Explore Business as a Platform for Change

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the approach to giving back and the philanthropy focus areas at Salesforce.
Identify inclusive philanthropy strategies to implement at your company.
Inspire others to use business as a platform for change.

Business as a Platform for Change

At Salesforce, giving back is in our DNA. When the company was founded in 1999, we committed to giving back 1% of our time, 1% of our equity, and 1% of our product to our communities, pioneering the Pledge 1% model. Because of this model, our impact has grown exponentially, alongside our business.

By operating as a platform for change and practicing inclusive philanthropy, business can help create a world that serves all stakeholders, including our shareholders, employees, customers, communities, and planet.

Listen and Learn from Partners

At Salesforce we listen to our nonprofit partners to understand their evolving needs and the unique ways that we can make an impact.

Inclusive philanthropy means working side by side with local communities and empowering those closest to the issues to guide the solutions.

Define Your Focus Areas

With so many pressing issues in the world, it can be challenging to decide where to focus your philanthropic efforts. When evaluating where to focus your giving back initiatives, consider:

Your company’s values
Causes your employees are passionate about
The greatest needs facing communities
How your company is positioned to deliver the most impact

At Salesforce, our core values are Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability. These values guide everything we do, including our key philanthropic focus areas: supporting schools, educators, and youth, and investing in a healthy planet.

Supporting Schools, Educators, and Youth

A brighter future begins with access to high-quality education. Since 2013, we’ve focused on supporting public schools and creating more career opportunities for students and young people.

Salesforce also supports education through technology and philanthropic giving. We help institutions of all sizes thrive via our grants program, Trailhead, and community resources—reducing barriers to learning and the workforce.

Our longstanding commitment to education and ongoing efforts to make AI more accessible is helping to pave the way for students, educators, and our communities.

Investing in a Healthy Planet

A healthy planet benefits everyone. We invest in community-led solutions for a more sustainable future, committing $100 million over 10 years toward new models, projects, and innovators.

Our vision for sustainability is a net zero, nature positive world, and our philanthropic investments ladder up to the same core priorities:

Protecting and restoring nature
Energizing the ecopreneur revolution
Preparing for and responding to climate disasters
Accelerating the energy transition

In all of our investments, people and communities are the center.

Employee Volunteering and Giving

While core focus areas provide structure to giving back initiatives, it’s also important to empower employees to give back to other causes that they are most passionate about.

Through our Employee Volunteering and Giving program, Salesforce enables employees to drive both individual and collective impact, making a difference through their time, talent, and resources.

A ground of children posing while wearing Saleforce t-shrts.

Fund Risk and Innovation

At Salesforce, we think of philanthropy as risk-tolerant capital. Unlike other forms of funding, philanthropy can provide flexible capital that allows impact leaders to take risks, test new solutions, and build capacity.

We aim to empower those closest to the issues by providing unrestricted funding. Restricted funds are set aside for a specific purpose, while unrestricted funds are flexible and can be used as the organization sees fit to advance their mission.

Leverage All Parts of Your Business

We know that to build a brighter future, it’s going to take everyone working together. Philanthropy is only one way to drive impact, so we leverage all parts of our business. We bring together task forces of experts across the business to address interconnected crises with an interconnected response.

Business as a Platform for Change in Action

Strategy	Salesforce Example
Listen and Learn from Partners	After hearing from our partners that the mental health crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing students and educators, in 2022, Salesforce donated $25 million to education, with a focus on teacher and student wellbeing.
Define Your Focus Areas	Staying true to the Salesforce values of Equality and Sustainability, our philanthropy initiatives focus on supporting schools, educators, and youth, and investing in a healthy planet.
Empower Employee Volunteering and Giving	Salesforce employees get 7 days of volunteer time off (VTO) each year, and we match employee donations to eligible nonprofits.
Fund Risk and Innovation	Through our support of ecopreneurs, Salesforce provides unrestricted capital and capacity building support to unlock innovative climate solutions and support startups’ capacity to grow and scale.
Leverage All Parts of Your Business	Every business unit and individual is enabled to create impact at Salesforce. Our Office of Ethical and Humane Use guides the responsible development of AI in our products, and our Sustainability team helped create the AI Energy Score to help evaluate, identify, and compare the energy consumption of AI models.

Sum It Up

By focusing on community-led solutions and a collaborative approach to giving back, businesses can drive more impact. In the next unit, learn how your business can get started by participating in the Pledge 1% movement.

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