-WP Engine, the WordPress Digital Experience Platform, announced yesterday at its Summit 2019 that it has formalized its corporate social responsibility program, Engine for Good, to advance its global impact and its stewardship for a positive future. In the closing keynote, Chairwoman and CEO Heather Brunner outlined the framework of the program: Open Future (WordPress), Open Doors (Diversity and Inclusion) and Open Hearts (Give Back).
Values In Action
One of WP Engine’s core values is Aspiring to Lead and Committed to Give Back. The company lives that value every day around the globe in a variety of meaningful ways, including local blood and food drives, cleanup campaigns, building homes and building websites for local community organizations. WP Engine was one of the first signatories of the Equal Pay for Equal Work White House pledge and the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge that aims to rally the business community to advance diversity. Every day the company gives back in numerous ways to WordPress by donating millions of dollars and thousands of hours of time and talent devoted to advancing the open source project and its community.
Customer Growth and Giving Back
In January 2019, WP Engine made a commitment to its employees that once it crossed the 100,000 customer milestone there would be a total of $100,000 in donations to causes that matter most to employees. With its acquisition of Flywheel this week, WP Engine now powers digital experiences for more than 120,000 global customers. To codify this Give Back commitment, the employees in each of the company’s seven office locations will give $15,000 to the local causes most meaningful to them. These donations, totaling $105,000, will be distributed among the three pillars of the program: Open Future, Open Doors and Open Hearts.
“The best organizations in the world are driven by the certainty that purpose affects performance. I am thrilled to announce Engine for Good as a way to unify all our global social responsibility initiatives under one roof and supercharge them with donations totaling $105,000 across our seven global offices including our newest one in Omaha, Neb.,” said Heather Brunner, Chairwoman and CEO of WP Engine. “Open Doors, Open Hearts and Open Future represents the three ways we will continue to bring to life and amplify our Aspiring to Lead, Committed to Give Back core value.”
Open Future
Through its pillar, Open Future, WP Engine invests in advancing WordPress and highlights digital experiences that are advancing the impact of the Web. So far this year, WP Engine has invested 20,000 hours and $4 million into the WordPress community; contributing to WordPress core, developing freely available plugins that encourage the use of WordPress; innovating Genesis, the most popular WordPress theme framework; investing in the beloved open source local development environment, Local by Flywheel; publishing Torque, the leading magazine for WordPress news, trends and insights; and sponsoring WordPress community events. WP Engine has also partnered with The Webby Awards for three years on its program, Webby for Good, a collaborative program that showcases Webby-recognized projects that are built to change the world and drive social impact.
Open Doors
WP Engine is committed to providing an inclusive environment where a diverse set of people can come together, be their authentic, whole selves and do the best work of their careers, aligned by the company’s core values. Through its pillar, Open Doors, WP Engine focuses on advancing opportunity for all. In 2016, WP Engine committed to the White House’s Equal Pay Pledge. Currently, 40% of the company’s c-suite are women, 30% of its people do not have a college degree, 29% are of non-white ethnicity, and 8% identify as LGBTIQA+. WP Engine empowers its people to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace by supporting Employee Resource Groups, company-recognized, voluntary, employee-led groups that are aligned with WP Engine’s mission and values. Thus far, WP Engine’s people have created groups such as Sheroes, which inspires women to own their paths to professional and personal success, Represents, which increases awareness of the perspectives and experiences of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups within the tech industry, and Pride, which promotes education, acceptance, and representation as it relates to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Open Hearts
With seven offices around the world, WP Engine aspires to serve as a business leader in its local communities as well. Through its Open Hearts pillar, the company encourages its people to give their time, talents and resources to improve the communities where they live and work, primarily focusing on the areas of health, hunger, and education. Since 2014, WP Engine employees have volunteered more than 6,400 hours and raised $320,000 for organizations in their local communities. In 2019 alone, WP Engine employees have volunteered 813 hours and $101,000, across 21 community events globally including Bike MS, Central Texas Food Bank, Dam That Cancer, Help for Heroes, Movember, The Daniel Morecombe Foundation, The Pieta House, The Thinkery and many others.
Workplace of Choice Growth and Talent
Bringing to life the vision for Engine for Good would not be possible without WP Engine’s passionate and talented people. WP Engine aspires to be a Workplace of Choice known for fostering a flexible, empowering, and inclusive environment for all. As the WordPress Digital Experience Platform, WP Engine will also showcase what’s possible when developing experiences on WordPress and WP Engine through the experiences it builds for its own audiences. Thus, WP Engine has launched a new talent recruitment website to help attract the best talent in the world to its mission of helping customers win online and its vision of becoming the most relied upon WordPress Digital Experience Platform by brands, agencies and partners the world over.
About WP Engine
WP Engine is the WordPress Digital Experience Platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence, and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP Engine’s combination of tech innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 120,000 companies across 150 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands create world-class digital experiences. Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has offices in Brisbane, Australia; Limerick, Ireland; London, England; Omaha, Nebraska; San Antonio, Texas and San Francisco, California.