Marc Benioff & Bret Taylor Letter to Stakeholders: Leading with Our Values

As the world continues to face challenges that test us all, there has never been a more important moment to lead with our values — trust, customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability. We are committed to bringing the full power of Salesforce to build a better future that works for everyone. More than ever, we believe that when a company truly serves all stakeholders—including shareholders, customers, employees, partners, our communities, and our planet—business is the greatest platform for change.

Prioritizing health and safety

In FY22, we continued to deliver relevant innovations to help our stakeholders adapt to this new endemic world. As more of us returned to the office and in-person gatherings, health and safety became a top priority. With Salesforce Safety Cloud, we are helping companies around the world bring people back together safely so we can all re-energize our company cultures and accelerate growth.

For a second year, we have harnessed our talent and technology to save lives during the pandemic. We have delivered more than 60 million pieces of personal protective equipment to communities in need across the United States and around the world and managed the administration of over 150 million vaccine doses using the Salesforce platform.

Advancing equality

Guided by our core value of equality, we continue to stand up for the rights and dignity of all people, in our company and beyond. Over the last seven years, we have invested more than $22 million to ensure equal pay for equal work across gender and race. We now offer our transgender and non-binary employees new benefits to support their unique needs.

Our Racial Equality and Justice Task Force continues to drive systemic change across our company. Over the past year, we have doubled representation of Black talent in hiring, and today more than 50% of our U.S. employees are members of underrepresented groups. Our executive compensation is now tied to achieving the environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals—including representation.

Beyond Salesforce, we’re continuing to work toward our goal of spending $100 million with Black-owned businesses by 2023 and have increased our spend with minority-owned businesses by 50%. We’ve also donated $87 million in grants to community groups advancing racial equality. Across the country, we are supporting critical policy changes, including criminal justice and police reform, stronger laws against hate crimes, and protection of voting rights.

Creating opportunity

Even as we thrive as a company, we know that Salesforce is more than a business. We are a community of 15 million Trailblazers who rely on our products every day to transform their companies and their careers. Nearly 4 million people around the world have used Trailhead to skill up for the 9.3 million jobs that the Salesforce Economy is expected to create by 2026.With Salesforce+, our new, free streaming service, we are empowering people with live and on-demand content, including Dreamforce, to help them succeed. Also, Salesforce is committed to workforce development through diverse programs dedicated to training and hiring for the jobs of tomorrow, including university recruitment, computer science curriculum in K-12 schools, training for thousands of veterans and their spouses, and more.

Serving all communities

Inspired by our culture of service, we achieved a major milestone in FY22—over the past 23 years, we have now donated more than $500 million in grants to communities and worthy causes, including $107 million to public schools. Salesforce employees have volunteered nearly seven million hours, and more than 54,000 nonprofits and NGOs run on Salesforce. Inspired by our example, more than 15,000 companies around the world have joined the Pledge 1% movement and committed 1% of their equity, 1% of their profit, 1% of their employees’ time, and 1% of their product to serve our communities.

As a participant of the United Nations Global Compact, we’re helping to lead the global movement to align business practices around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) so we can build a safer, more equal, and sustainable future.

Salesforce recognizes the importance of the ethical and humane use of technology across the company, and the Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology regularly engages with stakeholders and experts in furtherance of this commitment.

Protecting our planet

Finally, we continue to be a global leader in protecting our largest stakeholder—our planet, which faces an urgent climate emergency. Sustainability is now one of our core values, and we are operationalizing climate action throughout our entire business. Salesforce has achieved net zero residual emissions across our entire value chain, and last year we achieved 100% renewable energy for our global operations by procuring renewable energy equivalent to our electric energy usage. Executive pay at Salesforce is now tied to ESG performance, including two sustainability metrics. With Net Zero Cloud, we are helping organizations around the world track and measure their emissions so they can accelerate their own sustainability journey.

Salesforce is committing to $100 million and 2.5 million volunteer hours to fight climate action over the next 10 years. We are now nearly halfway to our company goal of 100 million trees, part of 1t.org, the global movement to conserve, restore, and grow 1 trillion trees. UpLink—the platform we created with the World Economic Forum—has now connected and empowered more than 30,000 ecopreneurs, innovators who are developing cutting-edge climate solutions.

As always, none of this progress would be possible without you—our stakeholders and your commitment to our shared values. We are deeply grateful for your trust and support. Even as we navigate these difficult times, we draw strength and confidence from knowing that we are making this journey together. We are all connected, and, in partnership with you, our business will continue to be a platform for change.

With gratitude,