Discussion Case: Salesforce's 1+1+1 Integrated Philanthropy Model Just four months after she started work at Salesforce, the cloud computing company, a colleague approached engineer Claire Whitehead with two questions: "Do you know HTML?" and "Can you help us teach some kids later today?" A few hours later, Whitehead found herself in front of a roomful of girls and boys demonstrating how to build a website. "I knew I owed it to my geeky 12-year-old self," Whitefield later said, explaining why she became a regular volunteer at CoderDojo, a global nonprofit that ran free clubs in 69 countries to teach coding to youngsters. Whitefield's efforts were part of a broader partnership between CoderDojo and Salesforce, which had donated $200,000 and close to 2,000 hours of its employees' time to the nonprofit. Salesforce was a leading provider of customer relationship management software ("CRM" was the company's stock market symbol). Founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, a former Oracle executive, the company provided cloud-based software designed to help organizations manage relationships with customers and other stakeholders. In 2018, the company had 25,000 employees, a market capitalization of more than $90 billion, and annual revenues of around $10 billion. Benioff had a broad vision of the purpose of the company he had founded. "The business of business," he stated, "is improving the state of the world." Salesforce was widely recognized as one of the world's most charitable companies. It embraced what it called the 1+1+1 model of integrated philanthropy: the company pledged to give 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of product, and 1 percent of employee time to charity annually. Initially, it set aside 1 percent of its founders' equity for this purpose; later, after this amount was exhausted, it funded grants from general revenue. Suzanne DiBianca, the chief philanthropy officer and executive vice president of corporate relations, explained the company's approach: "Integrated philanthropy means aligning your community support with your core business and competencies.... [It recognizes] that your technology, your products, and your time are just as valuable as the dollars you can give away." The company coordinated its philanthropy through its affiliated nonprofit foundation, called Salesforce.org. Salesforce employees received seven days a year of paid time-off to volunteer in whatever way they chose. Eighty percent took advantage of the opportunity to do so. Many employeeslike Whiteheadtapped into their professional expertise to lend a helping hand. Right after Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area in 2017, for example, the Red Cross contacted Salesforce with an urgent problem: the website the Red Cross had set up to provide immediate cash assistance to victims had gotten so many hits it had crashed. Within hours, Salesforce had assembled a 40-person team of volunteers, who worked at night and over the weekend to put together a platform that could handle 275,000 aid applications an hourat no cost to the Red Cross. Through its Power of Us program, Salesforce.org provided free or deeply discounted software to nonprofits and educational institutions to help support their missions, with a value of as much as $20,000 a year to the recipient. Revenue that flowed back to Salesforce from discounted product sales to nonprofits was reinvested in the foundation. An example of a nonprofit that made good use of its free subscription was Polaris, an organization devoted to ending human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Polaris used the software to capture information from hotline calls, which had previously been recorded on paper documents, and to track cases through the systemenabling them to better serve clients, satisfy funder requirements, and demonstrate their impact. Salesforce also donated millions of dollars directly to charitable causes. Education especially in the areas of science, math, engineering, and technologywas a priority. Unlike some companies that donated to charter schools and special academies, Salesforce targeted public education, especially in its home community of San Francisco, where its multimillion-dollar annual gifts enabled the school district to develop the first-in-thecountry computer science curriculum at every grade level. In many cases, the company linked monetary gifts to other forms of support. For example, it donated money, time, and resources to Year Up, an organization that placed talented but disadvantaged young adults in internships that could lead to living-wage jobs and stable careersincluding ones at Salesforce. In 2017, the company launched the Salesforce Impact Fund, endowing it initially with $50 million. The social venture fund's goal was to "accelerate the growth of companies using Salesforce technology to address challenges across workforce development, equality, sustainability, and the social sector." Early investments included Viridis Learning, a company that linked community colleges, their students, and local employers. Viridis helped schools to develop appropriate courses, students to track their progress in a "skills passport," and employers to find qualified candidates. "We've reverse-engineered the pathway to competency," said the Viridis CEO. In 2018, Salesforce.org launched Philanthropy Cloudwhich it dubbed a "social giving platform"in partnership with United Way. Organizations could use the product to empower their employees to select causes to donate to, request employer matches, set personal goals, track their volunteer hours, and assess their impact. "We are living in an age of individuals, not institutions," said the CEO of United Way, which embraced the online platform as a way to modernize its established role as a middleman in workplace giving. An advantage of Philanthropy Cloud was that individuals could carry their profiles with them when they changed jobs. In its 2018 annual report, Salesforce reported that since its founding, the company together with Salesforce.orghad donated $200 million to charitable organizations, 2.6 million hours of employee time, and free or discounted services to more than 34,000 nonprofits and educational institutions. And Salesforce's integrated philanthropy model had spread to other companies as well. A nonprofit called Pledge 1% encouraged other companies to follow the Salesforce example and "take the pledge" by donating 1 percent of equity, employee time, profits, sales, products or servicesor any combination of these. By 2018, Pledge 1% had reached 5,000 companies in 100 countries.

1. What evidence do you see in this case of the three kinds of corporate philanthropy discussed in this chapter: contributions of cash, in-kind products or services, and employee time?

2. What does integrated philanthropy mean, and how does it compare with the philanthropic initiatives of other companies discussed in this chapter?

3. Do you consider Salesforce's various charitable initiatives to exemplify strategic philanthropy, as defined in this chapter? Why or why not?

4. What are the benefits and risks to Salesforce of its approach to philanthropy?

5. If you were a corporate philanthropy manager for Salesforce, how would you evaluate the impact of the company's giving? What kinds of impacts would you attempt to measure?

6. Would Salesforce's philanthropic programs lead you to consider working for this company, and why or why not?