Clint Betts
Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief, Beehive Startups

Reblogged from Dec. 7 post HERE >> 

CHILDREN IN UTAH NEEDED BOOKS, STARTUP SANTA HELPED

Start Up Santa

We at Beehive Startups launched Startup Santa with Utah’s United Ways because two out of every three Utah children living in low-income families and attending third grade don’t read at a proficient level; because 35 percent of Utah children who are poor, living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, and not reading at a proficient level by the time they’re in third grade do not graduate from high school; because 347,000 Utah children live at or near the poverty level, and 234,00 of those children are at-risk of intergenerational poverty.

In 2015, Startup Santa’s inaugural year, we raised 13,644 books. We obliterated those numbers in 2016 thanks to the power and generosity of Utah’s startup and tech community. Startup Santa 2016 raised over 88,000 books for children living in low-income families. We are completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of those numbers and the real impact that’s going to have on the lives of so many Utah children this holiday season.

Paramount to our community’s continued success and prosperity is our duty to ensure the Silicon Slopes don’t rise while the rest of Utah falls or remains stagnant. We have a responsibility to care for and lift up those around us whether they work in tech or not. Startup Santa demonstrates the power and influence our community can wield to do good and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. We will not leave these kids or their families behind. We won’t allow it to happen.

On behalf of United Way and Title I schools across the state, thank you (THANK YOU!!!) to all of the companies and organizations who participated in Startup Santa 2016.

[slideshow]

Start Up Santa

The Startup Santa 2016 Winners*

The Startup Santa 2016 Top 10*

  1. Domo — 28,080
  2. Traeger Grills — 18,541
  3. Tanner — 6,073
  4. Podium — 4,851
  5. Lucid — 3,889
  6. LandDesk — 3,443
  7. NaviTrust — 2,669
  8. WildWorks — 1,834
  9. Pluralsight — 1,818
  10. My Tech High — 1,316

See the full leaderboard at StartupSanta.org.

*As of December 7, 2016