Twilio.org Impact Fund Makes Impact Investment in Edovo and Awards Grants to 3 Nonprofits

Twilio Inc (NYSE: TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform for developers, today announced that the Twilio.org Impact Fund has made an impact investment in Edovo and awarded its second round of grants to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), MindRight, and Caravan Studios. In 2017, Twilio.org awarded more than $1.5 million in impact funds and plans to award an additional $1.5 million in 2018. To learn more about Twilio’s social impact program or to apply for a grant from the Twilio.org Impact Fund, visit, www.twilio.org.

“Since launching the Twilio.org Impact Fund in 2017, we have had the opportunity to meet many nonprofits and social enterprises who are doing incredible work with the help of communications,” said Erika Balbuena, head of the Twilio.org Impact Fund. “Whether it’s a text message between an inmate and his daughter, a call that reminds a refugee of their citizenship appointment or a conversation between a counselor and a struggling teenager, the right communication at the right time can be life changing. I could not be more excited to welcome Edovo, the IRC, MindRight and Caravan Studios into the Twilio.org Impact Fund family.”

The Twilio.org Impact Fund makes investments in social enterprises who are using innovative communications strategies to carry out their missions and have demonstrated the potential to scale further through technology. Twilio invested in Edovo because of their commitment to decreasing recidivism rates through correctional education and their long term vision of changing the way inmates communicate with their loved ones.

Edovo’s mission is to help everyone connected to incarceration build better lives by providing meaningful access to education, communication, and self-improvement tools. Although education and communication with loved ones are well-documented ways to keep people out of jail and prison, most prisoners don't have regular access to these programs while incarcerated. Edovo provides tablet-based education and re-entry support as well as messaging-based communication for inmates. With this investment from Twilio, Edovo plans to provide lower cost communication options and free education to even more of the incarcerated population, helping to improve the current state of the correctional communications industry.

In addition to the investment in Edovo, Twilio.org also awarded grants to three nonprofits. Recipients of Twilio.org Impact Fund grants include:

International Rescue Committee - The IRC responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. With this grant, the IRC will begin building out a digital and SMS-based system that has the potential to dramatically improve client-caseworker communications and provide the IRC with data to more effectively support newly resettled refugees as they adapt to their lives in the United States.

MindRight - MindRight is a tech nonprofit whose mission is to empower youth of color to heal from trauma by providing personalized, live mental health coaching to teens over text messaging. With this grant, Mindright will produce the next version of their web application that will deliver real-time reports on student’s emotional wellness to community leaders so that they can track the performance of participants.

Caravan Studios - Caravan Studios, a division of Techsoup, is an nonprofit that builds apps that help communities organize, access, and apply local resources to their most pressing problems. With this grant, Caravan Studios will internationalize 4Bells, a mobile app that deploys skilled volunteers to time-sensitive tasks such as delivering supplies after a disaster or providing legal services to refugees.