Despite what you hear about the greed of the top 1 percent or the .01 percent, and the blame for some social ills aimed there, Philanthropy isn’t dead it is alive and well and changing with the times. Thanks to technology, specifically, cloud computing, everyone can be a philanthropist to a degree never thought possible. The Pledge 1 Percent movement represents part of the new philanthropy giving us all new ways to consider how we can best give back to society.
Marc Benioff had a vision. When the co-founder, co-CEO, and chairman of Salesforce started his cloud computing company twenty years ago, his idea of what cloud computing could be was not the only visionary thing about his startup.
From the beginning under Benioff’s direction the company donated one percent each of its equity, product, and employee time to charity. “It was easy then,” Benioff has told audiences, “We had no equity or product and there were very few of us to donate our time.” But donate they did and as the company grew so did its commitment to philanthropy.
Thanks to this example, thousands of companies today have taken the same pledge. Throughout its history, Salesforce has given employees time off with pay to donate 1 percent of their work time to a charity of their choosing, no questions asked. There’s no pressure to donate time but it has become a part of the culture and when employees get together they’re as likely to speak about the work they’re doing with a local non-profit or public school, as they are to discuss the philanthropy projects they’re working on. Lest you think this philanthropic effort is a drain on productivity, you might be interested to know that Salesforce is a highly successful, publicly traded company that has been on Fortune Magazine’s list of top 100 places to work for a decade and counting.
Over the last 20 years, Salesforce has donated $260+ million to 40,000+ non-profits and more than 3.8 million service hours through its 501 © (3) subsidiary and unlike 20 years ago, it’s no longer unique in this. In 2014 Salesforce joined forces with Atlassian and Rally to form Pledge1Percent.org. According to the Pledge1Percent.orgwebsite,
“They came together with the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado to accelerate a shared vision of every business around the globe integrating philanthropy into its corporate DNA. In 2016, Pledge 1% became a special initiative of Tides, a leading global philanthropic partner and non-profit accelerator.
Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud
There’s no way to tell the story of new philanthropy without a short digression into the business side of the house. Please be assured this is not a sales pitch.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is Salesforce’s primary business but it has also diversified into software development tools and developer training. At first the tools and training were focused on enhancing and expanding the core CRM product but that quickly gave way to supporting a robust community of developers. The AppExchange is the market place for developers that construct complementary products using the Salesforce Lightning platform and its tools.
Typically, AppExchange partners offer solutions that Salesforce has determined are not on its critical path, like accounting and finance systems. The AppExchange has a large contingent of vendors that have developed those solutions and they are plug compatible with the rest of Salesforce’s offering.
Also, a robust community of online users accesses the company’s development tools and Trailhead learning platform (for free) to learn application development skills that help people launch or relaunch careers in software. The research service IDC predicts that more than 3 million jobs for Salesforce architects, developers and administrators of various skill levels will continue to open up over the next few years.
With all that development capability it’s little surprise to people who know Benioff that the Salesforce Foundation, Salesforce.org (which was recently incorporated into the for-profit company) would build an application that would begin to revolutionize how philanthropy is done. The Salesforce Philanthropy Cloudis the result. The offering connects corporations, employees and non-profits in a network that enables employees or corporations to find non-profits they wish to engage with. This might mean volunteering, but it can also mean donating resources, not just money.
Timing is everything
The Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud comes along at a good time. According to research conducted by Povaddo, an opinion research and issues management consultancy, 57 percent of people working in America’s biggest companies–especially millennials–have demonstrated strong feelings that their employers should play more active roles in addressing important societal issues. That’s a lot to add to a CEO’s to-do list but it becomes relatively straightforward through the Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud. You could say that this opportunity has always existed but until recently there has been no technology to help bring the disparate threads together.
The demands on nonprofits continue to expand and not just in the obvious ways. Research performed for the company shows that demands on nonprofits outpace resources in several dimensions. For instance, demand for programs and services is up an amazing 77 percent over the past 5 years. But the desire on the part of the public to participate in the work of nonprofits is also up 59 percent. Finally, demand for transparency in how funding is raised and deployed, donation amounts, and donation volumes are all up with similar increases.
Philanthropy and charity, what’s the difference?
There’s a small difference between philanthropy and charity. Charity generally involves people donating to good causes. On the other hand, philanthropy can be seen more as a leadership position in which big players establish charities and lend their names and time to attract others to these good causes.
The big players can shine a bright light on a cause and that’s good, but most causes linger in obscurity unable to get their messages and causes to the public. A nonprofit might have a website and might do some small amount of social media, but it’s hard at that level to become known, gather resources and assume a greater role.
The Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud is important because it provides a new model for an old practice; it is beginning to link people and causes in ways that shift the dynamic. The Philanthropy Cloud fosters a market place where volunteers, donors, and charitable causes meet to better match people, needs, and resources. This helps everyone to become more involved, and to donate time and other resources for the greater good.
Philanthropy at work
How important is that? As noted, studies show the millennial generation wants greater participation in charitable causes and it even wants its employers to participate in, if not lead, the charge. Importantly, today some people even make job decisions based on a company’s philanthropic profile. This should not be surprising given a tight labor market and the increasing demand of Millennials to find meaning in their work.
Data supporting much of this can be found in another report from Povaddo. “Giving Your Workforce a Voice, Employee volunteerism and corporate philanthropy’s impact on talent ...is the consultancy’s second annual look at how doing good can also be good for a corporate bottom line. From the report,
· 73 percent of employees are either very familiar or somewhat familiar with their companies’ corporate philanthropy efforts. (In other words, employees are paying attention.)
· 63 percent say their company’s commitment to corporate philanthropy and employee volunteering is excellent or good.
But corporations could be doing more in their employee’s eyes. Half (49 percent) of the 1501 people surveyed said they get paid time off to volunteer in the community. But that percentage would rise to 68 percent if all employees could be guaranteed paid time off for charitable work.
Lest you think this is an anomaly, the prior year’s report discovered that 45% of respondents felt corporate America’s role in addressing philanthropic issues was more important than it was a year ago.So the evidence suggests that philanthropy is emerging as a factor in attracting talented employees. How businesses respond is an open question, but it suggests that the Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud is timely.
Last word (for now)
There’s no doubt that the upper end of the demographic scale has done very well since the turn of the century. The dot.com boom and the recovery after the housing collapse have benefitted the wealthiest segment of society and coined many new billionaires. But it’s a fallacy to claim, as some have, that the all of the wealthiest members of society are avaricious and greedy, though some undoubtedly are.
The new philanthropy is a small counter factual to all this. It’s creating opportunities in many sectors of the economy for people to give their time as well as money to social needs they deem important.
In addition to the three topics we’ve discussed here, the organization also supports a fourth way of giving, pledging 1 Percent of profits, an idea that’s also gaining popularity. The 1,1,1 formula of philanthropy initially supported by Benioff and his company, is a flexible framework that many organizations have customized to their own needs and circumstances. It is by far not a perfect tool for organizing society for giving back but it will serve nicely until something even better comes along.
