Salesforce.com Foundation 1% Product Donation Brings New Meaning to “Back to School”

On-demand leader’s integrated corporate philanthropy model provides enterprise-class technology to educational institutions from K-12 to higher education

SAN FRANCISCO –October 22, 2007 –Salesforce.com Foundation, the global leader in integrating philanthropy and business, today announced the successes that educational institutions have achieved using donated licenses of salesforce.com’s industry leading on-demand CRM technology through the Salesforce.com Foundation 1% Product Donation Program.  Bronx Lab School, KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), RISE (Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators), San Jose Education Foundation, and USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences are among the more than 2,500 nonprofits and educational institutions around the world using salesforce.com technology to revolutionize their classrooms.

“The same on-demand CRM technology used by the private sector can have a profound effect at educational institutions by giving teachers and administrators next generation tools to track student performance,” said Suzanne DiBianca, executive director of the Salesforce.com Foundation.  “The mission of educational institutions to reinvent their learning institutions using the latest Internet technology goes hand in hand with the Salesforce.com Foundation’s mission to redefine corporate philanthropy.”

For example, 30 new small schools within the New York City Department of Education have built a data portal using donated salesforce.com licenses in order to access accurate and real-time student information.  This innovative group of schools has customized the system to match school-specific programs such as attendance and grade tracking.  Today, there are 800 users across the 30 schools using the data portal to track daily student activity and progress, record qualitative observations, explore learning needs, and monitor the success of intervention plans.

“The Salesforce.com Foundation has given the Bronx Lab School and other like-minded schools the innovative tools we need to better serve our missions,” said Marc Sternberg, principal, Bronx Lab School.

At the higher education level, the University of Southern California (USC) College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the largest of nineteen schools at USC, is using donated salesforce.com licenses to improve fundraising and manage events as part of its advancement initiative.  This ten year project necessitated an easily accessible system to manage prospect and donor information and activities, as opposed to the various spreadsheets and legacy systems previously in use.  The College customized the on-demand system for its initiative, including tabs for “gifts” and “ events” and deployed the system in less than two months.
 
“Our Salesforce system has exceeded our expectations, and substantially improved the management of our advancement initiative, said  John R. Parker, chief technology officer, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “The benefits of an on-demand model for educational institutions are great - it’s easy for non-technical staff to use and access the system through a simple web browser, and we are freed from having to maintain software.”

About the Salesforce.com Product Donation Program
The salesforce.com 1% Product Donation Program provides qualified nonprofits around the world with unprecedented access to state of the art, enterprise-class technology to fuel innovation in their organizations and allow them to spend more time focused on their missions. Today, over 2,500 nonprofits are using Salesforce to manage a wide range of organizational needs including managing constituent relationships, fundraising campaigns, volunteers, program delivery, and much more. Salesforce.com donates 10 licenses to qualified nonprofits. Additional licenses are offered at an 80 percent discount. For more information on this program, please visit http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/product.

Developers interested in creating applications for nonprofits can get started for free by joining the Salesforce Developer Network http://www.salesforce.com/developer/, which provides instant access to software development tools and information on how to develop on the Salesforce platform.

About Salesforce.com Foundation

The Salesforce.com Foundation mission is to remain the leaders in pioneering, evangelizing and implementing the 1% Model, and using this model as a means to improve the lives of people around the world. The Salesforce.com Foundation harnesses the power of product and people to improve the lives of those in need. Using the unique 1/1/1/1 Model -- 1% Time, 1% Equity, 1% Product, "one" with the earth-the Foundation reaches out to the community and increases the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations so they can better achieve their goals. We call this the Power of Us. We concentrate on the use of technology, specifically as it relates to organizations with youth development programs. We have supported technology centers around the world that help kids in technology-bereft urban and rural areas create a better future for themselves. Since July of 2000, salesforce.com employees have given over 40,000 hours of their time and expertise, feeding the homeless, tutoring kids, improving nonprofit spaces, and offering hundreds of helping hands when the world is faced with devastating natural disasters.

About Salesforce.com Foundation

The Salesforce.com Foundation mission is to remain the leaders in pioneering, evangelizing and implementing the 1% Model, and using this model as a means to improve the lives of people around the world. The Salesforce.com Foundation harnesses the power of product and people to improve the lives of those in need. Using the unique 1/1/1/1 Model -- 1% Time, 1% Equity, 1% Product, "one" with the earth-the Foundation reaches out to the community and increases the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations so they can better achieve their goals. We call this the Power of Us. We concentrate on the use of technology, specifically as it relates to organizations with youth development programs. We have supported technology centers around the world that help kids in technology-bereft urban and rural areas create a better future for themselves. Since July of 2000, salesforce.com employees have given over 40,000 hours of their time and expertise, feeding the homeless, tutoring kids, improving nonprofit spaces, and offering hundreds of helping hands when the world is faced with devastating natural disasters.