Salesforce.com Employees Finish Year of Community Service With Around-The-Clock Holiday Volunteer Effort

News

Press Releases

Articles | Awards | Press Releases

Salesforce.com Employees Finish Year of Community Service With Around-The-Clock Holiday Volunteer Effort

Thousands served around the world by dedicated volunteers

December 22, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Dec. 22, 2004 – Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) and the salesforce.com/ foundation, the leaders in integrating philanthropy and business, completed a year of community service with a spirited holiday volunteer drive. Salesforce.com employees have given more than 750 hours to community service activities in December, the equivalent of a full-time volunteer serving 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the entire month.

Salesforce.com employees worldwide have given a total of more than 8,500 volunteer hours to service projects worldwide in 2004. Salesforce.com encourages each of its employees to dedicate six paid days per year to community service programs of their own choice, including activities set up by the salesforce.com/foundation.

“The holiday season has brought an outpouring of volunteer energy and enthusiasm from salesforce.com employees around the world,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com, and chairman, salesforce.com/foundation. “The power and the passion of this effort by our dedicated employees have made a positive difference in thousands of lives this holiday season.”

“Volunteer rates hover just under 10% for the typical corporate program,” said Julia Love, the director of corporate services at The Volunteer Center. “Salesforce.com has more than tripled this through a strong corporate commitment and culture of community service excellence.”

Nearly half of salesforce.com’s 679 employees participated in holiday projects across the United States and around the globe. In Dublin, employees welcomed children into the offices for a holiday music workshop and then took time out to deliver meals to the homeless. London volunteers provided toys to needy children. The Japanese office dedicated an entire week to volunteerism, with projects ranging from hosting a Christmas party for orphans to pasting language stickers on children’s books for distribution in Laos and Cambodia. Across the United States and Canada, employees turned out to help feed the homeless, provide presents for underprivileged children and pitch in on a wide array of Foundation-sponsored holiday projects.

“Seeing the kids’ eyes light up when we brought out the candy for decorating their gingerbread houses made my day!” said Julian Ong, assistant general counsel, salesforce.com. “It is great to work for a company that is involved in so many aspects of the community,” added Kendall Collins, senior director, field operations, salesforce.com, who joined Ong and a dozen other salesforce.com volunteers to make gingerbread houses with students at Jean Parker Elementary in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. “Here, community service is a priority, not an afterthought.”

Salesforce.com has pioneered a new model for integrated corporate philanthropy through its goal of donating 1 percent of its basic resources back to communities in which it operates. Established in 1999, the Foundation is charged with holding and executing this vision to create more successful communities. Through the Foundation, salesforce.com strives to donate 1 percent of its profits to the community annually through in-kind donations of products and services to non-profit organizations, 1 percent of its equity to Foundation programs and 1 percent of employee working hours to community service.

In addition to employee volunteerism, key successes for salesforce.com/foundation include:

  • Expansion to over 60 salesforce.com/foundation-supported Technology and Media Centers in 12 countries across the world serving approximately 50,000 youth;
  • Nearly $2 million in salesforce.com products and services donated to 250 non-profit organizations to help streamline fundraising and marketing operations;
  • 50-plus students from four continents brought together in San Francisco for the world premiere screenings of their award-winning multi-media projects at the Second Annual salesforce.com/foundation International Youth Media Festival and workshops in September;
  • Numerous awards received by the Foundation, its board and employees, including the San Francisco School Volunteer’s Allies for Education Award, and the Volunteer Center’s 2004 Community Champion Award;
  • The release of “Compassionate Capitalism,” the first-ever book on best practices for corporate philanthropy, co-authored by Benioff.

About salesforce.com/foundation

Salesforce.com/foundation is the leader in integrating philanthropy and business. Through its goal of donating 1% of profits to the community annually, 1% of salesforce.com equity to its programs and 1% of employee working hours to community service, the Foundation is building a new model for corporations to better serve the communities in which they operate. The Foundation also strives to better the lives of youth by providing relevant access to technology for youth in underserved communities both domestically and abroad. The Foundation works with other corporations, youth development agencies, and NGOs to create a society in which children, regardless of socio-economic background, ethnicity or learning level, have access to technology and understand how to use it to enhance their lives

Since July 2000, the Foundation has opened over 60 Community Technology Centers across the globe serving nearly 50,000 youth and other community members; has provided nearly 10,000 hours of service to the community through salesforce.com employee volunteers; and supports Salesforce.com in its efforts to offer its award winning online customer relationship management application to more than 250 qualified nonprofits globally saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. It is the recipient of the national 2003 Points of Light Award for Excellence in Corporate Community Service and the 2003 U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s first annual Corporate Stewardship Award. More information is available at www.salesforcefoundation.org.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM). Through its award-winning salesforce.com family of products including Salesforce.com (http://www.salesforce.com) and Supportforce.com (http://www.supportforce.com), the company provides a comprehensive suite of CRM applications to help enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies meet the complex challenge of sharing and managing information on-demand. Salesforce.com and Supportforce.com are built on the sforce client/service integration platform and include the Customforce.com toolkit for complete on-demand customization. Sforce (http://www.sforce.com) and Customforce.com (http://www.customforce.com) allow customers and independent as well as build their own on-demand enterprise applications. As of October 31, 2004, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 12,500 customers and approximately 195,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom and SunTrust Banks. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

###

Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and sforce, Customforce.com and Supportforce.com are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners