By Therese Poletti.  Originally published on MarketWatch.

As #GivingTuesday donation pleas flood social networks and in-boxes today in a worldwide effort to raise attention and funding for nonprofits, some might be skeptical of pleas or philanthropic touts from tech companies, which have an inconsistent reputation for philanthropy.

But Pledge 1%, a year-old corporate philanthropy movement, is using the fourth annual Giving Tuesday to announce that more than 500 companies, including many tech startups, have committed to the once-novel donation model created by Salesforce.com Inc. CRM, -0.66%  co-founder Marc Benioff in the early days of the cloud-based software company.

Pledge 1% is a promise to give 1% of a company’s equity, 1% of the company’s product, or 1% of employee time back to communities around the world; Salesforce does all three.

“We try to make it easy for CEOs and for startup companies and CEOs to be focused with their philanthropy,” said Suzanne DiBianca, president of Salesforce.org, the company’s nonprofit arm. “We want every company to make their own decisions where their investments should be.”

San Francisco-based Salesforce.org is joined as a founding members of Pledge 1% by Atlassian, the Australian software company with a Slack rival called HipChat; the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado; Tides; and Rally for Impact.

Among the list of 500-plus companies that have taken the pledge are a mix of unknown young tech companies and better known startups with hefty valuations, such as Twilio and Zuora Inc. Others are not even tech firms, like Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. Some venture capital firms — from well-known funders such as Bessemer Venture Partners to smaller shops like Blackbird Ventures in Surry Hills, Australia — are also joining in to make it part of the process for startups they fund.

The effort could help tech’s somewhat poor reputation for community outreach, which has festered despite the efforts of Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.90%   co-founder Bill Gates, who created the world’s largest private foundation in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Benioff and the Salesforce model have often been highlighted as an example of a rare tech company focused on giving back to its community, especially as San Francisco Bay Area residents blame rising rents, evictions and the cost of living on the tech boom.

DiBianca defends tech companies and says any negative reputation is a bit of a myth.

“I don’t think it’s true, it’s true for some companies and some CEOs,” she said, adding that many companies just want guidance or help. “They just don’t know what to do and how to do it. We are just providing tools.”

A recent corporate philanthropy list compiled by the San Francisco Business Times based on 2014 cash donations made in the Bay Area shows that many tech companies are not the Scrooges they are often believed to be. Of the 83 companies cited, 26 are tech firms, with Google Inc. (now known as Alphabet Inc.)GOOG, -2.28% GOOGL, -2.26%  topping the list with cash donations to Bay Area nonprofits of $40 million in 2014. Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, +0.13%  ranked No. 5 with $14 million in local giving, followed by Salesforce at No. 6, with $12 million.

The list does not include time spent volunteering by employees, product donations and equity donations, which Salesforce pioneered. A company spokeswoman said that since its founding in 1999, Salesforce has donated $100 million in grants around the world, employees have volunteered 1.1 million hours, and 27,000 organizations are using Salesforce software for free or at a discount.

The group has big plans for the initiative: Emboldened by their success this year, the Pledge 1% movement hopes to reach more than 1,500 pledges by Giving Tuesday in 2016. Here’s wishing them luck in pushing tech to follow Salesforce’s example in the community.

Originally posted: December 1, 2015

By Ludovic Ulrich.  Originally published on the Salesforce blog. 

Last year, Salesforce for Startups launched globally with the mission to empower startups to build, grow and give back. In that time, more than 3,500 members have joined the program from more than 85 countries. And we’re just getting started. To coincide with this milestone, the program has introduced a new offer related to Salesforce’s marketing automation tool, Pardot; a new partnership with enterprise technology venture fund Work-Bench; and new plans to grow and expand globally.

Originally published on Medium.

Last year on #GivingTuesday, Salesforce.org, along with Atlassian, Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado and Rally, launched Pledge 1%: a movement to encourage high-growth emerging companies around the world to build philanthropy into their business. We’ve had an unbelievable year — hundreds companies have already pledged 1% of their equity, profit, product or employee time back into the community — and we’re on our way to hitting our goal of 500 pledges by #GivingTuesday 2015 on December 1st.

Today, as we kick off Salesforce World Tour New York City, we’re pleased to celebrate the incredible Pledge 1% members in New York.

