After a little over nine years at Salesforce.org, I’m leaving today to begin a new journey (after some family time!) at a place I’ve always been proud to call home: the intersection of philanthropy, education, and technology. Reflecting back on the past near decade of my career with Salesforce, there are a few things that hold true throughout, some things that have changed, and some things I hope for our collective future as an ecosystem of people who care deeply about the social sector. I hope you’ll indulge me one last time in this format to share some of those thoughts.
Constants
One of the core constants in my time at Salesforce has been the change, the evolution of the organization and how we plan, effect and measure the impact we can have on the sector as a whole. I’m often asked what is it like to work for the same organization for nearly a decade, especially in the tech sector? The answer is a bit counter-intuitive: I haven’t! The organization now known as Salesforce.org has been through multiple iterations in my time here, with different sizes, different scales, different focuses, revenue models, and more. The plucky corporate foundation evolved into a technology distributor, evolved into a social enterprise, evolved into… well, you get the idea. This change is exciting, and exhausting, and challenging, and rich with opportunity, and constant.
Second has been the importance of product. Since day one in December 2010 I’ve been tasked with ensuring we can deliver the best possible product on the Salesforce platform to our customer stakeholders with the resources we have. Salesforce.org has always endeavored to support our community via product development from its inception, and today that commitment of support is no different. Did you know there are more people working on NPSP, EDA and other open source initiatives today than there were total Salesforce.org employees in 2012? In fact, there are more people working on just the NPSP today than total Salesforce.org employees in 2010! Technology, and the impact it can have on our sector has always been at the forefront of everything we’ve done, and that has been a constant throughout my time here.
Finally, I haven’t always made the right calls. I haven’t always thought we as an organization made the right decisions. I haven’t always aligned with our partners. I’ve even disagreed with customers from time-to-time. However I’ve always firmly believed, whether a nonprofit consultant, a Salesforce executive, an AE, an engineer, an admin on the Hub, a pro-bono volunteer, or some other participant in this ecosystem, that that individual cares, is committed to doing the right thing, and is looking out for the betterment of all stakeholders in the ecosystem.
To be clear, that idea of “betterment” isn’t always black and white. Should it all be free, or is today’s revenue tomorrow’s free product? Is it better to release something half-finished sooner? Or better to wait? Is it better to deprecate a bad product or continue to support an ecosystem? Is a feature “too complicated” or “not sophisticated enough”? These are all decisions that live in the massive swath of space between right and wrong and they’re judgement calls. Sometimes the call is easy, sometimes not, but I’ve never doubted the sincerity of all the stakeholders in our ecosystem to advocate for their assessment of the right thing™.
Changes
One might assume this list is long over the course of nine years, and that certainly is true. However, I think I would narrow it down to the two I view as most impactful: scale/reach and organizational structure. They are inextricably linked, and so I’ll attempt to talk about them both simultaneously.
In 2010 when I joined, the entirety of the organization then known as the Salesforce.com Foundation consisted of somewhere around 25 people. There were around 1200 organizations across the social sector utilizing Salesforce in some capacity, and the concept of “product” or “app” on the platform was very much in its infancy. Undoubtedly, we felt like we were doing good work, but ultimately we were limited in our reach. We were a two (soon to be three) person technology department: one executive and me. For our 1200 customers and burgeoning product line, I was the product manager, lead developer, lead tester, doc writer, support person and product marketer. We put out one release a year… if I could find the time to do it. Webinars were whenever they fit into my schedule, and community engagement consisted of lots of questions answered in online forums late into the evenings. In short, we did the best we could with what we had, but what we had was limited.
By 2015, we were a different kind of organization. We’d moved away from our small grant-making foundation to something bigger: a social enterprise. We had revenue, which meant we had multiple developers, a writer, a product manager, an entire marketing team, and more! No longer were we serving 1200 customers, we were serving 12,000 customers. The self-sustaining enterprise model bestowed on the Salesforce Foundation had evolved into something bigger, Salesforce.org. This gave the technology a reach and an impact we never thought we’d have, and left us grappling for tools to move even quicker, to help the organizations we serve be more effective, more efficient, and better able to serve their constituents. It was an incredible time to be a part of the organization as we were making up this model on the fly. The rules hadn’t been written yet for how to operate a social enterprise of this stature, and we were in the driver’s seat to write them. It changed how we could engage with customer’s missions, how deeply and how many. It afforded us an opportunity to grow a new approach to building products, to building ecosystems. It allowed us to take the best of the incredible culture and work at Salesforce.com and blend it with our own unique identity and build something distinct in the software world.
Today, Salesforce.org is a different kind of organization with a different kind of scale and possibilities. No longer needing to reinvent the wheel, our systems and capabilities extend to helping support 45k+ customers and their constituents. We can now support CSR programs through our philanthropy marketplace, the Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud. We can bring incredible new products to market like Salesforce Advisor Link at a blistering pace. We can continue to grow, support and maintain the incredible communities that have grown and supported us through our open source programs and more. Whether you are a small part-time nonprofiteer looking to get organized or you’re an international NGO, a community college or a member of the SEC, Salesforce.org can help your organization get smarter and more efficient so you can focus on your mission. That’s an incredibly powerful place to be and there’s more to come in this year alone.
Hopes
In the future, there are a few things I hope to see as Salesforce.org continues to evolve as an organization. I’ll be an outsider observer for this next iteration, so consider these my parting words of advice.
Salesforce.com is an incredible company. What has been accomplished there over the 20+ years since its founding is nothing short of a technical and business miracle. It’s been an honor to work for so long in association with the company. At the same time, Salesforce.org has always carried with it an identity all its own. I believe that identity always stemmed from a deep connection with the customers and communities we serve. Something about the altruism so often found in our sectors imprinted itself in the DNA of this organization long before I arrived and is a critical part of what makes Salesforce.org such a special place to work. I hope that distinct DNA continues to thrive, and maybe even spread.
Salesforce.org has an incredible mandate. Equally serve the customers who can pay you little or nothing, as well as customers who can pay their way. This mandate creates challenging dynamics, both ethically and financially. It also creates incredible opportunities across products and services. I hope Salesforce.org and Salesforce.com continue to embrace this paradox and keep alive the commitment to all customers as we’ve done so to this point.
Conclusion
I’ve made my share of mistakes during my time at Salesforce.org, but I’m damn proud of what we’ve built here.There are always improvements to be made, and there’s still so much more opportunity, so much more that can be done. I’m looking forward to watching from afar where the leaders here are going to take it, what’s going to happen for the Open Source Commons, for Salesforce.org Labs, for Philanthropy Cloud, the NPSP, case and program management, FoundationConnect, EDA, SAL, and all the announcements and new products to come. It’s an exciting time for the sector, and an exciting time to be involved in technology and philanthropy. Thank you Salesforce.org for one hell of a ride.
Until we meet again…
-Kevin
