Month: January 2025

The Giving Block, a leading nonprofit fundraising platform, faced a growing challenge: how to address concerns about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency donations. In 2023, they launched EcoGift, the first initiative committed to negating the carbon footprint of cryptocurrency donations.

Powered by Climate Vault, EcoGift offsets the carbon footprint of every cryptocurrency donation made on its platform—eliminating barriers for environmentally conscious nonprofits and donors alike. By seamlessly integrating this sustainability feature, The Giving Block not only reinforced its leadership in crypto philanthropy but also set a new standard for responsible innovation in the nonprofit sector.

The Crypto Energy Challenge

As cryptocurrency adoption has grown, so have concerns about its environmental impact. Many nonprofits—especially those focused on sustainability—hesitated to adopt cryptocurrencies as a fundraising tool, citing the energy-intensive nature of certain blockchain networks.

Pat Duffy, Co-Founder of The Giving Block, explained, “There was so much misinformation about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency. Nonprofits were worried, not just about the actual footprint, but about how to explain it to their boards and donors.”

The Giving Block recognized that these perceptions, whether accurate or exaggerated, could deter nonprofits from accessing a significant and growing pool of crypto donors. They needed a solution that would:

Address environmental concerns credibly and transparently.Remove psychological or administrative barriers for nonprofits.Align with their mission to normalize and grow cryptocurrency philanthropy.

The EcoGift Initiative

The Giving Block partnered with Climate Vault to develop and launch EcoGift in late 2023. This innovative program calculates and neutralizes the emissions associated with every cryptocurrency donation made on The Giving Block’s platform, ensuring that nonprofits and donors can give sustainably.

Climate Vault’s compliance carbon market approach guarantees that offsets are real, measurable, and impactful. Additionally, its long-term removal program provides confidence that these reductions contribute to broader climate goals.

Pat praised the partnership: “Out of all the vendors we spoke with, Climate Vault was the only one genuinely interested in solving this problem with us. They helped us create an approach that wasn’t just about checking a box but truly understanding and then mitigating the environmental impact of our crypto donations.”

Implementation

EcoGift was seamlessly integrated into The Giving Block’s platform in three key steps:

Accurate Emissions Measurement: In partnership with Climate Vault, The Giving Block assessed the annual carbon footprint of crypto donation transactions on its platform.Offsetting Through Compliance Markets: Climate Vault purchased emission allowances from regulated carbon compliance markets to neutralize the cumulative annual footprint of the crypto donations, ensuring immediate and verifiable carbon reductions.Future-proofing with Removals: These immediate reductions are ultimately converted into permanent carbon removals by funding innovative technologies that actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This ensures EcoGift has a lasting environmental impact, further strengthening the program’s credibility.

The Giving Block absorbs the cost of offsets to ensure that neither nonprofits or donors face additional financial burdens. “We felt strongly that passing this cost along would undermine the simplicity and appeal of our platform,” said Pat.

Results

Since launching EcoGift, The Giving Block has seen measurable success:

Increased Carbon Neutral Donations: EcoGift has already offset more than 2,400 CO2 emissions from tens of thousands of transactions. They aim to grow this impact even more by the end of 2025.Growing Adoption by Environmentally Minded Nonprofits: More environmentally focused nonprofits are now embracing cryptocurrency as a viable funding method.Enhanced Donor Confidence: Donors are reassured knowing their contributions are environmentally responsible.Positioning as a Sustainability Leader: The Giving Block became the first cryptocurrency fundraising platform to commit to carbon-neutral crypto donations, strengthening its reputation as an innovator.

Pat attributes much of EcoGift’s success to the partnership with Climate Vault. “This wasn’t about us finding a vendor; it was about finding a partner,” he explained. “Climate Vault approached this challenge with curiosity, expertise, and a genuine commitment to impact. They weren’t interested in a one-size-fits-all solution—they wanted to do it right.”

Additionally, EcoGift has opened the door for broader conversations about the sustainability of cryptocurrency as a technology. “EcoGift is showing nonprofits and donors that cryptocurrency can be a net positive for the planet,” Duffy said.

The Giving Block aims to continue expanding the program’s reach, bringing more nonprofits into the crypto philanthropy space and educating the public about the efficiency and sustainability of blockchain technology.

