai concentrate options. With their original, harvest, and decaf concentrates, we recommend their sampler pack. 

Potent Potables

For someone on your list who wants something a little stronger, a couple of amazing B Corp distilleries also made our list. 

For the rum drinker on your list, there is a woman-owned distillery in Crested Butte, Colorado making award-winning rum. And yes, they ship throughout the US (to 38 different states), Check out their entire selection on their website and support this B Corp that won a Best For The World award in 2021. 

And if rum isn’t your recipient’s thing, check out our go-to for client and community partner appreciation gifts, Makers Mark distilled bourbon. You can even get a custom label printed for that special someone on your list while getting them something they want. And you can feel good about your purchase–not only is Makers Mark a B Corp, but they’re also the first distillery to become Tier 3 Certified Regenified–read more about their sustainability commitments here.  

Gift Boxes

If you’re looking to give a little bit of everything, gift boxes can be a great option. And our friends at Better Made Easy have you covered–they even offer a B Corp-themed gift box that includes two of the gifts we already mentioned, Sachai Tea and Greyston Bakery brownies! The site has a variety of standalone gift options as well, so there will be something for everyone on your list. 

And if you’re in Georgia, check out Retaaza, a B Corp out to end produce waste in the Peach State. They have a “produce as a perk” option for fresh produce deliveries year-round! Order as a gift for a client, a new company-wide perk, or a treat for an important business partner. 

Charitable Giving

For the minimalist on your holiday list, give them the gift of charity. Donating is an easy and impactful way to give a meaningful gift. 

After the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene on western North Carolina, our B Corp community has been stepping up to help those affected by the storm. The planning team behind BLD Southeast has organized a small business relief fund for B Local Asheville and you can contribute here. This is tax-deductible, and all donations will be distributed to locally-owned small businesses in the region. 

In Georgia, there are three charities we have been supporting for many years now. Working to address the lack of diversity in the Salesforce ecosystem, Tech Forward continues to scale its impact as it provides CRM career training and job placement in our industry. In Atlanta, HYPE provides STEM education to girls of color in metro area middle and high schools, cultivating a pipeline of diverse talent for the tech industry. And last but not least, there’s our own B Local Georgia, which we helped launch in 2018. Through their all-volunteer board, they use any money raised to host free community events for B Corps, purpose-driven organizations, and students across Georgia. 

We’d like to thank Profitable Purpose Consulting‘s Nathan Stuck for his help compiling our 2024 AdVic Holiday Gift Guide.

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BLD Southeast is coming to Atlanta, and we here at Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic®) couldn’t be more excited to join the party! As a certified B Corp since 2018 and one that is headquartered in the Atlanta Metro Region, we can’t wait for this conference to kick off on September 11. Here are the top four things we’re most looking forward to in Atlanta!

It’s In Our Backyard

First, it’s important to note that BLD stands for B Corp Leadership Development, and they are independent regional conferences hosted by communities of B Corp leaders around the country. While there is a larger biannual conference (Champions Retreat) for the entire U.S. and Canada region, BLDs are designed to have more of a regional focus and be more accessible to everyone. 

When we started in this community, one of our first events was the 2019 BLD Mountain West in Denver. And while the event was great, it was focused on that region, not the southeast where we are headquartered. There hasn’t been a whole lot of focus on anything southeastern. But starting in 2020 with a virtual BLD Southeast (remember when everything went virtual), a determined group of volunteers has created an event that speaks our language, features our businesses, and allows us to build valuable business relationships with one another. 

After last year’s first-ever in-person event in Raleigh, this year we’ll be in our backyard, a short drive down GA400 to Midtown Atlanta. Home field advantage, local food and drinks, familiar venues, and a party with a Georgia flair–we can’t wait!

Content That Resonates: The Business Side of B Corp

One of our favorite parts of last year’s BLD Southeast was the business-focused content that brought us together around the thing we have in common, we’re all for-profit companies focused on using business as a force for good. But to do good, to scale our collective impact, and to grow the number of good jobs in our communities, we have to build successful businesses. 

In addition to getting all of these wonderful companies and people in the same room again this year, the content is once again focused on things we can bring back to the office. Track One is focused on sales, marketing, and operations, and it includes panels and workshops on business development, impact storytelling, and operational goal setting. Track Two’s concentration is on sustainable business, including people, culture, and the planet, with panels and workshops tackling topics like the sustainable tech stack, leading evolving organizations, and workforce development programs. 

