Once you complete the legal and organizational steps to set up your foundation, it’s time to add staff and build out your programs.

Hire staff

You’ll need the staff to run multiple programs, such as volunteer programs, product donations and grant intiatives. Our experience shows that it’s best to hire a dedicated person—don’t ask an employee to do this work in addition to their regular job. However, do leverage the experience, insight and resources of employee volunteers. 

As you get started, a single foundation executive can oversee various program components. Over time, you may want to dedicate someone for each program. For help in knowing what to look for in your staff, review the following sample job descriptions from the Council of Foundations.

Executive positions

• Corporate Sample: Chief Giving Officer, Anonymous
• Corporate Sample: Director, Community and Philanthropic Affairs, United Airlines Foundation
• Corporate Sample: Director, Corporate Social Policy, The MONY Foundation
• Corporate Sample: Executive Director, Generic Description from Council Publication: Organizing Corporate Contributions: Options and Strategies
• Corporate Sample: Executive Director, The Blue Foundation
• Corporate Sample: Vice President, Corporate Social Policy, The MONY Foundation

Program positions

• Corporate Sample: Analyst/Assistant Manager, Corporate Communications and Social Responsibility, McDonald's Corporation Foundation
• Corporate Sample: Manager, Corporate Contributions, Kraft Foods Corporate Contributions Program
• Corporate Sample: Program Officer
• Corporate Sample: Senior Research Consultant/Foundation Grants Manager, The Blue Foundation

Administrative positions

• Corporate Sample: Administrative Assistant, The Cargill Foundation

Salesforce.com example

Salesforce.com made a commitment to launch a foundation at a very early stage, when the company had about 50 employees, and before the IPO. The company invested $250,000 to hire initial staff, set up the organization and provide initial funds to support grants and a volunteer program.

Develop your programs

Organizations have developed a wide variety of successful programs. Many of these programs are unique to the companies, employees and executives of the organizations that run them. The most common programs include volunteer programs, grants programs and product donations.

Volunteer programs

Successful volunteer programs require multiple facets including team volunteering, individual volunteering, board service, recognition programs, volunteer time off policies and outcome measurements. When developing volunteer programs, consider all these aspects to make it truly integrated and effective for employees, the company and the community. Entrepreneurs Foundation offers additional resources to help build and manage a successful employee volunteer program.

Product donations

An easy way to start your philanthropic programs is to provide your product or service for free or at a dramatically discounted rate. To get started, gather a team to think creatively about how your product can help answer a social problem or support a nonprofit's mission.

For information about how salesforce.com manages product donations, check out our product donation program.

Grants programs

It is important for companies to have guidelines in place to frame corporate grant making and employee volunteer programs.  This makes your programs transparent to important audiences such as nonprofit organizations desiring funding and employees who wish to volunteer. You want your grant programs to support your local communities and nonprofits, but they also provide an opportunity to empower your employees by giving them input into the direction of corporate and individual donations.

Some common employee directed grant programs include:

• Employee Matching, which designates dollars to match employee contributions to charitable and nonprofit organizations as a way to leverage and encourage employee donations;
• Dollars for Doers, which rewards volunteer time with small cash donations to the organization where the employee volunteered;
• Community Action Team grants, which empower groups of employees to develop a project or event that benefits one organization and requires team participation; and
• Payroll deductions, fundraisers, run and walk events.

External grants are awarded to innovative organizations that respond to request for proposals that your organization develops. When creating your grant program guidelines consider how your employees and/or products and services can complement the cash grant and enhance a deeper relationship beyond simply writing a check. Check out a few of our past grantees and how they have used our product donation to meet their social mission. Below are a few documents to help you think through your grant strategy and processes.

• Sample (Generic) Request for Proposal (RFP)
• Sample (Blank) Grant Budget
• Sample Grant Agreement

Salesforce.com Foundation example

We saw the impact of integrating our volunteer, grant and product donation programs to support Project Homeless Connect. This nonprofit engages the citizens of San Francisco to support and create lasting solutions for homeless San Franciscans. Every other month, in a large venue they set up social services including medical, mental health, substance abuse, housing, food, clothing, wheelchair repair and more for these clients. Tracking those services and monitoring the impact is essential in creating systemic change.

• Time: More than 150 salesforce.com volunteers have participated in the bi-monthly event, giving over 1000 volunteer hours.
• Product: We've donated and configured Salesforce CRM in order for Project Homeless Connect volunteers to track homeless clients.
• Grants: We provided a $20,000 grant to SFConnect, which manages the "Connect" Initiatives. As one of our Community Action Team Grants, we also donated $3,500 to purchase several hundred pairs of socks and sweatshirts for the homeless.