Tapping into different voices, perspectives, and experiences helps businesses solve problems, reveals new opportunities to grow, and encourages contributions that better support people and communities. At Henkel North America, diversity is a path to progress, innovation, and impact. Our employees and partners are united by our purpose: Pioneers at heart for the good of generations. They collaborate to tackle challenges, find solutions and open new perspectives – allowing us to deliver products, services, and innovations that enrich and improve everyday life.

We invite you to “meet” our pioneers in our series, “Pioneers for Good.”

Introducing Carl and Grady

Carl Jordan, Global Quality Key Account Manager, and Grady Rorie, Application Engineering Manager, exemplify Henkel’s commitment to building diverse teams and fostering an inclusive culture to drive Henkel’s success.

As past Co-Presidents and long-time members of the Madison Heights, MI chapter of the Henkel Black Alliance (HBA) Employee Resource Group (ERG), Carl and Grady supported the development of equity and education-focused initiatives to uplift Black voices within Henkel and the community to better connect us all as allies for each other. The positive impact they made has created a ripple that continues to expand today.

Building connection and understanding through stories

History is full of unsung heroes and stories that can serve as inspiration for challenges and circumstances we face today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many needed to feel a sense of connection and hope, Carl and Grady spearheaded a virtual museum tour for their Henkel colleagues with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI. The museum explores and celebrates African American history and culture with an eye toward greater understanding, acceptance, and unity.

Reinforcing the power of storytelling, Carl and Grady also created “Little Known Heroes in Black History,” an initiative highlighting the untold stories of innovations and contributions of Black individuals in American history. It was a team effort to share these stories to uncover the details and moments that connect us and the invisible ripples made throughout history that benefit all.

Creating opportunities and building a diverse pipeline of talent

Understanding the importance of attracting and retaining diverse voices in the workplace, Carl and Grady worked through HBA to help remove barriers to educational resources and opportunities for Black talent.

Together, they nurtured a decade-plus-long relationship with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), which includes extensive fundraising for UNCF’s Walk for Education and an internship program connecting students at HBCUs with Henkel. A key part of the UNCF fundraising organized by the HBA team is an annual Burger Cook-Off when executives and employees showcase their cooking skills. The burgers are paired with various dishes, often inspired by traditional African American cuisine.

Carl and Grady help shape Henkel’s diverse workforce by attending career fairs and supporting opportunities for professional growth. Grady has worked extensively with a rotational program at Henkel designed to attract, develop, and retain high-potential, diverse talent for Henkel Adhesive Technologies.

“I want to serve as a credible reference and raise awareness of career opportunities for other people of color. At a recent college career fair, I met students who were surprised to learn I was a chemist, saying they did not know there were black chemists. It was exciting to open that avenue and show them they can do anything. I hope for the day when color is not a roadblock.”

Grady Rorie, Application Engineering Manager

In line with Carl’s and Grady’s commitment to education and uplifting the next generation, they joined Henkel colleagues in supporting Math Corps, a mathematics enrichment and mentoring program for middle and high school students. The program is run by Wayne State University and Detroit Public Schools and has created a lasting impact for the students, with 90% of the students enrolled attending college.

Inspiring more ripples of impact in the community

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the first official National Day of Service in the U.S., designed to encourage people to volunteer and engage in their communities in honor of Dr. King’s teachings. The idea of being of service to others – to their families, communities and at Henkel – is something Carl and Grady take to heart. Those small actions are part of the ripples they cast into their communities and Dr. King’s birthday is a special opportunity to join the “day on” by celebrating Black culture and giving back to those in need.

“We harness the teachings, activism, and sacrifices of civil rights predecessors like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to expand our impact and create lasting momentum to serve future generations.”

Carl Jordan, Global Quality Key Account Manager

Carl and Grady take steps every day to elevate diverse voices in pursuit of inclusivity, understanding, and growth, setting a strong example for the next generation of leaders to carry on. They proudly handed the role of HBA co-presidents to Malik Johnson and Jada Simpson to make their own ripples of impact.

CLEVELAND, January 22, 2025 /3BL/ – KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment (CDLI) provided a $9.8 million construction loan, a $3.7 million permanent loan and $9.4 million in low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) financing for construction of Jalen Lofts, a new 66-unit workforce and affordable housing community in Trotwood, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. The development represents a significant milestone in the community’s efforts to rejuvenate areas adversely impacted by the 2019 Dayton tornadoes.

