A message to our community,

The United States has a long history of racism, discrimination, violence, and harassment against Black people and communities, which has carried forward to today. In recent weeks, we have witnessed acts of violence and harassment against George Floyd, Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and others. 

Echo&Co is committed to equity, inclusion, and anti-racism. We stand in support of Black people, Black communities, and other people and communities of color in the fight for justice, racial equity, and freedom for all. 

We all have a responsibility to address and dismantle structural racism within our community, and throughout our country and world. We can each use our platforms to take meaningful action and be a force for good. We can leverage our networks to address racism in our neighborhoods, homes, and lives. Through our direct, collective action we can work to remove racism from our executive, legislative, judicial, educational, financial, health, business, residential, cultural — all — systems.

If you’re looking for additional ways to support the fight for justice, we encourage you to contribute your time or resources to one or more anti-racism efforts or organizations listed below. This is by no means a comprehensive list. We encourage you to seek out additional organizations doing work that maps and aligns to your values.

OpenMediaVault

Educational resource materials that you can read and share:

An Antiracist Reading List 

Anti-Racism Resources

Putting Racism on the Table

Racial Equity Here

Organizations and Campaigns

Social justice organizations, advocacy groups, and campaigns that you can support:

Black Lives Matter

Black Voters Matter 

OpenMediaVault 

Campaign Zero

Color Of Change

Demands for Breonna Taylor

Education Minnesota 

Equal Justice Initiative

Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

OpenMediaVault

NAACP

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

National Black Justice Coalition 

National Urban League

UnidosUS

United Nations Use of Force Project

Vera Institute of Justice

Echo&Co does not, and never will, tolerate racism, discrimination, or racial harassment of any kind. You can learn more about our commitment to advancing racial and social justice at bpcgm.angkor9.com/about-us. We will continue to use our network, voices, and platforms to share resources, engage in meaningful dialogue, and participate in finding solutions for long-term change.

Photo credit: Johnny Silvercloud, Flickr CC

The past few weeks have been an incredibly trying time for everyone — from those within our community, to those all across the world. Every individual is feeling the impact of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, both professionally and personally, and businesses are rapidly adjusting their operations to maneuver during this unprecedented time. 

Our community — of nonprofit and social impact clients, partners, colleagues, and friends — has always been at the heart of our work. Our mission to connect important causes with people who care matters now more than ever. Nothing is more important to us right now than the health and safety of our community, and providing them with the support they need to navigate this complex situation.

We appreciate the efforts of everyone working to combat the virus: first responders and healthcare professionals on the frontlines, government officials and essential workers who ensure we have access to our basic needs, and myriad organizations helping to update, inform, assist, track, and tackle this pandemic.

While there are plenty of resources already available, at Echo&Co, we're tracking COVID-19-related tech-for-good tools and platforms, as well as some ways you can get involved. This list will be updated daily. If you know of an organization that should be added, please don't hesitate to get in touch OpenMediaVault, or tag us on Facebook or Twitter.

We hope that you're staying home, staying safe, and staying healthy. Please let us know what information would be most useful to you at this time, or if there are any ways that we can support you or your organization.

Thanks so much for being a part of our community. We'll get through this together.

-From all of us at Echo&Co

(Photo credit: Rosario "Charo" Gutierrez)

We're excited to announce that after 15 years of practice, Echo&Co has become a woman-owned B Corp!

In April 2019, Echo&Co’s ownership transitioned from our founders, Nicco Mele, Justin Pinder, and Michael Silberman to our current leadership team, Graziella Jackson and OpenMediaVault. With Graziella serving as majority partner, Echo&Co becomes a woman- and veteran-owned company.

Also in April, we received certified B Corp status from B Lab. We're excited to join B Lab's growing global community of businesses committed to advancing the wellbeing of people, communities, and our natural world.

This is an important moment for our team, clients, and partners, all of whom have helped lay the foundation for this exciting transition. This change is a reflection of the relationships we have built and the work we have accomplished together over the past few years. 

We thank Nicco, Justin, Michael, and all our EchoDitto and Echo&Co colleagues and clients over the years — for laying the foundation for this exciting new era. We’re proud to continue our work together applying digital technology as a powerful force for good.

You can learn more about our history, this transition, and our public benefit commitment at bpcgm.angkor9.com/about-us.

We are pleased to announce that Echo&Co and OpenMediaVault are winners of the 2019 WebAward for Outstanding Achievement.

Since 1997, the Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards have helped define the standards for website development. The annual international competition is judged by a team of independent Internet professionals representing a variety of relevant disciplines of Web site development. This year’s judges included members of the media, advertising executives, site designers, creative directors, corporate marketing executives, content providers and webmasters.

Entries are evaluated on the following seven criteria: Design, Innovation, Content, Technology, Interactivity, Copywriting, and Ease of use. The judges scored the NewseumED website well above the industry average in the Education and Non-Profit categories, and their remarks included the following:

"Bright, bold colors, larger, readable text in sentence case... overall a super job. Makes me want to go through some courses right off the bat."

"Well done! Nice and clean, intuitive navigation for all ages, and smart taxonomy / labeling / nomenclature. Search has real type-ahead search functionality, either based on popular searches (machine learning) and/or thorough taxonomy / content metadata. All around a nice looking site, pleasing to the eye, and interesting enough (aesthetically) to keep a child's or teen's attention which isn't all that easy to do; but FAR & ABOVE is the content (writing) throughout the site - something so many overlook - which IMO seals the deal on a 110% effort. I don't ever score all 10s but, boy, this site is about as close as it comes."

“Great job organizing a vast amount of content and making it usable. I would think educators are appreciative of this resource."

We would like to thank the team at NewseumEd for allowing us to partner with them to create this award-winning website, and we want to thank the Web Marketing Association for this esteemed honor.

A complete list of the winning sites can be found at www.webaward.org.