The Salesforce.com Foundation is based on a simple idea: Leverage salesforce.com's people, technology and resources to build collective knowledge and enable action to improve communities throughout the world. We call our integrated philanthropic approach the 1/1/1 model.
We help Salesforce.com employees around the world find meaningful ways to volunteer and get engaged in their local communities. Every year, each salesforce.com employee is entitled to 6 days of paid time-off for volunteer projects of their choice.
We donate and discount salesforce.com products to help nonprofit and higher ed institutions increase their effectiveness—so they can focus more time and resources on achieving their mission. We call this our Power of Us program.
We make grants with a focus on: employee inspired giving including team volunteering activities and matching gifts; technology innovation through our annual Force-for-Change initiative; and supporting healthy communities in the locations where salesforce.com has corporate offices.
Since its founding, the Salesforce.com Foundation has pioneered an integrated philanthropy model, a model that weaves salesforce.com's philanthropic efforts into the very core of its success—its people, products, and profits—to help advance solutions to social and environmental problems.
In March of 2009, the Foundation began an innovative new stage in the evolution of our model when we became a reseller of salesforce.com products. Beyond the initial product donation to nonprofit and higher ed institutions, the Foundation now also provides deep discounts on additional salesforce.com products, and 100% of the revenue from those additional sales returns to the Foundation to sustain and grow all of our charitable programs.
With this change, the Salesforce.com Foundation has become what we like to call a "social" social enterprise—an organization with a sustainable business model, driven by a social change mission, with community engagement for social good at its core.
When Marc Benioff started salesforce.com in 1999, he knew that he wanted to incorporate philanthropy into his business practice from the start. Just a year after he founded the company, he used his personal resources to launch the Salesforce.com Foundation. At that time, Mr. Benioff had a simple, but powerful, vision for the Foundation—donate 1% of salesforce.com equity, 1% of his employees' time, and 1% of his product to improving communities around the world.
Known as the 1/1/1 model, Mr. Benioff's original vision still guides the Foundation and has inspired many other companies, like Google, to adopt an integrated philanthropy model.
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Salesforce.com helps us effectively manage our most valuable resources - the volunteers, partners, and donors that make what we do possible.
– John Crary, CIO, American Red Cross
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