To our readers around the world: Thank you for joining us in goodness

At Microsoft News, our mission is to bring you trusted news from the world’s top providers. With our Microsoft News For Good initiative, we have sought to take that mission a step further by bringing you trusted information and then empowering you to use that knowledge for good. Whether it’s responding to a natural disaster, supporting human rights and equality, helping the environment or making change in your own community, you have taken actions to help others in ways that have had a measurable and tremendous impact.

Microsoft News For Good started in the US and UK markets toward the end of 2017 with a question: If we presented the news with a focus on the solutions to many of the world’s problems, and then gave you an opportunity to be a part of those solutions, would you respond?

The answer was a resounding yes. Examining issues like poverty, loneliness, missing children and environmental degradation, Microsoft News readers engaged to learn more and support the nonprofit groups at the frontlines, with more than $2 million raised in 2018 and 2019. The initiative has now expanded to more than 20 markets around the world.  

Over the past year alone, Microsoft News readers have supported 70 charities and nonprofits, contributing more than $800,000 to the causes featured on MSN.

Here are just a few of the ways you made an impact:

• Readers in the US and Canada contributed to The Red Cross and Team Rubicon to aid Bahamians affected by Hurricane Dorian
• We have supported relief efforts for the Australian bushfires, with an outpouring of donations from readers across multiple continents
• Through our partnerships with The Nature Conservancy, Microsoft Philanthropies and Silvia Terra, donations supported the planting of 50,000 trees in American forests
• 7 European market regions held blood donation drives, with readers signing up to become blood donors and saving lives
• You have volunteered your time and talents to help at food banks, mentor bullied youth, and participate in reforestation projects
• Over the holidays, you sent more than 1,900 care packages to military servicemembers overseas through Operation Gratitude, gifted 213 Christmas trees to struggling families with Christmas Tree Santas, and warmed 1,286 people with a new coat
• You helped break the cycle of poverty in America through donations to Feeding America and other nonprofits supporting under-represented groups, such as PFLAG, American Association of People with Disabilities and Swipe Out Hunger
• We raised funds for grassroots nonprofits in the US through our Local Hero of the Month series, honoring individuals making an impact in their communities

We are proud of our For Good initiative as it extends Microsoft’s culture of corporate responsibility and employee giving. From numerous AI For Good programs that deploy advanced technology to solve problems to support for first responder organizations in humanitarian relief efforts, you can learn more about Microsoft’s commitments to the pillars of trust and responsibility, closing the opportunity gap, and protecting our planet in the 2019 Corporate Social Responsibility Report here.

As we head into a new year and a new decade, we’re busy planning bigger and better ways we can bring our journalism partners, our readers and the power of technology together around a shared mission of universal good. Thank you for being the most important part in making this positive change happen.