From the intentional networking to the carefully curated content, we’re excited to not only meet so many amazing leaders but also to learn from them. And the BLD Southeast conference is a great opportunity to do just that. 

Highlighting What Works in Atlanta

Atlanta is a special place. But it’s also now the sixth biggest metropolitan area in the country and the largest in the southeast. The economy is the 11th largest in the country, home to 16 Fortune 500 companies, the world’s busiest airport, and a booming tech and startup scene, especially in Fin-Tech and Green-Tech. 

While there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done, Atlanta has been incredibly intentional about building an economy that works for everyone. With an increased focus on access to capital and investment, the Atlanta metro now boasts the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the United States, topping both Washington, D.C., and Virginia Beach, VA. 

Day One of this year’s conference will focus heavily on Atlanta, with excursions to Morehouse and RICE, and an afternoon of programming in historic Castleberry Hill at Atlantucky Brewing. In addition to panel discussions covering music & culture, and the inclusive business community in the city, there will also be a sustainable fashion show featuring another Atlanta B Corp, Sustainable Fashion Week Atlanta! 

A Full-Circle Moment

We embarked on our B Corp journey back in 2016 when AdVic was in the middle of its second year in business. We partnered with the University of Georgia’s Full-Time MBA program and ended up hiring one of their students. That student, Nathan Stuck, is now the Executive Director of BLD Southeast, the founder of Profitable Purpose Consulting, and a driving force behind the growth of the community in our state and region. That project with AdVic ended up being the pilot for what is now a Fall semester class at UGA, and their students (under the guidance of Mr. Stuck) have helped seven of Georgia’s B Corps certify. 

When we initially certified in 2018, there were only eight B Corps in the state. When B Local Georgia launched, we signed up to be one of the founding members and sponsored many of their earliest events to help them get off the ground. Six years later, the Georgia B Corp community has grown by 400%, boasting 33 B Corps with more on the way.

With Atlanta hosting the regional conference this year, we’re in awe of how far we’ve come and feel a full-circle pride in the role we’ve been fortunate enough to play in building a community of businesses that care about both profit and purpose and that are using their companies as a force for good in their local communities. 

If you’re interested in joining us at this year’s conference, tickets are still available on their website. 

Lastly, if you are interested in learning more about AdVic’s commitment to being a B Corporation, click here.

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In 2018, when we first worked on certifying as a B Corporation, we released our first-ever Annual Impact Report. There was a question on the B Impact Assessment that addressed not only whether we had one, but what information we were publicly sharing–and we accepted the challenge to share our impact data. 

What started back then has continued every year, through our first recertification in 2021, and now through our recent recertification earlier this year. As we continue our commitment to being a business focused on purpose and profitability, we are excited to release our seventh version of the AdVic® Annual Impact Report. 

Not to spoil all of the highlights, but here are some of the 2023 achievements we’re most proud of: 

• 1% of Revenue: Each year, as part of our Pledge 1% commitment, we set a goal to donate 1% of revenue in the combined form of charitable donations, volunteer, and pro bono time. In 2023, we hit 1.08% of revenue, which included 616 volunteer hours, 220 pro bono hours, and over $25,000 in cash donations. 
• Employee Engagement: With a goal of 91% employee engagement, we hit 94.6%. This number is an aggregate of scores on our annual employee survey for the questions of happiness, trust, career path, as well as coworker and supervisor satisfaction. 
• Equitable Growth: For an IT company, we have always taken pride in our commitment to the diversity in our team. As we close the books on 2023, we are 21% underrepresented minority and 37% female. And as a whole, this population represents a majority (53%) of our company. 

As we go deeper into 2024, our 10th year in business and seventh as a B Corp, we’ve once again set ambitious goals for ourselves. We aim to hit the 1% of revenue donated goal for the eighth year in a row, the same number of years we’ve been committed to this pledge. We’ll also strive to continue being a great place to work, one that employees appreciate working at and offers everyone an opportunity to build a career in the Salesforce ecosystem. 

You can read the full impact report here.

AdVic would like to thank Nathan Stuck and his company, Profitable Purpose Consulting, for compiling the information for our 2023 Annual Impact Report.

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At Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic®), we’ve always been a dog-first organization. On any given day in one of our offices, you’ll see four-legged friends sleeping under desks or [politely] begging for snacks in the breakrooms. Our love of animals has also steered a lot of our community and philanthropic work, from sponsoring the Georgia English Bulldog Rescue’s annual Bully Ball to company volunteer shifts at FurKids adoption days outside our Alpharetta-Halcyon office.