• 212 Staffing, a company that provides consulting and staffing services to local and global enterprises implementing and using Salesforce, Oracle and SAP based applications, has pledged 1% of time, 1% of product and 1% of profit.


• Admittedly, an app that takes the guesswork out of school applications, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product.


• AppNexus, the world’s leading independent ad tech platform, has pledged 1% of time.


• Auctio, Inc., is a referral management platform that enables companies (B2B) to launch and optimize referral and cross selling programs, has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time, 1% of product, and 1% of profit.


• Care+Wear, a company designing innovative healthwear to create a more positive and effective healing experience for patients everywhere, has pledged 1% of profit.


• CariClub, a company that is connecting young professionals to nonprofit junior board opportunities, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product.


• CartoDB, a company making it easy to map and analyze data, has pledged 1% of product.


• ChatID, a platform that connects consumers and brands from within the retail channel, has pledged 1% of time.


• CloudPixle, a leading innovator in the digital signage space, has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time, 1% of product and 1% of profit.


• Dstillery, a company that creates data-driven marketing solutions that are brand-specific, cross-channel, and tuned to perform, has pledged 1% of equity and 1% of time.


• Goby, an expertly designed toothbrush, has pledged 1% of profit.


• enhatch, a mobile platform for field sales teams, has pledged 1% of product.


• Epic Foundation, an organization that connects the world’s leading philanthropists and corporations with outstanding organizations focused on youth wellbeing, has pledged 1% of time.


• Fundera, a company that makes it easy to save on a small business loan, has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time, and 1% of product.


• General Assembly, a global network of campuses for technology, business, and design, has pledged 1% of time.


• Guggenheim Partners, a global investment and advisory financial services firm, has pledged 1% of time.


• Javelin, an all-in-one software platform for innovators, has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time and 1% of product.


• Media Math, the top advertising software company for transformative results, has pledged 1% time, 1% product and 1% profit.


• Multi, which allows individuals to interact with local businesses in real time has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time and 1% of product.


• Placemeter, Inc., an urban intelligence platform, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product.


• Porter and Sail, the premium digital concierge for leading lifestyle hotels, has pledged 1% of time.


• Qubit, a digital experience leader, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product. Reserve, a digital concierge service focused on making every part of the dining experience better, for both restaurants and diners, has pledged 1% of equity.


• Scott’s Pizza Tours, a company providing guided tours of New York’s best pizza, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of profit.


• Silverline, a Salesforce Platinum Cloud Alliance Partner focusing exclusively on the end-to-end deployment of salesforce.com products and powerful third party apps, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product.


• TripExpert, a service providing trustworthy, professional reviews of hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions, has pledged 1% of equity.


• UltraLinq Healthcare Solutions, Inc., a cloud-based medical image and data management platform determined to help payors, networks and providers change how healthcare is delivered and practiced, has pledged 1% of equity, 1% of time and 1% of product.


• Vettd, the mobile app platform for alumni groups, non-profit and social organizations, has pledged 1% of time and 1% of product.

Thinking about building giving back into your company culture? Pledge 1% can help. Take the pledge today at www.pledge1percent.org.

Originally posted: November 11th, 2015

By Ryan Scott. Originally published on Forbes.

Attending SOCAP15, the recent Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco, was one of the highlights of my year. A world-renowned conference series dedicated to increasing the flow of capital toward social good, SOCAP brings together impact investors, global innovators, foundations, governments, institutions, and social entrepreneurs for a forum on how best to change the world. It’s nearly impossible to leave without feeling inspired and ready to take on any challenge to social progress.

San Francisco is uniquely positioned to help define and embrace the evolving role that businesses play in social change. While all the attention is on the unprecedented wealth within the Bay Area, the reality is that one in five residents live in poverty. Fortunately, the same entrepreneurial mentality endemic to the region has also ushered in brand new tools to address this growing income gap and other pressing social issues.

One of the most exciting of these new tools is the concept of equity pledges, and I was honored to participate in a dynamic panel discussion about how startups can use this commitment to do good from the start.

The discussion was hosted by Rob Joyce, Director of Special Projects for Full Circle Fund, an active network of 200 professionals who leverage their resources, skills, time, and funds to accelerate social good in the Bay Area. A year ago, inspired by Salesforce’s 1-1-1 model, the San Francisco nonprofit launched Founders Pledge, a program that helps companies bake giving back into their corporate DNA by pledging 1% of their equity to nonprofits.  These pledge-making companies access resources and programing to cultivate a company culture that builds on their equity commitment; these companies also become a part of the Pledge 1% community, a national and international corporate philanthropy movement dedicated to making the community a key stakeholder in every business.

