Taproot Foundation
Model & Strategy
Taproot Foundation engages the nation’s business professionals in pro bono services to support nonprofit enterprises in achieving urgent social change. Impacting critical issues like the environment, health, and education requires more than vision and passion. To succeed, social enterprises also require access to marketing, design, technology, management, and strategic planning resources. Taproot offers three core programs to increase nonprofits’ effectiveness through access to pro bono professional services.
The Services Grant Program directly matches volunteer experts from an array of fields with projects in need of support. The Advisory Services Program supports organizations to internally develop their own customized, high-impact pro bono outreach programs. The Advocacy Program joins leading foundations, universities, companies, coalitions and associations in collaboration to envision and design broader initiatives and movements built around donated services to effect social change.
Taproot demonstrates that pro bono service can be a reliable, high quality, cost-effective, and scalable resource for nonprofits, enlisting top talent from the marketing, tech, human resources, design and consulting fields to create meaningful impact.
Aaron Hurst is the founder of the Taproot Foundation and is a creative force behind the conception of the national Billion + Change initiative and the Service Enterprise model. He is a featured blogger for the Huffington Post and Stanford Social Innovation Review. Aaron began his career as a social innovator at the University of Michigan, where he designed and led an educational program for local correctional facilities, subsequently becoming the first student to receive the Michigan Campus Compact Award. Upon graduating, he worked in inner-city education in Chicago before landing in Silicon Valley as an early employee at two venture-backed social venture companies. Aaron is a recipient of the Ashoka Foundation fellowship and has also been formally recognized as a leading social innovator by the Aspen Institute, Social Venture Network, Fast Company, Commonwealth Club, the Manhattan Institute, the State of California, and the Alliance for Nonprofit Management.
Lindsay Firestone Gruber became President and CEO in 2018. A widely recognized authority on nonprofit capacity-building, CSR and cross-sector collaboration, Lindsay has dedicated her career to the idea that greater change can be achieved in the world by helping to strengthen the organizations that are tackling some of society’s greatest challenges. Under her leadership, the Taproot Foundation supports organizations by engaging business professionals in pro bono service, ensuring that organizations serving the social good have access to the marketing, HR, IT, strategy and other resources they need to thrive.
IMPACT
Taproot envisions all organizations with promising solutions will be equipped to successfully take on urgent social challenges. Taproot will lead the way in ensuring that mission-driven organizations have access to high impact pro bono where and when they need it.
Since 2001, Taproot has engaged over 7,500 social change organizations, with more than 21,000 skilled volunteers providing 1.7M hours of work worth over $200M in pro bono value.