In 2021, several of our Georgia-based team members began volunteering at BarkVille Dog Rescue, a 100% volunteer network of foster homes. BarkVille specializes in rescuing bully breeds and dogs with medical conditions or injuries from shelters, especially those who are running out of time in shelters. They give these pups a new lease on life and keep them housed, fed, and loved until they find their forever home.

So when the Jasper, Georgia-based nonprofit reached out to AdVic for help with a marketing overhaul, we emphatically raised our hands to serve. Our in-house marketing team quickly got to work, taking advantage of their Volunteer Time Off, a benefit allowing each employee to spend 40 paid hours volunteering with a nonprofit of their choice. 

For this project, that meant helping BarkVille rebrand its “Be Cool, Adopt” logo, completely rebuilding its website, adding new images and videos, and helping bolster its calls to action for donors, volunteers, fosters, and people searching for their family’s new four-legged sidekick.

The new website will help BarkVille to “envision a compassionate world where all dogs reside in responsible, loving homes and work with area shelters and other rescue groups to develop a network of supporters and volunteers to create a better world for homeless dogs,” co-founder Kim Murphy told us. With 2,100 successful rescues and 1,800 adoptions under their belt, they are optimistic that this marketing refresh will see that number grow in size.

As honored as we were to help BarkVille spread its mission and grow its impact, we also know the dire situation of most public and private dog rescues in Georgia and beyond. If you love pets as much as our team does, consider signing up for a volunteer slot, fostering a rescue, making a donation, or better yet, adopting your new best friend! Groups like BarkVille need your help now more than ever.

As Ms. Murphy so succinctly told us, this work requires “a village of caring people.”

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Volunteerism is just a small part of how AdVic – a Certified B Corporation – gives back to our communities and the world at large. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

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This May, Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic®) will proudly celebrate our 10th anniversary. But there is another milestone we’re proud of in 2024… We’ve recertified as a B Corporation!

B Corps, as they’re known, are companies certified to meet the highest standards of performance in five key categories: corporate governance, worker impact, community impact, environmental impact, and customer transparency. To certify, companies must take the B Impact Assessment – and trust us – the review process is rigorous!

As part of the commitment to continuous improvement, companies must recertify, which means taking the assessment in its entirety, every three years. Having first certified in 2018, this is now our third successful application, a testament to the team we’ve built and the commitment we’ve made to serve them and the communities we operate in. 

Our B Corp journey goes back to 2015 when AdVic was still in its infancy and an early stage quite familiar to the IT startup space; a couple of people working out of a basement at the founder’s home. As they grew the business and thought about the type of company they wanted to collectively build, AdVic CEO Jeff Jones found an article about B Corps, and the idea was born. 

A Focus on Impact Improvement

So what has it meant for AdVic? Where do we get our points and how have we used the assessment to improve our business and its impact? Here are just a few examples of what we’ve implemented and improved upon:

Equitable Pay & Benefits:

• Our pay multiplier is in the lowest bracket of 1-4x, meaning our highest-paid team member makes no more than four times what our lowest-paid team member is paid. To put that in perspective, the average Fortune 500 CEO makes 272x what their lowest-paid team member makes.
• Developing New Skills: The average “AdVician” received 5-9 days of training in 2022, with over 75% of team members participating. 
• Health Insurance: With a 100% paid employee premium, over 75% of our employees are signed up for company-provided healthcare.

Community Impact:  

• 1,552 hours of volunteer time in 2022 and the combined equivalent of 1.6% of revenue donated in the form of volunteer hours, pro bono consulting, and charitable donations.

• We helped launch B Local Georgia back in 2018 and have been supporters ever since. As a result, the state has grown from eight B Corps to over 30, creating collaborative opportunities with other purpose- & profit-driven businesses like ours.

Environmental Impact:

• Since our first recertification in 2021, we’ve partnered with We Are Neutral to offset our Scopes 1-3 emissions. Working with a trusted partner, we know our carbon credits are doing important work to sequester harmful greenhouse gases.

“Good Business is Good For Business”

The most important part of our B Corp certification is being able to prove that doing business the right way has been good for business. From those early days in the basement, we’ve grown AdVic to a team of over 100 of the most talented Salesforce® professionals, working from our offices in suburban Atlanta and home offices across the country. We take care of – and listen closely to – our clients and customers, and continue to lead by example in our industry. 

As B Lab, the nonprofit body behind the certification gets ready to release the next iteration of their standards in early 2025, we’re excited to see what lies ahead and we’re ready for the challenge. And we welcome you to join us on this journey. 

