Personio Foundation to fund ‘exceptional’ non-profit organisations in fields of climate action and education

Bayern, Germany-based Personio, an HR management and recruiting platform, announced on Monday that it has launched a call for applications for “exceptional” non-profit organisations working in the fields of climate change mitigation and education to join Personio Foundation’s Impact Portfolio.

The portfolio companies will be given unrestricted grants (between €50K and €100K per year) for multi-years, strategic assistance, and free access to Personio HR management software. Additionally, grantees will also have the chance to collaborate with other impact portfolio partners to co-create their HR Accelerator and a shared community.

Personio Foundation’s mission

With its Impact Portfolio and HR Accelerator, Personio Foundation aims to help forward-thinking, creative organisations get engaged in climate action and education. Since its introduction in December, the Foundation claims to have expanded its Impact Portfolio to include assistance for eight NGOs. Its HR Accelerator has started creating material to help NGOs improve their human resources capabilities.

Co-founder of Personio and Chairman of the Foundation, Hanno Renner, says, “Launching the first worldwide call for applications to join our Impact Portfolio is a major milestone for the Foundation. With eight organisations already in the portfolio, we are looking forward to partnering with more non-profits and supporting even greater impact in education and climate change. It has always been our ambition to link Personio’s success with tackling these pressing issues, so taking the Foundation to the next level is really exciting.”

Applicants should meet the following criteria:

• Eligible organisations: organisations that qualify must have legal non-profit status
• Field of action: they must be working in the fields of education or climate change mitigation
• Geographic focus: the Foundation will help organisations globally
• Special focus: organisations offering cutting-edge, scalable solutions to tackle climate change and education will be given special attention

Interested organisations can apply here.

A brief about Personio and the Foundation

Personio was founded in 2015 by Hanno Renner, Roman Schumacher, Arseniy Vershinin, and Ignaz Forstmeier, and later joined by Jonas Rieke. The company offers cloud-based HR management and recruiting solutions, and software for startups and SMEs.

The platform enables its customers to store and manage all employee data and HR processes in one place, including vacation and sick days, approvals, salary, attendance, employee documents, performance, reporting, and employee onboarding. It states that over 7,000 companies with more than 500,000 employees have automated their people processes with Personio.

Currently, Personio has offices in Madrid, London, Dublin, and Amsterdam. In June 2022, Personio raised €190.4M at a valuation of €8B.

Personio Foundation was established in 2021 by Personio. The Foundation is based on a commitment made when Personio was founded to set aside 1 per cent of the company’s equity for good causes. This 1 per cent stake is currently worth $85M and will continue to grow until an IPO.