With New Antipoverty Initiative, Salesforce CEO Puts Silicon Valley on Spot

For all the tension and media coverage of San Francisco’s rising rents and tech shuttle buses, there have not been a whole lot of people stepping forward with solutions. Enter Marc Benioff. Salesforce’s chief executive used the occasion of his company’s 15th anniversary to announce the formation of SF Gives, a partnership with the non-profit organization Tipping Point, that hopes to raise $10 million over the next 60 days for Bay Area antipoverty programs.

With SF Gives, Benioff channels local philanthropic heroes like Charles R. Schwab, founder of the giant discount brokerage firm, the Gap co-founders Don and Doris Fisher, and Warren Hellman, the deceased investor who gave millions of dollars to cultural, educational and medical charities in the Bay Area and founded and financed a free bluegrass concert series, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Benioff is also putting his colleagues in the tech industry on the spot.

SF Gives is challenging 20 companies to pledge $500,000, and eventually expand the program to $100 million. The initiative has already received $5 million in commitments for donations from companies like Box, LinkedIn, Google, Zynga, PopSugar, IfOnly and Jawbone. The end goal, Benioff told The San Francisco Chronicle, is to change the way Silicon Valley thinks about local philanthropy.

[March 7]