Upwork Announces 40 Recipients of Its $1M “Work Together Talent Grants Program”

Skilled professionals on Upwork's platform will support awarded organizations seeking to counter the impacts of COVID-19

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Upwork (Nasdaq: UPWK), the leading online talent solution, today announced 40 recipients of its Work Together Talent Grants program which received 6,300 applicants in total. Launched in April, the initiative was designed to identify and reward projects with a mission directly tied to mitigating COVID-19’s devastating impact on individuals, communities, and economies everywhere. Notably, 60% of the recipients are owned or led by members of underrepresented groups or are diversity-focused organizations and 17.5% of the grantees are U.S. Black owned, led, or focused organizations.

With a network of independent professionals located in more than 180 countries offering expertise across more than 80 categories of work, Upwork’s initiative provides grantees working on coronavirus-related projects up to $25,000 in talent credits. These credits will be used to hire talent via the Upwork platform for a total of one million dollars in funding.

“It was critical for us to find a way to apply our resources to help support businesses and independent professionals during this crisis, while also supporting our mission of creating economic opportunities so people have better lives,” said Upwork President and CEO Hayden Brown. “We understand the impacts of the pandemic are much broader than just the health transmission of the virus and have carefully selected projects that target a variety of important issues, from aiding marginalized communities and reimagining education to using technology to address mental health. We are proud to support these important initiatives and cannot wait to see their transformative results.”

Among the 40 Talent Grants recipients, select projects include:

• Connecting the world to Black culture: Blavity is a media tech company home to the largest network of brands specifically serving Black millennials. Their Work Together Talent Grant will be used to help Black small business owners secure funding and craft strategies to better navigate the unique difficulties of the pandemic.
• COVID-19 resource hub for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers: USAHello is on a mission to build a resource hub which delivers trustworthy information and educational programming for those in need. Since the start of the outbreak, over 300,000 immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and receiving members have accessed USAHello’s free, multilingual online platform.
• Leveraging AR/VR technology to spread pandemic awareness: disruptED is an education tech company that creates AR/VR learning tools for Pre-K to 3rd graders. They are using their Work Together Talent Grant to support the creation of a free AR/VR book that teaches children how to stay safe and healthy amid the pandemic in a way that is immersive, interactive, and easy to understand.

About Upwork

Upwork is the leading online talent solution transforming traditional staffing. We empower businesses with more flexible access to quality talent, on demand. Through Upwork’s matching technology and services, companies have access to a global pool of proven professionals so they can scale their teams dynamically to meet business needs. Upwork also provides skilled professionals access to more opportunities.

Upwork’s mission is to create economic opportunities so people have better lives. The community of independent professionals working via Upwork spans many categories including software development, creative & design, finance & accounting, consulting, operations and customer support—over 8,000 skills are represented.

More than thirty percent of the Fortune 500 use Upwork. Clients include Airbnb, Automattic, BISSELL, GE, and Microsoft.

Upwork is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., with an office in Chicago as well as team members in more than 800 cities worldwide. For more information, visit Upwork’s website at www.upwork.com and join us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.