Our social responsibility: Announcing Turnitin's philanthropic partners

At Turnitin, our mission is to ensure the integrity of global education and meaningfully improve learning outcomes. This commitment to integrity includes our own corporate social responsibility efforts.

We are guided by a deeper sense of purpose: by advancing education, we advance humanity. This sense of purpose drives us to focus our efforts on improving and reducing educational gaps throughout the world. We know that this is the unique role that our company can play in benefitting society.

What is the definition of social responsibility at Turnitin?

Leveling the playing field across educational systems requires action on our part, action that goes beyond our product and service offerings to support those who may experience barriers to traditional educational structures.

We know that Turnitin is in a position to donate our people power, resources, and expertise from the countries in which we have a presence. We know how important it is for companies to invest in the communities where we live, work, and do business to uphold honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage; these also happen to be core values of academic integrity.

Just as academic integrity must be modeled, so too does social responsibility.

We take academic integrity seriously. And we are incorporating academic integrity’s core values as we enact our social responsibility efforts. We believe that by leveraging these values, we can enact much needed social change. As an educational technology company, we seek to actively increase access and equity in education systems.

We promote volunteerism for our team members. Every Turnitin team member is offered two days of service-centered paid time off per year, as part of their total rewards package. We’ve encouraged the founding of a number of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that create safe spaces for historically marginalized cultures within our employee base. We are happy to report that our ERGs are thriving, and exploring how they can partner with aligned non-profit organizations advancing their efforts in our communities. Turnitin also matches all team members’ donations to support the valuable work of non-profit organizations working across any number of causes.

But there is much more work to be done.

What is Turnitin doing to better the world through social responsibility?

We are taking steps to improve the educational landscape throughout the world with our social impact strategy called “ACTivate.”

Social Impact is our signature Turnitin approach to corporate social responsibility or environmental, social, and governance. It’s how we strategically impact the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. As an educational technology company, our Social Impact focus is on serving underrepresented communities of educators and students in both the K-12 and higher education sectors.

In 2022, we formalized our Social Impact work under a new strategy: ACTivate. Mobilizing under a higher purpose to serve vulnerable educational communities across the world brings deeper meaning to our work and “activates” our goal of advancing humanity.

Who are Turnitin’s philanthropic partners?

In 2022, we funded eight non-profit partnerships with education-focused organizations around the globe:

• NPO Kidsdoor—Founded in 2007, NPO Kidsdoor is a Japanese non-profit that supports elementary and secondary school children in realizing their full potential. The organization offers free educational programming; drop in centers; and hands-on career workshops.
• UDAI—Founded in 2013, UDAI Working Together Works is an Indian non-profit that supports young people with Special Needs. This is an organization that believes being different should be celebrated. UDAI offers students vocational, therapeutic and educational services to address their needs.
• Indigenous Literacy Foundation—Formerly the Indigenous Literacy Project that was founded in 2007, it became the Indigenous Literacy Foundation in 2011. ILF is an Australian Community-led non-profit that supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The organization provides culturally relevant literature, resources and programs in local languages to improve literacy outcomes in remote parts of the country.
• Daughters for Life— The Daughters for Life Foundation is a Canadian non-profit supporting the empowerment of girls and women in the Middle East through access to higher education. Through the provisioning of scholarships and awards programs, they invest in the female leaders of the future encouraging them to spark change.
• The Children’s Foundation—Founded in 1990, The Children’s Foundation is a British non-profit serving children in Newcastle upon Tyne. Their focus is on supporting the wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people in the North East of England.
• Reading is Fundamental Pittsburgh—Reading is Fundamental is a US non-profit addressing the critical needs of children from underserved communities in the Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania region. They offer reading materials and learning environments that instill a lifelong love of learning in students.
• Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star—Big Brothers, Big Sisters Lone Star is a US non-profit, and the premier volunteer-led youth mentoring organization in Dallas, Texas. BBBS believes that mentoring supports children in realizing their potential, thereby strengthening communities.
• and Enseña por México—Enseña por México is a Mexican non-profit that is part of the Teach for All global coalition. The organization works to reduce educational inequality for young people in Mexico by supporting all actors in the learning ecosystem via alliances with communities and civil society.

How did we select our philanthropic partners?

We consciously made sure our selection process was employee-driven and region-specific, because we believe our global team members know their own communities best.

The company prioritized hearing directly from our local teams, inviting nominations from our regional teams. The regional representatives then identified non-profit organizations that aligned with our focus of empowering underserved educator and student communities.

How does Turnitin partner with non-profit organizations?

We strive for true partnerships with our selected non-profit partners.

We see these as opportunities for collaboration with our local communities beyond a financial transaction.

These opportunities run the gamut, from inviting these organizations and their leadership teams into our offices and Zoom meetings to hear about their work, to participating in volunteering efforts, or to delivering fundraising drives. The goal is to sustain our relationships with our non-profit partners and bolster them with all the resources Turnitin can muster.

We’ve encouraged our team members to get involved with the meaningful work of our partners, so that they can experience firsthand the transformative power of education.

Stories from Turnitin’s non-profit partners

We strive to amplify the impact of our non-profit partners by highlighting their voices.

We’d like to share a few of these impact stories with you.

Enseña por México:

“Turnitin joins the Enseña por México movement to end educational inequality in the country! Through a donation and as allies of the organization, Turnitin will be supporting four schools in CDMX and Nuevo León, promoting the education of more than 600 high school students through the collaboration of PEM [Professionals in Mexico] that accompany them academically and socio-emotionally. Together we can make a lasting impact for all girls, boys and youth in Mexico!

With this donation Turnitin contributes to reduce the educational gap and influence the improvement and educational continuity to provide greater life opportunities to boys, girls, and young people in Mexico, through the construction of solid foundations in their development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills, through the strengthening of a movement Teaching Professionals in Mexico (PEM), educational organizations and communities that contribute to the improvement of educational quality through co-created solutions.” – Juan Manual González Barajas, General Director

Daughters for Life:

“We are honoured to be the recipients of such a generous donation and would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for this contribution. The support and acknowledgment of organizations are crucial components of DFL’s progress. Through the value of this donation, we are able to fund our scholarship and awards program continuously.” – Jacklin Ibrahim, Executive Director

Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star:

“We were honored to partner with Turnitin during National Mentoring Month to benefit our local mentoring programs. Thank you, Turnitin for being a Defender of Potential!”

Indigenous Literacy Foundation:

“I wanted to thank you at Turnitin for your generous support for the work we’re doing this year. Your donation will help us get resources, literary resources, books, and play equipment into remote communities in and around Indigenous populations so that they too have the opportunities to develop their literacy journeys. We do not take any government funding so donations are so critical to allow us to do our work. So thank you very very much.” – Ben Bowen, CEO