Case Study: DigitalOcean achieves 43% employee participation in workplace philanthropy with Bright Funds

DigitalOcean and Bright Funds Restructuring Employee Referrals to Drive Engagement in Workplace Philanthropy

DigitalOcean, a high‑growth cloud platform serving over a million developers, wanted to formalize a corporate citizenship program that reinforced its culture of community and amplified its strong employee referral engine. To do this, DigitalOcean partnered with Bright Funds to redesign referral incentives and launch a workplace giving program using Bright Funds’ Personal Referral/Credit Grants functionality to encourage individual philanthropy and higher employee engagement.

Bright Funds built and automated the new referral incentive—when a referred candidate is hired, DigitalOcean pays a $1,500 charitable donation via Bright Funds (plus a $3,500 referral bonus to the employee), with DO matching additional employee donations and entry into a “Golden Ticket” raffle for larger gifts. Bright Funds handled the Credit Grants workflow and reminders, driving a 43% participation rate in the raffle (>4x the industry standard) and stronger philanthropic engagement tied directly to DigitalOcean’s hiring program.

DigitalOcean

Olivia Melman

Recruiting Operations Program Manager