4.12.2023 09:45:00 EET
Gofore has established its own foundation to promote digital change in the society and to support its positive impact and even distribution. The foundation that started operations in November will start its first call for projects on 1 January 2024.
In the spring of 2023, Gofore decided to establish a foundation to increase its impact on promoting ethical digitalisation. The company wants to help society harness digitalisation’s possibilities and potential to the full and without delay. As far as Gofore knows, the foundation is the first one of its kind in Finland.
”We feel that mere corporate responsibility is not enough, and want to do more than what we can with our customer work i.e. our handprint alone. With the foundation, we can support research or development that would perhaps not find financing elsewhere but that may have a big impact”, comments Gofore Impact Foundation’s Chair of the Board of Directors Timur Kärki. Kärki is also one of Gofore’s four founding members and Chair of Gofore’s Board of Directors.
The foundation’s birth was also impacted by so-called stakeholder capitalism, i.e. the thought of the fact that all stakeholders, be it shareholders, employees, customers, supplier, the state and in principle the entire society – do well and consequently get either wealth or value from that.
”Especially employees, and increasingly also the customers’, expectations of corporate responsibility continue to grow. In the everyday digital services, focus is shifted to e.g. accessibility and inclusivity, in the industrial side support is needed in e.g. fighting climate change and the green transition”, Kärki lists.
Purpose of the Gofore Impact Foundation is to support digitalisation’s positive impacts, such as democracy and equality development, and to mitigate the social tension and negative side effects of digitalisation. Those can include e.g. unequally built services, accessibility issues, digital marginalisation, individual safety, social media problems or even democracy challenges. The foundation’s objective is also to impact the diversity of developers of digital services and the overall vitality of the industry.
The foundation can fulfill its purpose by giving out grants and donations or expert work, by practicing research and development and run the projects it finances and participate in the societal digitalisation discussion.
The first call for projects will start on 1 January 2024 and be open until 14 February 2024. In March 2023, the Gofore Annual General Meeting decided to authorise Gofore’s Board of Directors to decide on one or several donations to the foundation for a maximum of 250,000 euros.
Gofore Impact Foundation: impact.gofore.com
Further information:
Timur Kärki
Chair of the Board of Directors, Gofore Plc and the Gofore Impact Foundation sr
t. +358 40 828 5886
timur.karki@gofore.com
Media enquiries:
Anne Sivula
Gofore Plc Communications, PR & Media
t. +358 40 717 4873
anne.sivula@gofore.com