Jalen Lofts will provide quality housing for families, with income levels between 30%, 50%, 60%, and 80% of area median income (AMI). The project is a co-developer, co-owner partnership between Pivotal Housing Partners and The Trotwood Community Improvement Corporation (TCIC) and will be located less than 15 minutes from Downtown Dayton, and within proximity to Trotwood’s latest developments, including a new library,courthouse, YMCA, and Goodwill Easter Seals. The development boasts a mix of 1, 2, and 3-bedroom residences, each featuring accessible and universal design features, an energy-efficient design, and an extensive array of contemporary amenities.

The City of Trotwood received a most impacted and distressed (MID) area designation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) because of the tornado damage and was allocated $10.5 million Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to recover from Presidentially declared disasters and to rebuild rental development projects.

The sponsor, Pivotal Housing Partners, is a top ranked Ohio-based multifamily developer and property management company with LIHTC properties operating in 16 states including Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansa, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and most recently, New York.

Derek Reed and David Lacki of KeyBank CDLI structured the financing for the transaction.

About KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment

KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment (CDLI) finances projects that stabilize and revitalize communities across all 50 states. As one of the top affordable housing capital providers in the country, KeyBank’s platform brings together construction, acquisition, bridge-to-re-syndication, and preservation loans, as well as lines of credit, Agency and HUD permanent mortgage executions, and equity investments for low-income housing projects, especially Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) financing. KeyBank has earned 11 consecutive “Outstanding” ratings on the Community Reinvestment Act exam, from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, making it the first U.S. national bank among the 25 largest to do so since the Act’s passage in 1977.

About KeyCorp

KeyCorp’s roots trace back nearly 200 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $190 billion at September 30, 2024. Key provides deposit, lending, cash management, and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of approximately 1,000 branches and approximately 1,200 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank Member FDIC. 

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CONTACT: 
Laura Mimura 
216-471-2883 
Laura_J_Mimura@KeyBank.com

KEY MEDIA

NEWSROOM: 
Key.com/newsroom

Originally published on Illumina News Center

Illumina recently launched the MiSeq i100 and MiSeq i100 Plus Systems, two powerful, compact benchtop sequencers that incorporate more than 140 invention disclosures and 60 patent families. Through a series of News Center articles, we are celebrating outstanding employees who helped develop this breakthrough technology.

The Illumina MiSeq i100 Series, announced last fall, is the company’s first customer-installable instrument since the iSeq. Illumina’s latest offering was a brand-new challenge for Staff Software Technical Product Manager Aneesh Natarajan.

When Natarajan began work on the confidential project in September 2021, only a select handful of employees knew about it. His manager, Bret Langham, asked him to represent the entire software department and serve as the software project lead. “To be on the core team of a new instrument project is a really good opportunity, and I jumped on it,” he says.

Inside Illumina 
Illumina’s software organization is responsible for a portfolio that includes cutting-edge AI algorithms like PrimateAI-3D and industry-leading software solutions such as DRAGEN, winner of the PrecisionFDA Truth Challenge V2.

The software department itself is divided into three disciplines: developers, testers, and technical product managers. Natarajan is part of the third category and works on the software that users interface with when operating an instrument.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Natarajan always liked math and science. He landed at the University of California, San Diego, for college—less than two miles from Illumina’s global headquarters. He majored in bioengineering, not computer science, specializing in bioinformatics (a discipline used heavily in genomics, which produces a large volume of data). In his final year of college, Natarajan’s teaching assistant mentioned that a friend working at Illumina was asking him to recommend people for a job. He encouraged him to apply, and that friend at Illumina became Natarajan’s current boss.

Now, as a staff software technical product manager, his daily responsibilities involve working with all kinds of teams with varying levels of technical expertise. A hardware engineer might ask him to build software that can run a calibration routine. A product management director might suggest that low-throughput customers could use a feature in their software to reanalyze their data. Every day holds a new opportunity to collaborate and solve problems.

Behind the MiSeq i100 
For a project like the MiSeq i100, a hardware team begins building what they call the “prototype one,” or P1, instruments and consumables. Natarajan’s initial goal was to construct the bare-bones software that would allow the hardware teams to manufacture the P1 instruments and test them as they build. This first version is called the service software, and it’s used not only in manufacturing but also when field service engineers are troubleshooting an instrument.

