Salesforce.com co-founder, Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff plans to unveil a major philanthropic commitment this week that he described as his "next major donation" following the $100 million gift he and his wife, Lynne Benioff, made to the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in June of 2010.
"There’s something big coming that’s very exciting," said Benioff, when asked recently whether he planned to continue making such large donations to nonprofit causes. He declined to provide specifics, and predicted an announcement would be made Tuesday, April 8.
Benioff has long given to charitable causes personally, but the gift his family made for the children's hospital was of an unprecedented magnitude, perhaps reflecting the enormous growth of Salesforce.com, which has soared from $1.65 billion in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31, 2011 to $4 billion for the year ending Jan. 31, 2014.
Benioff has also long been a champion for integrating support for charities and staff volunteerism into the core structures of corporations, and recently he has publicly urged tech companies in San Francisco to do more to help alleviate suffering and promote education in the region. In particular, on March 7 the Salesforce.com Foundation helped launch SF Gives, which aims to collect $10 million from 20 tech companies to fight poverty.
Salesforce.com itself adopted a formula at the time of the company's founding that today calls for 1 percent of corporate equity, 1 percent of revenue and 1 percent of employee time to be allocated to charitable causes. So far, the company has made $53 million in grants, while employes have contributed 560,000 hours of volunteer labor and 22,000 nonprofit organizations have been able to use Salesforce's software platform free of charge or at reduced pricing.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee attended Salesforce's recent birthday celebration, a public concert March 7 in Justin Herman Plaza, where employees and attendees collected more than 31,000 pounds of food for the SF-Marin Food Bank and packaged 22,680 meals for Stop Hunger Now. Lee declared the day "Global 1-1-1 Day."
Contacted Monday, Lee said he knew of Benioff's upcoming announcement, but he had been sworn to secrecy.
"He doesn’t think small," the mayor said.