Over the past two years, technology has served as a safety net for small business owners, helping them find new customers and keep their doors open. In a 2021 survey, 78% of small businesses said that digital tool adoption during the pandemic created more opportunities for their businesses, and more than 80% of Black- and Latino-owned small businesses reported that they use digital tools as a key part of their operations. To help our economy recover, we’ve provided capital, training, and resources to small businesses.

• To help underserved small businesses gain access to critical capital, we committed $185 million to Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) to establish the Grow with Google Small Business Fund and OFN’s Grant Program funded by Google.org. The fund delivered low-interest loans to over 50 Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), who in turn provided loans to tens of thousands of underserved small businesses, including $50 million to support Black-owned businesses.

• We’ve helped more than 8 million Americans grow their skills, careers, and businesses through Grow with Google digital skills trainings. A network of 8,000 partner organizations — including America’s SBDC, SCORE, and the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) — helps to extend the reach to underrepresented small business owners.

• The Grow with Google Digital Coaches program provides hands-on coaching and digital skills workshops to Black and Latino small business owners in English and Spanish. These local experts have trained 100,000+ small business owners across the U.S., thanks to support from partner organizations.

• We’re working with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to train 10,000 Latino small business owners on how to use digital tools to adapt and thrive via Grow with Google digital resource centers.

• In partnership with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and Grow with Google, the Indian Country Digital Trainers program provides support for businesses in tribal nations and communities.

• For National Veterans Small Business Week, we offered a livestream workshop to help Veteran business owners grow a loyal customer base and a Grow with Google OnAir workshop to help businesses build an online presence. To further support Veteran-led businesses, Grow with Google curated Primer app lessons covering topics from digital marketing to website building. And we teamed up with Hiring Our Heroes to add additional Primer mini-courses on establishing an authentic brand and maintaining work-life balance.

If startups succeed, communities and economies succeed. Google for Startups is working to connect startup founders with people, products, and best practices to help their businesses thrive and grow. Here are a few of the programs aimed at supporting founders from underrepresented groups:

• Programs like Black Founders Exchange, hosted by American Underground and Google for Startups, and Google for Startups Founders Academy, are helping to build systems of mentorship and networking for underrepresented founders.

• Google for Startups Accelerators, like Black Founders and Women Founders, provide access to Google’s people, networks, and advanced technology to help founders solve technical challenges specific to their businesses.

• The Google for Startups Black Founders Fund and Latino Founders Fund provide selected U.S. founders with up to $100,000 in non-dilutive capital along with Google Cloud credits, Google.org Ad Grants, and hands-on support to help their startup grow. The first $10 million in awards to Black founders, and community support facilitated by Goodie Nation, has already created a halo effect, helping founders to raise over $75 million in venture capital since 2020.

• To support the military-affiliated community, Google for Startups teamed up with organizations including Bunker Labs to scale their impact to new cities across the U.S. and offer one-on-one mentorship from Google advisors to Veterans looking to start their own business.

It’s estimated that half of the U.S. workforce will need to reskill by 2025, and workers of color are disproportionately impacted by the skills gap. We’re working to help people advance their careers by making digital skills accessible to everyone. To date, we have helped nearly 170,000 Americans get a new job and increase their income through digital skills training.

• Google’s Applied Digital Skills program provides lessons on how to create a resume, how to communicate effectively at work, and more.

• Google Career Certificates are flexible online courses, available in English and subtitled in Spanish, designed to prepare students for entry-level jobs in high-growth fields like IT Support, data analytics, and UX design. Our recent $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund aims to enable Google.org grantee, Social Finance to reach more than 20,000 American workers. This investment in America’s future has the potential to drive $1 billion in wage gains.

• Grow with Google Career Readiness programs help students develop skills to secure internships and jobs that will help them build successful careers. We partner with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and Partnership with Native Americans (PWNA), to bring digital skills and workforce training to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Native-Serving Organizations (NSOs). Together, we’ll train more than 250,000 students by 2025.

• We work with a network of external organizations to deliver our job seeker trainings to communities of color. For example, in partnership with Dress for Success, The Links, Inc., and sororities in the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Grow with Google created Black Women Lead, an initiative to train 100,000 Black women in digital skills by 2022. We’ve also partnered with the Hispanic Federation and the Latino Community Foundation, and have helped 10,000 individuals upskill through digital skills and job readiness trainings so far.

• We’re working to support Veterans, service members, and military spouses and partners in transition to the civilian workforce. We also added minicourses on the Primer app specifically for military spouses and partners on topics including transitioning to remote work, working from home, and starting and growing an online business. Through our Grow with Google Partner Program we work with over 1,000 military and Veteran-serving organizations across the U.S. who propel our workshops and have trained nearly 20,000 people in the military-affiliated community so far.

Students from marginalized groups face major barriers to computer science education, including lack of exposure and lack of opportunity. To expand computer science (CS) education and help all students develop future skills, we partner directly with innovative organizations and support nonprofits through Google.org funding. Since 2013, we’ve given over $80 million to support innovative nonprofits around the world.

