ArtsFund, a united arts fund in Seattle, was recently featured in a Seattle Times article about the charitable donations of Microsoft employees, fostered and encouraged by the company for which they work. In 2015 the company’s employees gave $62 million to groups in Washington State, a 7 percent increase from the previous year.

Mari Horita, President & CEO of ArtsFund, has been working with Microsoft employee, David Jones, for the past couple of years on an Excel model to assist with the allocation of grants to the arts organizations ArtsFund supports. What started as Jones answering a few questions about Excel, a program he worked on earlier in his career, turned into an opportunity to provide an arts organization with the skills of a sorely needed technology specialist.

“To me, it’s fun…that kind of help is so valuable,” Jones said about the collaboration.

Microsoft’s annual employee giving campaign contributed $125 million to nonprofits in 2015, including the check the company wrote to ArtsFund to match the hours Jones spent there.