How are Founders Pledge, Pledge 1%, and other programs relating to models like the 1:1:1 and benefit corporations creating new opportunities for collaborative impact between the private and nonprofit sectors? How can a pledge of company equity be the first step to building a broader social-minded company culture? This was the line of inquiry Joyce posed to me and fellow panelists Dipti Pratt, Director of Pledge 1%, which has encouraged 450 companies to take the pledge so far; Carlos Garcia, Sr. Donor Relations Officer at San Francisco Foundation, which ranks among the nation’s largest community foundations in grantmaking and assets; Milicent Johnson, Manager of SF Gives at Tipping Point Community, which funds and partners with the most promising groups supporting the needy in San Francisco; and Joe Kleinschmidt, a board member of Full Circle Fund as well as CEO and co-founder of productivity software firm Obindo, a company that has also made the Founders Pledge.

The panelists I sat with agreed that there’s never been a better time to engage your company in community outreach, and it’s important to not wait to do so. As the founder of two companies, Kleinschmidt had a helpful perspective. “When you first launch a company, your resources are often extremely limited. But you do get to define the kind of culture you want your company to have.”

Ten years ago, when Kleinschmidt started his last company, he wanted to give back. “But the demands of building a company mean you have no extra time to say, ‘Now I’m going to get to that giving back,’” he observed. “I was always ‘about to get to that.’”

When he launched his second company, Obindo, Kleinschmidt recognized that there are always going to be other demands and giving back must be a part of its mission from the start.

Beyond doing the good work, you need to have systems in place to track how you’re giving back. And the biggest piece of data you need isn’t data at all; it’s the infrastructure to tell your story. Causecast is doing its part in this regard by offering our platform to any Founders Pledge company, and by connecting all of the pledge companies to volunteer and give together. This is particularly helpful to startups that may have a small headcount and no point person to manage their employee volunteer and giving programs. Through the Full Circle Fund, every pledge-making company will enjoy the benefits of the Causecast platform.

“We think about leverage every time we make a key decision at our company,” said Kleinschmidt. “The question we always ask is: how can we do this, not slightly better, but a thousand times better? When we apply that question to philanthropy, we feel the strongest answer is to leverage the community of people who are already doing this. Meeting other like-minded founders is pure gold. There’s an alignment there. Purpose drives you, and founders want to connect with people who have those values.”

The panel agreed that one challenge founders face in shaping their corporate philanthropy is investors. How will funders perceive the generosity of equity pledges?

The answer is that culture is a much broader consideration than what happens within your company. You can’t just add culture after the fact if it isn’t there; sometimes it’s too late. And if you aren’t building your culture with intention, it doesn’t mean it isn’t being built.

Startups compete with larger companies for more than market share; they also compete for talent. And employees these days aren’t just looking for balance – they’re looking for purpose. If you want to attract the best talent, you need to shape your company as a visionary on every level, and that includes philanthropy.

From early on, you are signaling what kind of company you are building. The consensus of my esteemed panelists is that prioritizing philanthropy is an essential tool toward creating a company that resonates through the noise and drives positive social change forward.

Originally posted: November 3rd, 2021

By Quentin Hardy.  Originally published in The New York Times.

To view the full article, visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/giving/marc-benioff-salesforce-chief-on-the-strategic-benefits-of-corporate-giving.html?ref=giving

Originally posted: November 2nd, 2015

By Gillian Tett.  Originally published in the Financial Times.

If you are strolling around downtown San Francisco these days you might notice an imposing superstructure springing up, changing the skyline. This is the new headquarters of Salesforce, the cloud computing company that was founded by Marc Benioff in 1999 and has since exploded at startling speed. (Among its clients is the FT.)

But Salesforce is using more than concrete to change the landscape — it is trying to use philanthropy too. In recent years, the group has run a big charitable foundation, which dispenses tens of millions of dollars of aid each year, along with donations of employee time and Salesforce products.

There is nothing unusual about that: most tech companies today run philanthropic programmes, and most newly minted billionaires are giving money away. Just look at how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has joined forces with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to implement a pledge to each give away at least half their wealth.

