Tides Center Builds Custom Grant Tracking, Contract Management and Financial Operations Applications using the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service from Salesforce.com

SAN FRANCISCO - August 4, 2008 - The Salesforce.com Foundation, the global leader in integrating philanthropy and business, today announced that Tides Center, a sector-leading nonprofit that provides back-office services to over 200 socially innovative projects across the country, has completely transformed its business using donated and discounted licenses of Salesforce CRM and Force.com as part of salesforce.com's 1% Product Donation Program.  Using the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service, Tides Center built a set of custom, Software-as-a-Service applications to improve services to its projects by streamlining processes, reducing redundancies, eliminating paperwork, and minimizing data entry error. Salesforce.com partner CASA Customer Solutions helped design and deploy the Force.com applications for Tides Center.

"With projects across the country and around the globe, we operate with a unique set of business challenges; and, as a nonprofit, we have tight budgets and limited IT resources.  We wanted a way to drastically improve our services to our projects and create a replicable model for the nonprofit sector without investing in implementing and maintaining a bunch of software applications," said Ellen Friedman, Executive Vice President of Tides.  "Salesforce.com gave us exactly what we needed-a cost-effective way to create a completely customized solution for our unique model."

Tides Center used Force.com to design and deploy a custom portal for potential new projects to initiate, manage and submit applications. The portal is integrated directly with Salesforce CRM, so staff has a complete view into the pipeline of new project applications in process as well as those that have been submitted for review.  This insight helps Tides Center manage the application review and tracking process more effectively, and also keep applicants informed along the way.

Vendor contract management was another area Tides Center addressed with its Force.com deployment.  The organization wanted to eliminate the myriad of emails, faxes and paper involved in managing vendor contracts for over 200 projects.  With Force.com, Tides Center created a fully automated workflow and approval mechanism that significantly streamlined contract approvals and kept all relevant contract information in a single, central location.

Full integration of Tides Center's accounting system with the Force.com platform is expected to give staff and projects direct access to real-time financial information as well as more timely, accurate, and customizable financial reports. The full deployment is expected to enhance the projects' visibility into the management of their financial resources.

"Force.com has been a tremendous asset.  We have been able to create our own applications, extend the value of our Salesforce CRM deployment, and easily add additional features from AppExchange that helped with our marketing efforts," said Tom Shaffer, Tides Center's CRM Program Director.  "Looking to the future, we know we have the right platform in place to support our organization as our needs grow and change."

About the Salesforce.com Product Donation Program
The salesforce.com 1% Product Donation Program is a key component of salesforce.com's 1/1/1 Model where 1% Time, 1% Equity, 1% Product are given to nonprofits around the world to help them better serve their social missions.  The 1% Product Donation Program provides qualified nonprofits with unprecedented access to state of the art, enterprise-class technology to fuel innovation in their organizations. Today, more than 4,000 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 the Force.com Platform and AppExchange
The Force.com platform (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create and deliver a new generation of Software-as-a-Service applications.  Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via the Force.com AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire Software-as-a-Service community.
 
The Force.com AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional Software-as-a-Service business applications available on the Force.com AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

About Tides
Tides partners with philanthropists, activists, foundations, and organizations to promote economic justice, a robust democracy, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected. Tides Foundation, Tides Center and Tides Shared Spaces have collaborated with over 15,000 individuals and organizations that have touched millions of lives across the country and around the globe. Founded in 1976, and with offices in San Francisco and New York City, Tides provides fiscal sponsorship to over 200 groups across the country, operates and supports green nonprofit centers and has granted more than $550 million since 2000 alone. For more information, visit www.tides.org.

About the Salesforce.com Foundation
The Salesforce.com Foundation is the leader in pioneering, evangelizing and implementing the 1/1/1 Model to improve the lives of people around the world. The 1/1/1 Model harnesses the power of people and technology through 1% Time, 1% Equity, 1% Product to build deep relationships with communities around the world and increase the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations in achieving their goals. The Foundation concentrates on the use of technology, specifically as it relates to organizations with youth development programs. It has supported technology projects around the world that help kids in bereft urban and rural areas access technology to create better futures for themselves. The 1/1/1 Model has had a profound effect on salesforce.com and its communities: Since July of 2000, salesforce.com employees have given over 80,000 hours of their time and expertise back to the community. More than 4,000 nonprofits in 56 countries around the world are using donated licenses of Salesforce to run their businesses more efficiently; and numerous organizations are benefiting from technology related grants from the Foundation. For more information on the 1/1/1 Model, please visit http://www.sharethemodel.org. For more information on the Salesforce.com Foundation, please visit http://www.salesforcefoundation.org.