Over the past year, we’ve seen our fair share of changes here at SurveyMonkey. We returned to our original name, transitioned to a private company, and welcomed new leadership, to name just a few. Yet, despite the dynamic nature of the last twelve months, one thing was clear: diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and social impact have remained baked into our culture and a fundamental part of what we do.
I am proud to celebrate the launch of our 2023 Social Impact Report, “Powering Curiosity to Shape a Better World.” It highlights our impact in the past year by asking the right questions, listening to our communities, taking action based on what we learn—and keeping at it to spark meaningful change.
The first question being...
How do we create a social impact strategy that sparks meaningful and lasting change?
The SurveyMonkey Together team uses an insights-driven, values-centered, and business-aligned strategy for social impact and DEI. At its heart is our belief that together we can drive real progress for equity, sustainability, and social justice to build a better future for everyone.
In 2023, we focused on bringing equity and inclusion further into our business and employee experience, leveraging our assets to advance both equity and sustainability, and sharing our social impact and DEI insights with the world.
- By 2024, achieve gender parity for women and men in our workplace, while also including space for representation from the gender non-conforming and non-binary community.
- By 2030, achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across our operations and supply chain.
And we kept asking ourselves the questions that took our work to new heights.
What actions can we take to motivate ourselves and encourage others to build a more sustainable and equitable world?
We’re enormously proud of our legacy of corporate philanthropy through donation and volunteer programs, partnerships, and strategic giving initiatives that have a proven record of positive impact. These continued uninterrupted through the company changes of the last year.
Our SurveyMonkey Contribute program, for example, embeds social impact directly into our product, allowing people to raise money for nonprofits by completing simple surveys online. Since 2011, the program has raised nearly $17M for causes such as social justice, animal welfare, and education. Nearly a half million surveys were completed in 2023 alone.
Our employees are a major driver of our community support. Through initiatives like Team Gives Back and our annual Week of Service, SurveyMonkey employees volunteered 3,354 hours in 2023, with a full 25% of our global workforce making time to serve. We also launched our skills-based volunteering program with Taproot Foundation, where 41 employees donated 67 hours of their time and corporate expertise to nonprofits on the platform.
How can we create engaging, inclusive, and inspiring employee experiences?
This question is an important one for us, as our DEI initiatives have become a large part of life at SurveyMonkey. Our approach centers on two key groups: employee resource groups (ERGs), which are organized around a shared identity or common goal, and Diversity, Inclusion, and Impact Groups (DIIGs), which operate locally at our various offices.
These groups, along with additional research and surveys, help inform our continued commitment to creating a world-class employee experience and tech’s most inclusive workplace. We continued investing heavily in leadership and management development, embedding equity and inclusion into our learning strategy, elevating our employee value proposition, and continuing our coaching and mentoring schemes.
For example, Learning and Talent Development for LEAD, our new leadership program, launched in 2023. Our annual Curiosity Week encouraged all employees to invest in their learning, and included 24 sessions from 14 instructors, reaching 570 participants.
Women now represent 47% of our workforce, moving closer to our 2024 goal for gender parity. Through our DEI learning strategy, we cultivated DEI ambassadors, prioritized diverse leadership development, and integrated DEI into quarterly reviews, performance management, and succession planning.
What answers do curious people need to drive positive impact in their business, lives, and communities?
For more than twenty years, our survey platform has been a force for positive change across industries, audiences, and communities and 2023 was no different:
- McDonald’s restaurants in Pittsburgh used SurveyMonkey to power their fourth annual Outstanding Educators Awards.
- The L.A. Times used our products to gauge support for striking actors and writers in Hollywood.
We continue to expand the breadth of our survey templates that help companies drive positive impact, from equity and inclusion to employee volunteering, taking a stance on social issues, and more.
What will it take to build a net zero business?
Addressing climate change is the responsibility of every company, and it’s one we feel very passionately about.
In 2023, through research, benchmarking, and establishing internal baselines, we developed our roadmap to achieve net zero GHG emissions across our operations and supply chain by 2030. To help us achieve this, we continued to operate 100% of our data processing and storage via the cloud.
We’re also proud that three of our key offices have earned LEED certifications, including LEED Gold in Portland and San Mateo, and LEED Silver in Ottawa.
What’s next?
If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that our commitment to the long-term impacts of DEI and social impact are strong enough to withstand the ebbs and flows of the day-to-day. It brings to mind the quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
We’ve seen time and again that no matter what challenges we encounter, our people remember what’s important: helping our customers, serving our communities, caring for our colleagues, and protecting our planet. With a mindset like that on our side, there’s no telling what kind of progress we can make together.