Very soon after the initial service software gets off the ground, the team splits into two groups—one continues to create manufacturing tests for the service software while a second group begins to work on the customer-facing application, called the control software. They start importing all the sequencing functionality and building in some of the features that users will need.

One of the major efforts for the MiSeq i100 was developing the first-time setup for the user, which needed to be as easy as possible for users. The software guides the user step by step so they can install it independently without an Illumina field service engineer. Building this detailed workflow was extra challenging: Illumina’s last customer-installable instrument, the iSeq System, was built on Windows, and the user had access to the underlying operating system. Natarajan’s team would be building the MiSeq i100 on Linux, which would require a far more sophisticated setup workflow since the user would not have access to the underlying operating systems to configure their instrument. Natarajan’s team wanted to provide instead a simple and intuitive workflow within the software user interface itself that would allow a customer to apply all their necessary configurations.

Through analysis of many customer use cases and potential failure modes, they worked out what information they’d need and what screens they’d require to connect the instrument to a customer’s network. “Companies sometimes have massive IT departments because they have very unique networking requirements,” Natarajan explains. “Our instruments need to be able to connect to any type of network, no matter how complicated or simple.” They had to prepare different workflows based on a wide range of potential network configurations.

Writing these steps and accounting for all the possibilities, during setup and beyond, requires deep collaboration across the business. “Imagine the software detects some sort of hardware failure,” Natarajan says. “What error message should we show to the user in that scenario? We have to work with the subject matter expert of that piece of hardware, because they would know the corrective action and what we should recommend to the customer. And then with the technical writing and experience design (XD) teams, we figure out how to craft that message before we put it into the software.”

An XD team within a larger user experience team makes high-fidelity mockups of how the software should look in terms of font sizes, button sizes, color schemes, and so on. When they have the detailed requirements, they deliver them to the UI developers and software testers so they know what screens to build, and how to test that the software does what the stakeholders intended it to do.

Beyond setup, calibration, and other maintenance considerations, there is—of course—the actual sequencing. MiSeq i100 can run up to 384 samples in a span of four to 16 hours, depending on run configuration. All of this requires a sleek and streamlined user interface. “The customers don’t want to spend a lot of time setting up a run,” Natarajan says. “They often want to be able to plan the details of their runs ahead of time, so when it comes time to start sequencing, the workflow is quick and simple. They subsequently want a streamlined way to get their secondary and tertiary analysis results. To support these needs, we have features across our run management software, our instrument software, our cloud software, and our bioinformatics pipelines that allow the user to plan their runs and analysis, stream data to our cloud platform, BaseSpace Sequence Hub, and auto-launch analysis either on instrument or in the cloud.”

At this point, the software team is ready to bring in other software components. They start with Real-Time Analysis, which is needed for sequencing. They add Illumina Run Manager, which handles a lot of the run planning, run management analysis, and execution. They start bringing DRAGEN on board, which will analyze the data. They begin doing the cloud integration. They compile all the features they need to build a full digital package and launch the product; then they begin testing the software, cleaning it up, and making it completely customer-ready.

Natarajan is most proud of the effort the team put into embracing and building what the company calls “universal software”—meaning that the MiSeq i100 and NovaSeq X leverage many of the same software components, even though the instruments are very different. Many Illumina systems launch in staggered years but are built in parallel. Universal software allows everyone to work more efficiently and benefit from previous upgrades, improvements, and new features. “If we build new features on top of what NovaSeq X has, then theoretically NovaSeq X can pull those features into their subsequent software releases,” Natarajan says. Best of all, universal software gives the customer a more consistent experience across all instruments in the Illumina portfolio.

The final stretch 
Late summer 2024 was crunch time. Natarajan flew to Singapore to work with some of his software colleagues (the last two or three years of MiSeq i100 software development occurred mostly in Singapore while much of NovaSeq X was being built in San Diego). It was time to get the product ready for customers. “We want to make sure the product is as bulletproof as possible,” he says. “No one wants the user to make an error because the software workflow itself was not intuitive enough.”

The Illumina MiSeq i100 Series was introduced to the market in October 2024. Natarajan says, “There are so many exciting features in MiSeq i100. And I’m thrilled when I hear users say the software is extremely easy to use.”