The Phatgnat Spotlight #2: Salesforce
This feature presents individuals, departments or foundations who help raise the profile of their brand through positive community youth projects and initiatives, plus the interviews disseminate examples of good practice to other businesses.
Name: Isabel Kelly
Title: Foundation Director Europe, Middle East, Africa
Company: Salesforce Foundation
1. Describe the philosophy, or values, behind your brand/company.
salesforce.com/foundation's mission is to create successful communities by serving youth and non-profits through volunteerism and technology-based programs. We lead the way in giving all employees 6 days per year, in work time, to volunteer in community programs. We help non-profit organizations to improve their organizational efficiencies through a donation program of salesforce.com's online utility CRM product. We give technology and media grants to excellent non-profit organizations.
2. How does this corporate philosophy orchestrate itself in terms of the causes and issues you support?
We work with non-profits who implement excellent programs, with a focus on underserved youth. As salesforce.com is a cutting-edge technology company, selling online utility CRM, it made sense to focus on technology-oriented projects. The Foundation has a presence wherever the Company has a presence (and in some other areas too). We have set up technology centres in community organizations in locations including San Francisco, Dublin, Tokyo, Kenya and Israel. We have also provided video-making technologies and expertise to enable young people to tell their own stories (see www.youthspace.net) and have showcased these films at Youth Media Festivals in San Francisco, Tokyo and at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005.
3. How do you demonstrate the business case internally, which enables you to do such work?
The Foundation is aligned and fully-integrated into the organization that gave it birth: salesforce.com. The vision of Marc Benioff, CEO & Chairman of salesforce.com and founder of the Foundation, was to build philanthropy into the fabric of the company from its very inception. The Foundation was founded with 1% of salesforce.com's founding equity, and operates a 1% model: 1% of equity, profit and employee time.
4. How do you tackle the issue of sustainability in the projects you are involved in?
We develop long-term partnerships with the community organizations we work with; introducing them to our full range of technologies and encouraging them to develop as the Foundation develops new programs and granting areas. See some examples of our program work on the EMEA Blog.
5. What new social/cultural/technological trends do you see impacting on your brand and community investments/projects in the near future?
Marc Benioff, in his 2003 book "Compassionate Capitalism" refers to this 1% model as Integrated Philanthropy. Marc believes that, "as a company grows, so should its ability to make the world a better place."
6. The Salesforce Foundation has a weblog (the only example I have found) - why and how important is it in your operations?
We started the Blog as a way of sharing completed volunteering activities and the enthusiasm of volunteers throughout the salesforce.com EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region. It's been getting a high number of hits, so it seems to be a success and the Asia Pacific and US offices are starting their own blogs. They'll all be linked to our Foundation and Company websites.
7. What developments or initiatives are we likely to be seeing from the Foundation in the future?
The Foundation will be continuing with its volunteering, technology and media projects in the future, and also moving more into career support for underserved young people. We'll be doing this through volunteering, for example with the City of Dublin STEP program, where volunteers will be helping with CV writing and other work-related curriculum, and through a new program called BizAcademy, which will involve employees sharing their sales skills with underserved young people.
SalesforceFoundation Weblog website link.
Check out all the 'Spotlights' here
Filed by DK on December 14 2005
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