A follow-up to an earlier post, Philanthropy on the Front End:
Marc Benioff’s technology company volunteers to reshape philanthropy model
When Salesforce.com emerged on the technology scene in 1999 with the novel concept of offering software as an online service, the accompanying PR catchphrase was “the end of software.” Perhaps less known was the parallel mantra, coined for the newly formed Salesforce.com Foundation: “the end of philanthropy.”
“While this phrase shocked some, what we meant was an end to corporations just giving away money” and that they should “get more involved with the organizations they support,” says Salesforce.com CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff.
Benioff, under whose leadership CRM leader Salesforce.com has evolved in a decade from a disruptive idea into a public company that projects more than $1 billion in revenue in 2009, is the chief evangelizer—through books, conferences and the media—for Salesforce.com’s 1/1/1 Corporate Responsibility model.
These numbers correspond to the three ways in which the Salesforce.com Foundation contributes to the community, providing 1 percent of employee hours, 1 percent of company equity and 1 percent of its product.
“This is what we do, you can’t take it out,” says Benioff of Salesforce.com’s philanthropy model. “It’s like trying to take the blood out of the body. This is what we do every day.”
You can read more about the Salesforce.com Foundation and how they assist qualified non-profit organizations here.
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