Salesforce.com has a philanthropic 1:1:1 model.

In his book “Behind the Cloud“, Marc Benioff’s (co-founder 1999, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com), Part 6: The Corporate Philanthropy Playbook, starts with Play#64: “The Business of Business is more than Business” – a quote widely attributed to the American economist, statistician, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics; Milton Friedman (and here).  In the book Marc states that the co-founders of salesforce.com shared his philosophy that “the value of a corporation should be distributed not only to its leadership but also to the communities in which it operates and to the world.”  Suzanne DiBianca (Executive Director and co-founder of the Salesforce.com Foundation) officially joined salesforce.com in 2000 to establish the Foundation – now a decade ago!  So what is the 1:1:1 model?

1% time, 1% product, 1% equity

• 1% time: salesforce.com employees spend six paid volunteer days per year responding to community needs around the globe – employees have, so far, donated 178,000 hours
• 1% product: Salesforce donate CRM licenses to non-profits organisations – to 8,000 non-profits, in some 70 countries.  The Foundation offer 10 subscriptions for free, and the rest at 80 percent discounts
• 1% equity: Founding stock from salesforce.com provides funds for grants, with a specific focus on  supporting youth, technology innovation and employee-inspired volunteer projects – including some $20 million in grants to non-profit organisations

The case presented by Marc for Corporate Philanthropy (Play #68:  Share the Model) is:

1. It’s the right thing to do – for the community and the company
2. It builds your brand
3. It attracts and retains employees – a competitive advantage
4. It’s fun – honest

The model has also been adopted by many of salesforce.com’s third-party suppliers.  Most of the suppliers listed in salesforce.com’s AppExchange (the marketplace of 1000+ applications and services that extend Salesforce’s CRM) offer free, or significantly discount applications, or services to non-profit organisations.

I acknowledge that I have an interest in salesforce.com – I am a qualified salesforce.com administrator, and I have supported a number of charities, some pro bono, with their implementation and configuration of the non-profit instance of saleforce.com (Brian Green Consultancy CIC).