But what makes the Salesforce initiative striking is that the company started doling out cash as soon as it was founded, long before it could aspire to create a 61-storey San Francisco skyscraper. More interesting still, when Benioff’s company made its move into philanthropy, it did this by placing 1 per cent of the equity into a foundation — creating a windfall when Salesforce went public in 2004 for a $1.1bn valuation.

These days, Salesforce is on a mission to persuade other start-ups to do the same via a “1-1-1” pledge (a framework whereby companies give away 1 per cent of their equity, employee time and services for social good). This year, for example, it has teamed up with the Robin Hood Foundation, an organisation that seeks to address the problems of poverty in New York, to promote that pledge on the East Coast.

But the really big prize is Silicon Valley, which is now home to a herd of so-called “unicorns” — start-ups that have not yet floated on any stock exchange but are already valued at more than $1bn. For if those unicorns were to earmark 1 per cent of their equity for charity, it could eventually deliver a philanthropy bonanza. “We think that start-ups should be thinking about philanthropy right from the start,” says Suzanne DiBianca of Salesforce. This is a campaign to turn the tip of those unicorns’ horns into a force for good.

Not all unicorns seem to be convinced by this pitch, however. There is no sign that, say, the founders of Uber — arguably the most (in)famous unicorn around today — are about to give 1 per cent of their company to charity. Nevertheless, dozens of start-ups have signed up to variations of the 1-1-1 pledge, including Seth Levine (founder of Foundry), Dan Siroker (Optomizely), Ron Conway (SV Angel), Scott Farquhar (Atlassian) and Krista Marks (Simbulus).

To my mind, this is a fascinating development. In the past, it was generally assumed in corporate America that people donated money after they had become successful and rich. It was also assumed that companies ran corporate social responsibility programmes only when they had profits to disperse. But what the Salesforce model is trying to do is build philanthropy into the company from the very start. And that reflects a subtle shift in how Benioff and his ilk view companies — and capitalism.

For instead of assuming that companies are just about shareholders, or that corporate social responsibility sits in a separate mental or structural box from business, the 1-1-1 pledge tries to put them into a wider vision of social interest.

This is different from the Wall Street ethos — the concept of capitalism that people such as Buffett espouse (he does not believe in giving chunks of the company to philanthropy because it goes against shareholder interests). Indeed, the language of the 1 per cent pledge has more in common with centre-left ideas, or the 19th-century British Quakers who created companies such as Cadbury. “Companies can do more than make money,” Benioff insists. “They can serve others

By Caroline Preece.  Originally published on CloudPro.

Salesforce has set aside a $100 million fund to pour cash into European start-ups.

The money will be allocated by the SaaS giant’s global corporate investment group, Salesforce Ventures, whose portfolio includes more than 150 start-ups, such as CartoDB, CloudSense, Cloud9 IDE, NewVoiceMedia, Qubit, Universal Avenue and YOUR SL, but only 17 of those are based in Europe.

However, John Somorjai, EVP of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures, said the money signalled a growing focus on Europe from the company.

“There is so much incredible innovation happening in Europe today and we want to empower the next generation of enterprise cloud start-ups in the region,” he said. “Our $100 million commitment strengthens our mission to help start-ups grow and give back to their communities.”

The public cloud software market in Europe is predicted to grow 12 times faster than other sectors, according to IDC, and is set to hit €33.3 billion by 2019.

Salesforce Ventures has invested in start-ups since 2009, and those present among its portfolio are encouraged to take up Salesforce Foundation’s 1-1-1 model that encourages companies to give back to their community with one per cent of their product, time or equity.

Ruben Daniels, co-founder and CEO at Cloud9 IDE said: “Salesforce Ventures provides not only funding, network and introductions, but also the mentorship and framework to help companies understand how they can give back as they grow.

“We are proud of our commitment to pledge one per cent and expand diversity in the technology industry by making the community a key stakeholder in our business.”

Thorsten Kohler, co-founder and CEO of mobile productivity solutions firm YOUR SL, added: “An investment from Salesforce Ventures offers a collaborative partnership. Salesforce Ventures has increased our ability to stay competitive as we grow and connect with new enterprise customers, delivering success to the entire spectrum of business.”

Originally posted: October 14, 2015

By Naomi Morenzoni.  Originally published on Medium.