TechSoup’s mission is to construct a dynamic bridge that leverages know-how to allow connections and modern options for a extra equitable planet. We’re devoted to delivering on this promise as a result of we imagine that constructing the digital capability of civil society organizations (CSOs) at scale can produce tremendously constructive outcomes within the identify of safeguarding democracy, preserving our planet, and serving the tens of millions of people who depend on companies supplied by our sector every day.
More often than not, our focus is on the organizations we serve. Generally, although, we discuss in regards to the unimaginable individuals who make this focus attainable.
Rebecca Masisak, TechSoup CEO from 2012 to 2024, is one in all these individuals. Throughout her 23 years at TechSoup, she has labored tirelessly to make sure that our imaginative and prescient of a greater world turns into a actuality, main the event of a first-of-its-kind market that went from serving roughly 10,000 nonprofits in 2002 to the present 1.4 million organizations worldwide. She introduced this month that she is transitioning to a brand new position as TechSoup’s Government Chair. We’re benefiting from this second to have a good time her, her management, and the impression she has made on the sector.
As an early architect of what would finally develop into the TechSoup Market, Rebecca oversaw the founding of the TechSoup International Community, which expanded TechSoup’s attain internationally and now has 70+ NGO members that serve their native international locations. Amongst her many different achievements, she envisioned and realized the first-ever direct public providing from an NGO and led TechSoup by way of the COVID-19 pandemic — a important time when so many nonprofits wanted to maneuver to the cloud and mobilize on the bottom. She continues to information TechSoup as we navigate our personal shift with the fast-changing tides of know-how innovation in order that we could stay resilient ourselves and may proceed to face alongside and serve the tons of of 1000’s of nonprofits that flip to TechSoup annually.
Rebecca has served the sector, the civil society organizations and leaders we work with, and our personal group by bringing her deep enterprise acumen to form a world community for good. Her work has been acknowledged in lots of varieties, together with a number of invites to talk on behalf of the sector on the World Financial Discussion board at Davos, an article within the New York Occasions, and being 4 occasions acknowledged as one in all The Nonprofit Occasions’ Energy & Affect High 50.
Rebecca talking on the European Financial and Social Committee (EESC)
Listed here are only a handful of Rebecca’s many contributions to world civil society and, after all, to our personal group.
Shaping the TechSoup We Know At this time
Rebecca joined TechSoup in 2001, at a time after we had been nonetheless working as CompuMentor. Via her management, CompuMentor gained the Yale College of Administration Nationwide Enterprise Plan Competitors for Nonprofit Organizations. The marketing strategy was for TechSoup Inventory, which supplied a blueprint for the worldwide TechSoup Market. The platform launched in 2002 with three donors — Microsoft, Lotus Notes, and Internet Gecko — and has grown at this time to incorporate greater than 100 long-standing relationships with main firms, together with Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Dell, Intuit, and lots of others. Below her management in 2005, this program expanded to serve CSOs in Poland, Belgium, the UK, South Africa, and Spain.
The organizing precept behind the TechSoup Market is the “triple win mannequin,” which Rebecca first launched within the Yale marketing strategy competitors. Companies keen to donate their know-how by way of TechSoup had been provided the chance — without charge — to outsource the outreach, vetting, training, and help of their in-kind philanthropy. TechSoup sustained the prices to function this system by way of a small administrative charge to nonprofits. To nonprofits, the proposition was a web-based area created only for them to learn articles, ask questions of consultants, share finest practices, and register their organizations. The organizations may browse a “one-stop buying” expertise for donated and specifically discounted know-how gives and examine their eligibility for these gives. This saved time for nonprofits in having to barter donations and reductions and allowed them entry to merchandise at a fraction of retail prices.
This groundbreaking strategy to company philanthropy and tech capability constructing supplied main companions similar to Microsoft an early and lasting seat on the desk in a world effort to carry NGOs in all places in control technologically in order that they might higher serve their communities.
Forming a True International Community
In 2016, Rebecca led the growth of our market to succeed in 236 international locations and territories around the globe, after working within the intervening years to carry as many associate NGOs (PNGOs) and company donors into the TechSoup International Community fold as attainable. Rebecca was instrumental within the configuration of the worldwide community mannequin, designing its operations to depart a big portion of any cash transacted immediately within the palms of native capacity-building organizations. Thus far, this market has delivered US$2.3 billion price of donated and discounted know-how assets to CSOs throughout the planet. This modern mannequin continues to permit TechSoup to advocate for organizations in all places, work with company donors to extend their giving applications, and deal with domestically led improvement by way of our many PNGOs engaged on the bottom to serve their communities.
Streamlining Worldwide Giving: NGOsource
In 2013, Rebecca was instrumental in launching NGOsource, a challenge based and launched by the Council on Foundations and TechSoup that helps U.S. grantmakers streamline and save of their worldwide giving. Lots of the underpinnings that allowed us to embark on a challenge of this scale had been constructed on the capacities that drove the growth of the TechSoup Market, together with information and validation processes and the TechSoup member repository mannequin. Over the course of its lifetime, NGOsource has served over 7,700 NGOs worldwide and has facilitated greater than US$8 billion in funding to organizations in all places.
Innovating Fundraising Via a Direct Public Providing
As TechSoup labored to repeatedly evolve and spend money on our market of gives, Rebecca envisioned a brand new approach to elevate funding to ship extra impression for the sector. With a daring purpose to lift US$11.5 million in simply three years, Rebecca launched TechSoup’s direct public providing (DPO) in 2018. Notably, the DPO was made obtainable to any particular person who wished to speculate $50 or extra. For each $100 invested, TechSoup was capable of ship $47,000 of further assets to the nonprofit sector. Below Rebecca’s management, the DPO additionally ushered in TechSoup’s 5 Strategic Initiatives, which proceed to information our operations and funding at this time:
- The NGO Expertise Market
- International Validation and Information Companies
- Apps for Good
- Enhancing Processes and Programs
- Creating Our Cooperative Expertise Platform (CTP)
Responding to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented hardship to the trendy world and offered NGOs with a singular pair of challenges: How will we proceed to serve our communities throughout lockdown restrictions whereas quickly transitioning our workforces to a distant working setting? Below Rebecca’s management, TechSoup rose to those challenges internally, but in addition stepped as much as present the NGOs in all places with the digital assets they wanted to ship on their missions beneath extraordinary circumstances. A big a part of our capacity to take action at such scale was as a result of philanthropic provide chain powered by the resilient community of TechSoup International Community companions that Rebecca had labored to determine years beforehand.
Planning for a Altering Future
At this time, TechSoup finds itself at a pivotal second akin to when Rebecca joined our group, and equally as thrilling. As company philanthropy itself is altering, so too are the know-how wants of nonprofits — particularly small, grassroots organizations working with even smaller budgets. In opposition to this backdrop, Rebecca has navigated TechSoup by way of an evolution towards a membership mannequin designed to construct better digital resilience within the civil society sector. This shift in our personal enterprise mannequin additionally builds extra resilience in TechSoup itself, in order that we will proceed to serve our group now and for years to come back.
Rebecca working alongside our consumer companies workforce
Constructing a Bridge to a Extra Equitable Planet
Telling a narrative by way of the language of milestones may be tough enterprise. It is easy to overlook the interlocking parts of character, grit, and compassion that laid the groundwork for the achievements themselves. In her over 20 years of management at TechSoup, Rebecca has embodied all three of those qualities and extra.
At this time, we honor Rebecca and her years of service and are honored that she’s going to stay on our government workforce supporting us as we transfer ahead, deepening our dedication to world civil society. We can be without end grateful for the muse that Rebecca has constructed and for all her work towards making a extra equitable planet for us all.
