As part of our strategy to drive systemic change, Salesforce is working to empower underrepresented communities — and philanthropy is key to our efforts.
This quarter, we embraced new funding models with equity at the center. By partnering with leaders and organizations closest to the communities we’re trying to serve, we catalyzed our giving in the second quarter of our fiscal year (May 1, 2022 through July 31, 2022):
- In Q2 of fiscal year 23, we gave more than $32 million in grants to charitable organizations.
- As July 31, 2022, we have now donated a total of $575 million in grants (life-to-date).
Read on for highlights showing where Salesforce’s second quarter giving made an impact.
Salesforce makes strides scaling inclusive philanthropy
In Q2, we focused on supporting younger, smaller organizations to help grow and scale their innovative work. This includes donations from the Salesforce Catalyst Fund, which provides critical, unrestricted capital to nonprofits led by underrepresented leaders. Recipients include:
- Kura Labs: Kura Labs’ mission is to build talent pipelines from underserved communities by providing free, advanced training and job placement to underserved populations. The Salesforce grant supports Kura Labs’ efforts to scale nationally, serving 16 cities and training 10,000 new infrastructure computing and DevOps engineers from underserved communities.
- The Marcy Lab School: The Marcy Lab School creates alternative pathways to high-growth technology careers for young adults from underestimated backgrounds. Salesforce’s grant will help grow Marcy Lab’s flagship program, the Software Engineering Fellowship, which creates a direct pathway for young people of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds to employment as entry-level software engineers.
- Urban Ed Academy: Urban Ed Academy’s (UEA) mission is to build equity in education through representative Black leadership in and around schools. Salesforce’s grant will support the scaling of Urban Ed Academy’s “Man the Bay” program, providing more teaching fellows with professional development and teacher training, while also directly supporting more students.
We also announced donations to Phase Be, CodeDoor, and Year Up to promote equitable access to economic opportunity and help young people across the United States and Europe launch their careers.
With volunteer programs, Salesforce enables employees to donate skills and time
Our employees continue to play a key role in our giving strategy. In Q2, Salesforce volunteers reached a milestone of 7.2 million in all-time service hours.
Employees spent their service hours on projects like:
- Debate Mate: In June, Salesforce hosted 75 students on its London ‘Ohana Floor for the Debate Mate Finals. Debate Mate is an opportunity for students to practice speech and debate skills, and winners were chosen after debating on the topic: “Technology does more to connect us than disconnect us.” Salesforce volunteers served as guides, judges, career panelists, supported as audience members, and co-chaired the final debate.
- Career Spark + Ukraine Refugee Support Program: In June and July, Salesforce volunteers hosted Career Spark sessions and English lessons for Ukrainian refugees in the Amsterdam office and local community center. Teams hosted a “Build Your CV” session to help participants rebuild their lives while staying in Amsterdam and find a job that aligns with their background. Participants were also matched with mentors from Salesforce to give ongoing 1:1 support.
- Salesforce Pitch Club: To inspire more young people to explore careers in tech, volunteers from Salesforce France gave face-to-face workshops to 25 young people. Participants chose a Salesforce cloud, found a real use case for it, and pitched it to Salesforce volunteers.
Salesforce provides free and discounted products and services to nonprofit, education customers
Salesforce has provided free or discounted product to over 57,000 nonprofit and education customers since our founding. This quarter, we continued to provide pro bono services to help nonprofit organizations further their missions. Some highlights from Q2 include:
- On Your Feet Foundation (OYFF): OYFF is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing post-placement care for birthparents. They started using Salesforce recently to keep track of birthparents, adopted children, adoption agencies, and campaigns.
- Two Salesforce employees worked with OYFF to enhance their user experience and process automation, allowing them to boost productivity, collect complete data, and increase adoption among users.
- Braven: Braven empowers promising, underrepresented college students with the skills, confidence, experiences, and networks necessary to transition from college to strong first jobs.
- Through a skills based volunteer program facilitated by Venture 2 Impact, a team of Salesforce volunteers analyzed Braven’s current volunteer recruitment process and application experience, and then provided Braven with technical solutions for improvement. They also suggested marketing and design solutions for improvement.
Slack builds on reskilling initiatives with Next Chapter momentum
Next Chapter, a nonprofit incubated at Slack that trains formerly incarcerated people for employment in the technology sector, added to the company’s overall giving back efforts this quarter. With Slack, Next Chapter:
- Reached a milestone of 14 hiring partner companies.
- Kicked off a complementary partnership with Aspen Institute of Rework Reentry to help scale Next Chapter to additional companies across the United States.
- Released a trailer for Home/Free, a new documentary short film series on the experiences of formerly incarcerated individuals narrated by John Legend, to be released later this year.
Salesforce will continue to support diverse leaders and organizations, and experiment with new ways of giving to deepen our impact. We look forward to tracking the impact of these new models and partnerships over the long term, and keeping inclusive grantmaking at the center of our giving.
More information:
- Learn more about Salesforce Philanthropy.
- Read how Salesforce gave back in the first quarter.
- Explore Salesforce’s legacy of giving in the article Salesforce Hits Half a Billion Dollars in All-Time Giving.