AdVic would like to thank Nathan Stuck and his company, Profitable Purpose Consulting, for guiding us through the B Corporation recertification process.

If you’re interested in learning more about our dedicated team of Salesforce® professionals, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

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At AdVic®, we have experience implementing over 1,500 Salesforce® projects and unleashing the world’s No. 1 CRM for businesses of all sizes. But we don’t just work with traditional for-profit businesses – we also get to use our business as a force for good in the nonprofit sector, as was the case on a recent project we completed with Athens, GA-based Books For Keeps. 

And our connection to them and this work started long before we met them. 

Tying It All Together

We’ve long been fans of the good beer made by our fellow B Corp Creature Comforts Brewing Company, but we’ve been bigger fans of the community impact they make through their Get Comfortable foundation (Creature). Through it, they’ve been tackling some of Athens’ most pressing issues since 2018, supporting their founding value that Athens would be better off because Creature was there.

So when they pivoted their strategy, based on the advice of their advisory board, to tackle third-grade literacy in Athens, we were eager to help however we could. Third-grade literacy is the moment when students either begin reading to learn or continue learning to read. And downstream, the latter group is statistically less likely to graduate high school or attend college–and more likely to require economic assistance and enter the criminal justice system. 

Books For Keeps: A Valuable Partner

Their partner in this endeavor was Books For Keeps, a local nonprofit focused on increasing book access in the Classic City (nickname for Athens). The Salesforce seed was planted when they heard that other book access organizations around the country were utilizing Salesforce.org’s free Nonprofit Cloud licenses to tackle their inventory management. But when Creature approached them about their ambitious new plans, Books For Keeps wondered if this technology solution could also help them manage the mentorship service they would need to add. 

They reached out to Creature for help. And Creature reached out to us. The rest, as they say, is history. We partnered with Books For Keeps to provide them with a Salesforce org that could accomplish everything Nonprofit Cloud had to offer, while also empowering them to grow with Creature’s wild ambitions. 

The Power of Salesforce

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is a powerful tool, but not all nonprofits can afford the cost of licenses and a good implementation. But that’s why Salesforce.org offers ten free licenses to every qualifying nonprofit. And being a part of the Ohana, a lot of Salesforce partners, especially those in the B Corp community, have an annual pro bono budget to help those scaling nonprofits maximize their new CRM. 

We went through our usual scoping process and introduced our project team to get a full understanding of what they needed. Number one was the usual, donor management, which is powerful in itself. But number two was figuring out how to manage the new mentorship program that would be a major part of their plans with Creature. 

They developed a Jotform for mentors and mentees – and they wanted that data to flow back into Salesforce. Valuable data. Like, “When did they meet, and for how long?” “How often do they meet?” “How many books did they read this session?” “How engaging was the session?” 

Using The Data

As the age-old adage goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Connecting Salesforce to Jotform allowed Books For Keeps to track really important data they needed to make this pilot a success. Even more importantly, they were able to use that real-time data to share with their stakeholders on their website, knowing well that their transparency was truly transparent. 

Better yet, the University of Georgia stepped up to help analyze the data. Under the guidance of Dr. Grace Bagwell Adams, an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia School of Public Health, Books For Keeps was able to determine a positive outcome statistically related to the mentorship program–the students at HB Stroud Elementary, where the pilot was hosted, increased their reading scores 3.4 times that of other students not enrolled in the program. 

Let’s Scale This Impact

With the pilot’s success, Creature is doubling down on Get Comfortable’s efforts. And because of Salesforce, Books for Keeps is prepared to grow with them. In the 2023-2024 school year, this literacy program will be expanding to two additional schools in Athens-Clarke County. And with the additional data flowing into Salesforce, they can expand their research.

What’s working? How many books should be read per session? How many sessions should the mentor and mentee have? What can make this program more successful? 

All of the data needed to continue to perfect the work that empowers their mission is now at their fingertips. 

But We Still Need You! 

If we can tug at your heartstrings for a second, the executive director of Books For Keeps, Justin Bray, discovered the nonprofit while utilizing his Volunteer Time Off (VTO) as an employee at Creature Comforts. This is a full-circle story that brings two great organizations together to tackle a systemic issue holding this great city back. 

And they can use your support!

Books still need to be bought and staff still needs to be allocated. And as they perfect the process, they want to scale and impact even more young lives. 