Code Next is a computer science education program that meets Black, Latinx, and Native high school students in their own communities with help from local nonprofits, research organizations, and schools. The program provides the skills and inspiration students need for successful careers in computer science–related fields. Of the recent 12th grade graduates, 91.5% of them were accepted to and are attending college or higher education programs. Of those graduates, 88.4% are majoring in a STEM field in college, with 58.1% specifically naming computer science or information systems as their major.

The Code with Google program, CS First, is an introductory computer science curriculum designed for students in 4th to 8th grade that has helped over 60,000 teachers reach more than 2 million students in 100+ countries. CS First curriculum makes computer science learning effective and fun while leveling the computer science playing field.

Students watch easy-to-follow instructional videos related to their interests that introduce core CS concepts. Using a problem-solving approach, students create coding projects that align to various subject areas like sports, art, and game design, and showcase their creativity.

The Google News Initiative (GNI) is deeply committed to supporting quality journalism from trusted sources and voices that reflect the diversity of the world we live in. Here are a few ways the GNI is working to make the news industry more diverse, innovative, and inclusive:

Supporting research to better understand challenges in the industry:

• GNI provides funding for research projects that help shed light on representation in the industry like a study from Media Diversity Australia, which revealed that over 76% of journalists on Australian screens were found to have an Anglo-Celtic background.

Developing tools and programs to help make journalism more inclusive:

• In 2021, GNI helped VideoOut to create the LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program, a tool that equips journalists with the knowledge to use LGBTQ+ vocabulary respectfully and accurately.

• The GNI Ad Transformation Lab is a program designed to support publishers serving underrepresented communities in their transition to digital. The program aims to help bridge the technology gap and improve advertising revenue for participating publications.

• The Women in News Leadership Programme provides a forum to learn, connect, and grow for women leaders in news organizations across Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Providing economic support for organizations serving underrepresented communities:

• GNI Global News Equity Fund is a multimillion dollar commitment to provide non-dilutive cash awards up to $250,000 to news organizations owned by or serving underrepresented communities around the world.

• The GNI supports innovative organizations like Capital B, a Black-led, nonprofit local and national news organization that aims to combat misinformation and fill the basic information needs of Black residents in areas where they are underserved.

In 2020, we launched the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund, a global multi year commitment dedicated to spotlighting and growing Black creators and music on our platform, by giving them access to resources to help them thrive on YouTube. In our first two years, we welcomed 320 grantees hailing from the U.S, Kenya, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, and Nigeria.

After an inclusivity audit of our own marketing revealed many areas to improve, we partnered with external inclusion experts to build a set of resources and principles to help us tell stories more equitably. To help accelerate progress in the industry at large, we’ve made our All In inclusive marketing toolkit available for everyone to use.

Each year, Google.org grants hundreds of millions of dollars to social enterprises and nonprofits around the globe to help stimulate innovative approaches to solving problems, and provide comprehensive support for underserved communities. For example, the Google.org Impact Challenge supports nonprofits and social enterprises working to make their community — and beyond — a better place. Every challenge invites ideas that tackle a specific problem or support a particular community. The best and boldest ideas are given a strategic package of funding, mentorship, and technical support.

By making our research, open source technology, and products accessible to nonprofits and civic entities, we help fuel their work and problem-solving efforts. Here are some ways we’ve accelerated our partners’ impact through our technology:

• Google’s flood forecasting efforts, in partnership with governments, have improved the granularity and lead time of flood alerts; however, some who lack access to the internet may not receive this timely information. Google.org worked with the Red Cross to build local networks that can get disaster alert information to people who wouldn’t otherwise receive smartphone alerts directly.

• In 2019, a team of Google.org Fellows used machine learning to help UpTogether (formerly known as Family Independence Initiative) make its data more useful in sharing with collaborators and impacting policy. Google.org has supported UpTogether in its mission to help families escape poverty since 2015.

• Since 2017, Google.org has supported Goodwill Industries International with grants and pro bono support to create their Digital Career Accelerator, improve their infrastructure, and analyze data to improve training programs and services for job seekers.

The Google.org Fellowship matches Google employees with nonprofits and civic entities for up to six months on full-time technical projects, with the aim of helping tackle some of the world’s toughest technical challenges. Here are a few ways our Fellows have been helpful in recent years:

Helping to build tools that aid with COVID-19 response efforts, for example:

• Global.health, a data repository designed to model the virus’s trajectory and track its variants
• The National Domestic Workers Alliance benefits tool, to distribute emergency cash funds to essential workers
• Crisis Contact Simulator, a tool that uses AI to simulate conversations with LGBTQ youth in crisis to help train counselors at The Trevor Project

Supporting organizations in the fight for racial justice. Helping to:

• Scale the Center for Policing Equity’s National Justice Database
• Develop the first real-time, publicly accessible local jail data set alongside the Vera Institute of Justice
• Redesign Measures for Justice’s comparative performance data portal, which is being used to inform policies and advance reform