Katharine Becks- BA 621 DB

Link:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhessekiel/2018/03/01/salesforce-polishes-its-golden-halo-in-2018/#3d49e4c73dc1

Synopsis:

Salesforce is a company that provides cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions to large and small business and nonprofits across industries. Salesforce is this year’s winner of Forbes’ Golden Halo Award which acknowledges the outstanding social commitment and activities of a business. Salesforce.org has a social enterprise arm (salesforce.org) that is dedicated to bringing technology to nonprofits and schools.

As a company, Salesforce has had a strong commitment to “giving back” since it was founded in 1999. It developed and adopted a model which it refers to as 1-1-1. This represents the company’s process of contributing back to the community 1% of its equity, 1% of employee time, and 1% of product. Specific policies and procedures lead to valuable societal benefit:

· In 2017, Salesforce employees collectively volunteered 800,000 hours.

· Annually, Salesforce gives all employees 7 days of paid time off to help out causes they believe in.

· Salesforce matches every employee’s charitable donations up to $5,000 each year.

· Salesforce provides pro-bono services to nonprofits using their products.

The company has also instituted numerous practices to insure pay equity for all of their employees.

Relationship to Course Material:

In our readings this week, there was content on social responsibility and its relationship to marketing. In particular, it was noted in the Gap case that they engaged extensively in corporate citizenship and social responsibility.

Question:

Companies committed to social good like Salesforce often get a great deal of publicity for their actions. Is using social commitment as a marketing tool to improve sales and profits somehow unethical or deceptive? Do you think something like the 1-1-1 model can have an overall positive ROI for the company given improved sales and employee satisfaction?