• If you wish to become a Get Comfortable partner, you can send an email here. 
• If you want to donate to Books For Keeps, you can donate here. 
• And if you’re in Athens and want to be a mentor, please register here. 

AdVic is proud to have been a small part of this preliminary success and the program’s continued growth powered by Salesforce–and we’d love to have you join us.  It’s a testament to what Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Cloud can do. 

Ad Victoriam is a Salesforce and MuleSoft® Partner who provides multi-cloud consulting services, from strategy to implementation. Our nimble team of certified professionals across the United States accelerates businesses by simplifying complex problems through cloud and data expertise. As a Certified B Corp – and a founding member of B Local Georgia – we balance purpose with profits and have made a strong commitment to the community. If you’re interested in talking about your nonprofit and its tech needs, contact us here.

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Back in early 2016, AdVic® started its journey towards B Corp certification. At the time, there were only around 1,500 B Corps around the world and only six in our home state of Georgia (there are now 6,100+ and 24 in Georgia). 

What appealed most to us about the certification was the rigor with which it validated and verified our performance in its five key sections: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. 

We officially became certified in January of 2018 and finished our first recertification, required by the certifying nonprofit B Lab every three years, in 2021. We’ll be up for recertification in early 2024, but we put ourselves through the B Impact Assessment at the end of every year, giving ourselves a score for the year gone by and using it as a basis for the next year’s strategic plans. 

AdVic’s B Corp Highlights to Date

We recently completed the aforementioned annual B Impact Assessment and are excited to announce that our own score, albeit unverified, has improved since our last recertification, and includes opportunities to improve it even further in 2023, setting us up for another successful recertification in early 2024. Here are some of the highlights: 

• For the past two years, we have been working with We Are Neutral to offset our Scopes 1, 2, & 3 GhG emissions, which includes our two offices (and our remote team’s home offices), and all business travel. 
• We’ve continued our commitment to Pledge 1%, donating a combined 1%+ of revenue in the form of volunteer time, pro bono work, and charitable donations. In 2022, we finished right around 1.5%, marking the sixth consecutive year we’ve surpassed our commitment. 
• 2022 also saw us strengthen our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Salesforce® community. On top of regular donations and employee matched donations to organizations like HYPE and TechForward, we also sponsored the first annual Dreamin’ In Color conference. 

This process of self-evaluation is a powerful tool and an important step in becoming a better version of ourselves every year. It gives us a chance to set targets for improvement, holds us accountable to previous year goals, and see where we surpassed our expectations or fell a little bit short. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the B Corp certification process, we invite you to reach out to us. And if you’re just interested in learning more about how we use it, year in and year out, to evaluate our own commitments to using our business as a force for good, we’re happy to help you with that as well. And we look forward to celebrating our recertification with all of our stakeholders in 2024! 

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Most of us take our access to technology for granted. From our childhood to our professional lives, we’ve had computer labs in school, we’re given brand new computers at work, and have an array of iPads, iPhones, and other connected devices at home. But for a good number of people in our community, access to technology and the devices needed to access the internet aren’t readily accessible. 

Access to technology in the classroom results in greater achievement in the classroom, and both of these metrics can define future career opportunities and earning potential. So, when we we’re introduced to the incredible team at Inspiredu last summer, we wanted to help amplify their mission and be a part of the solution to this glaring tech gap, which was even more important during the pandemic when remote learning required a computer. 

When we assessed our own technology inventory, we opened an office closet and found a stack of Apple MacBooks collecting dust, complete with shoeboxes of chargers. They had all been in service for years, but they all still worked just fine. The technology needed to do the type of work we do on the Salesforce platform was just a little bit outdated. We quickly reached out to our new friends at Inspiredu to inquire about a donation. 

The process was simple. We told them what we had, 11 Apple MacBook Pros (which eventually became 15). They emphatically told us they would take them. We could either schedule a pickup or bring them to their Atlanta office, where they would wipe all sensitive information and prepare them to be distributed to students in need. We dropped them off that same week, smiled for a fun picture, and made a small ripple of change in our local community. 

Inspiredu made it incredibly easy to give our computers a second life in a meaningful way. Those old MacBooks are now in the hands of high school students in Atlanta, who are completing homework assignments, Googling their curiosities, and getting the technological leg up so many of us take for granted. 

If you have old technology, at home or at work, think about donating it to an organization like Inspiredu that is making a difference in the lives of students in their community and inspiring all of us to do our part. 

