Castlighters care so deeply about giving back to our communities. For example, our team donated countless hours and nearly $2 million to create and maintain the publicly available Test Site Finder, helping more than 5 million unique individuals find COVID-19 testing. We enabled in-app donations with only a few clicks to No Kid Hungry , which led to our users and customers donating over $30,000 to the nonprofit. Our team volunteers their time, including 150+ hours in 2020 spent mentoring seventh graders to explore careers, build skills, and discover their path to a successful future through Spark’s mentorship program. And over 50 Castlighters donated their time to working on nine projects to bridge inequity gaps in healthcare in our latest hackathon, with the three winners selecting charities of their choice to make a donation.

It comes as no surprise that the team is always looking for ways to give back to our communities and help further serve our mission outside of work. As the season of giving is upon us, we kicked off our first annual Week of Giving.

For our Week of Giving, Castlight committed to donating up to $10,000 in an employee match to Feeding America. Feeding America is a network of over 200 food banks across the country that helps the 1 in 9 Americans who struggle to get enough to eat.

Given the challenges brought forward in 2020, Feeding America is a charity that is serving populations in great need more this year than ever. It is core to our mission to address barriers to health, which includes meeting the basic needs of food and nutrition. This year, up to 50 million of our neighbors in the US are experiencing hunger—up from 35 million in 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In support of our Week of Giving, Castlight’s EVP of Engineering, Vijay Anand, hosted a Giving Tuesday panel discussion with touching stories from Castlighters on their own experiences and perspectives on giving back. The event also welcomed a guest speaker from St. Anthony’s, a nonprofit that works to feed, clothe, heal, and lift the spirits of San Franciscans in need—and is part of the Feeding America network. This discussion highlighted the struggle that so many of our neighbors experience in regards to food insecurity and inspired our teammates to donate to this great cause. Over 75 Castlighters attended this panel discussion, with $3,500 raised within a three hour period during and following the panel discussion.

Week of Giving took place Monday November 30 through Monday December 7. In just the first day, Castlighters donated $5,742. And before the end of the second day, the team had already rallied together to exceed our goal of $10,000! In total, the team raised $14,088 over the course of the week, exceeding our goal by 40%. Together with Castlight’s match of $10,000, that is a total of $24,088 raised towards providing meals to those in need.

Castlight is grateful to have a team that genuinely cares for the health and wellbeing of our communities, and we are proud of the many ways our employees give back. Thank you to our team for reaching our goal in less than two days and raising funds that will be used to feed and nurture the members of our communities.