“Share the Model”

An Interview with Marc Benioff, Chairman and Chief Executive Offi cer, salesforce.com

EDITORS’ NOTE Regarded as the know it. Modern philanthropy isn’t People at salesforce.com have found their leader of what he has termed “The only about big gifts, but also about passions and introduced us to nonprofi t orga- End of Software”, Marc Benioff has participation – our “share the model” nizations they wanted to support. But it’s not been recognized with honors such practice has helped extend this idea. just employees; it’s our business partners and as being named a Young Global To date, hundreds of companies from customers as well. Leader by the members of the World different industries have viewed our I’ve seen the rewards of giving back through Economic Forum and the 2007 sharethemodel.com site for best prac- tens of thousands of children educated through Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the tices, and companies like Google have Room to Read, more than half a million entre- Year award. He was appointed by adopted parts of the model to build preneurs funded through Kiva, and human rights President George W. Bush as the philanthropy into their day-to-day violations brought to light through WITNESS. Co-Chairman of the President’s operations. I evangelize integrated philanthropy at ev- Information Technology Advisory How does salesforce.com eval- ery opportunity. The foundation has become our Committee, serving from 2003 to Marc Benioff uate and measure the success of culture. This year, we provided an opportunity 2005. Prior to launching salesforce. CSR efforts? for the over 40,000 participants of our annual us- com in 1999, Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle We measure success through our Salesforce ers conference, Dreamforce, to volunteer on site Corporation from 1986 to 1999. In 1984, service. In fact, the fi rst application we built on as part of their experience. Attendees assembled he worked as an assembly language program- the Force.com platform measures everything re- more than 6,000 amenity kits for the families of mer in Apple Computer’s Macintosh Division. lated to our foundation. It tracks volunteer hours patients at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital He founded entertainment software company and breaks out the percent of volunteerism by and built more than 65 bicycles for students of Liberty Software in 1979 when he was 15 years department. It also measures product donation local elementary schools. We have also raised a old. Benioff is the author of The Business of so that we know the number of users, log-in total of $8 million dollars for UCSF from partici- Changing the World, Compassionate Capitalism, rates, how they are using the service, and what pants at the past two Dreamforce events. and Behind the Cloud. He received a Bachelor other applications they need. We even use it to How have you focused your own per- of Science in Business Administration from the track grant outcomes with our youth programs, sonal philanthropic efforts? University of Southern California in 1986. including the number of students placed in in- I’ve been personally involved in philan- ternships, number of years, promotions, and thropy for the past two decades. We’ve gone COMPANY BRIEF A publicly traded company, scholarships as well as years in college, grades, fairly wide with our personal giving, investing salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud comput- graduation rates, and job placements. This ap- in areas such as education, health care, and hu- ing company that is leading the shift to the so- plication has been so effective at helping us man rights. But two years ago, we transformed cial enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, evaluate and achieve our goals that we’ve also our approach and decided to concentrate on mobile and cloud technologies to put custom- made it available for other companies to use. just one effort. In June 2010, we announced our ers at the heart of their business. Salesforce.com How do you engage employees in these most signifi cant philanthropic gift ever: $100 has more than 100,000 customers including philanthropic efforts? million to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Burberry, Dell, Japan Post, NBC Universal, Kelly All new hires participate in a volunteer ac- This investment aligned with our own interests Services, and SunTrust Banks. tivity at orientation. No matter what the task, in terms of advancing health care and children’s participating sends the signal from day one that well-being and it’s where we believe we can Would you provide an overview of the 1/1/1 integrated corporate philanthropy is a core value make the biggest difference. integrated corporate philanthropy model? for us. The effect of those fi rst few hours of volun- We’ve endowed four research chairs at Soon after we incorporated salesforce.com, teering stays with most employees for a long time UCSF and my wife has been on the board since we also created the Salesforce.com Foundation and they often continue their volunteer activities 2008. Our initial gift will help fund the construc- as a public charity. throughout their careers at saleforce.com. tion of the children’s hospital’s new home. We pioneered the 1/1/1 integrated philan- Fostering continuous engagement is criti- Researchers and physicians at UCSF Benioff thropy model by which we give one percent of cal to the foundation’s success. We let our em- Children’s Hospital discovered the cause of re- our time, one percent of our equity, and one ployees choose where they want to focus their spiratory distress syndrome – the number one percent of our profi ts in the form of product do- volunteer efforts, which generates a sense of killer of premature babies – and developed nation back to the community. The idea was for ownership. To further spur involvement, we therapies now used around the world to save the foundation to be integrated into the com- have employee-led foundation councils that thousands of lives every year; they performed pany from the beginning and to grow as the serve as independent advisory groups to each of the fi rst fetal surgical procedures; and helped company grew. It worked and has allowed us our one percent efforts (product, time, equity). prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS from mother to to donate $30 million in grants, deliver our ser- In addition, every year we honor Volunteers of baby. They just made a pivotal discovery about vice to 13,000 nonprofi ts at no charge, and give the Year with a grant of $500 made to an organi- malaria parasites that gives hope for a vac- more than 300,000 hours of community service. zation of their choosing. We listen to employees cine. Imagine a world without malaria, which If adopted on a large scale, this model and we let the foundation change as we evolve kills one million people – mostly kids – a year? could change corporate philanthropy as we as a company. What’s happening is phenomenal.• 30 LEADERS POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2012 LEADERS MAGAZINE, INC. VOLUME 35, NUMBER 2