Ad Victoriam is a Salesforce® and MuleSoft® Partner who provides multi-cloud consulting services, from strategy to implementation. Our nimble team of certified professionals across the United States accelerates businesses by simplifying complex problems through cloud and data expertise. As a Certified B Corp – and a founding member of B Local Georgia – we balance purpose with profits and have made a strong commitment to the community. If you have any questions, please contact us here.

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When we first embarked on our B Corp certification journey back in January of 2016, Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic) was less than two-years-old, employed eight employees and was still operating out of a combination of shared workspaces and our founder’s basement. Fast forward to February of 2022 and we’re now over 150 employees strong located in 18 states across six time zones, and we’ve re-certified as a B Corp in 2021 and continue to scale both fast and responsibly. 

Of all the things we did as we pursued our certification, one of the most valuable was to commit to publishing an annual Impact Report. This annual exercise holds us accountable to ourselves and the commitments we’ve made. It keeps us honest throughout the year and requires a laser focus on the non-monetary business metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) we value. 

In this version of the Impact Report, covering the fiscal year 2021, we share our performance against the 2021 goals we set for ourselves 12 months ago, including our community impact in terms of money, time, and product. There is also an overview of how we did with regards to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both in terms of our own hiring and in supporting upstream solutions that are working towards long-term solutions for increased representation of both women and people of color in the tech industry. 

As a B Corp, we understand fully well that we, like all businesses, are on a journey to becoming better versions of ourselves every single day. But we also believe that reflecting on goals, commitments, and progress is a valuable exercise that affirms we are doing business the right way and positively impacting our team members, communities, and the environment. 

We hope you will take a few minutes to look through our 2021 Impact Report (click the image below) and will join us in celebrating our accomplishments, acknowledging where there is still work to be done, and committing to continuing the journey to being a company that uses business as a force for good. And if you have any questions about AdVic, B Corps, or the 2021 Impact Report, reach us here.

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AdVic and Goodwill of North Georgia recently partnered to provide a unique training program for residents of Athens-Clarke County, GA. The 12-week program taught participants the basics of Salesforce® and prepared them for a career in the growing technology industry.

The first cohort of students consisted of 10 participants with varying professional backgrounds who are looking to pivot from a job to a career, as well as significantly increase their earning potential. Salesforce is the global leader in CRM (customer relationship management) software, controlling around 20% of the market share, with some figures estimating that over 90% of Fortune 500 companies currently use the software. As such, the ecosystem is a rich source of high-paying jobs where demand for skilled workers often outpaces the supply of talent.

Making a Positive Impact

The AdVic Team saw this challenge to work with Goodwill as an opportunity to make a positive impact on multiple fronts. With the right attitude and drive, we know anyone can develop the skills to work on the Salesforce platform in high-paying jobs. And it’s a fact that these days employers are caring more about the ability to configure and build than they care about traditional employment requirements, like years of experience or formal education.

And that thinking aligned perfectly with Goodwill’s mission to put people to work.

“Programs like this one, and partners like AdVic, provide job seekers with the training they need to transition out of simply ‘a job and a paycheck’ and into a career,” remarks Alicia Battle, Goodwill’s Director of Workforce Development. “At Goodwill, we consistently study workforce trends and data to ensure our programs are meeting the demands of the job market and preparing our job seekers for high-growth industries. We understand the value of technological skills for the workforce of today and for the future. We look forward to helping this cohort of students begin to build a successful career.”

Just Getting Started

While the scale of this initial program is small, there are ambitious plans to increase the class-size and offer it throughout the year, meaning more and more high-paying jobs being created for area residents. “Innovative public-private skills training partnerships like this develop Athens’ home-grown technology talent base and increase community members’ access to jobs offering higher wages and benefits,” said Ilka McConnell, Director of Economic Development for Athens-Clarke County, “which also helps us as a community to attract and retain technology companies here in the Classic City.”

This program is a creative solution to multiple problems, and demonstrates the combined powers of collaboration and action. Together AdVic and Goodwill are helping local residents launch a career in technology, filling a supply void in the industry and giving back to the community. Together, we have the power to effect positive change.

Ad Victoriam is a Salesforce and MuleSoft® Partner who provides multi-cloud consulting services, from strategy to implementation. Our nimble team of certified professionals across the United States accelerates businesses by simplifying complex problems through cloud and data expertise. As a Certified B Corp – and a founding member of B Local Georgia – we balance purpose with profits and have made a strong commitment to the community. If you’re interested in talking about your nonprofit and its tech needs, contact us here.

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The post AdVic and Goodwill Team Up for Salesforce Training appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.