When Marc Benioff co-founded Salesforce in a small San Francisco apartment in 1999, he promised himself that the company’s success would be measured not just in revenue but in the positive impact it created locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. More than 25 years later, Salesforce has become the city’s largest private employer, and that promise has grown into one of the country’s most ambitious corporate and personal philanthropic legacies – one that is deeply rooted in San Francisco and the broader Bay Area.
The Blueprint for Giving: The 1-1-1 Model
From Salesforce’s first day of operation, Marc Benioff built philanthropy into the company’s business plan. The result was the novel 1-1-1 model, a framework committing 1% of the company’s equity, 1% of its product, and 1% of employee time to community causes.
Since then, Salesforce has given just shy of $900 million in grants and 10.5 million employee volunteer hours to communities around the world. More than 64,000 nonprofits currently benefit from free or deeply discounted access to Salesforce technology, helping them raise funds, scale operations, and deliver services more effectively.
The impact extends beyond Salesforce. Today, the Pledge 1% initiative, inspired by Salesforce, has been adopted by more than 19,000 companies worldwide, igniting $3 billion in new philanthropy, and proving that the 1-1-1 model can be operationalized and replicated at scale.
