It’s hard for visitors to spend much time in San Francisco without noticing the presence of Salesforce, the huge, cloud-based software company. Many downtown buildings feature the company’s signature blue cloud logo, and the prominent Salesforce Tower, shooting far above the city and dominating its skyline, is impossible to miss.
Salesforce’s billionaire founder Marc Benioff is also making a significant mark on education in the Bay Area and beyond — both through the Salesforce Foundation, which is affiliated with the company, as well as via his personal giving. Recently, the Salesforce Foundation announced a $25 million gift to support “student and teacher wellbeing” in San Francisco, Oakland and around the country. Over the last decade, Salesforce has provided over $100 million to Bay Area schools, and its total education spending tops $165 million.
When he created the company, Benioff adopted a “1+1+1” approach to corporate giving: One percent apiece of the company’s earnings, products and employee time go to charitable causes. Benioff’s ed philanthropy through Salesforce also differs from many other funders: While some ed philanthropists favor charter schools or have prioritized specific issue areas, like “whole child” education or online learning, Salesforce maintains a singular focus on strengthening public education in the regions where it operates. A fourth-generation San Franciscan who attended public school, Benioff told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Our focus is on the children. Our company will always be supporting public schools.”
Strengthening public education can look different depending on the challenges schools are facing. Right now, a year after schools started reopening, many are reporting learning loss, teacher burnout and teacher shortages, and widespread student mental health issues. In response, Salesforce’s latest round of funding will support student wellbeing and mental health, as well as the resiliency of schools and educators. “As schools’ needs have changed, we’ve evolved to meet those challenges — from the early days of providing WiFi and devices, to STEM and computer science, and now a renewed focus on mental health. We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do together,” said Ebony Beckwith, Salesforce Foundation’s chief business officer and CEO, when the latest funding was announced.
Dream big
Benioff announced the new school funding on the eve of Dreamforce, the company’s annual mega-conference (and the world’s largest software conference), which fills the city’s hotels and snarls downtown traffic. After two punishing economic years, many San Franciscans, particularly those in the tourist industry, were thrilled to welcome the Dreamforce extravaganza back in force this year, along with a lineup of guests that included Matthew McConaughey, Magic Johnson, Jane Goodall, Al Gore and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I attended a celebration at Presidio Middle School that took place as Dreamforce was kicking off, where Benioff spoke before a crowd that included city officials, students, educators and press. “Dream Big,” the tagline for the day, was displayed on video screens, T-shirts and other swag.
Benioff began his talk by describing the origins of his local ed funding — in 2013, Ed Lee, then San Francisco’s mayor, invited him to breakfast and asked him for funding to upgrade technology in the city’s middle schools.
The tech leader told Lee that he hadn’t set his sights high enough. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “[Benioff] said yes to all the technology-related requests and added another $100,000 in innovation grants for each middle school principal to spend however they wanted on the students and staff. That could mean field trips, furniture, books, tutoring, soccer balls, art supplies or a coffee maker for teachers.”
Salesforce provided $2.7 million to San Francisco middle schools that year, and committed to providing $100 million over 10 years. In 2016, Benioff began providing annual grants to Oakland schools, as well.
Salesforce’s most recent round of ed grants includes funding for Bay Area schools as well as for public school districts in Indianapolis and Chicago, the New York City Department of Public Education, the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, and organizations working to support educators and education leaders (see complete list of grantees).
CEO saviors?
At IP, we often criticize billionaires for the outsized influence they can wield — and praise they often receive — because of their deep wallets, rather than any hard-won wisdom or expertise. Certainly, Marc Benioff has himself amplified the narrative of the super-rich savior. During a 2021 speech at Davos, Benioff chose to extol not the front-line medical or service workers risking their lives every day, but corporate leaders, many of whom (like Benioff himself) saw their vast wealth multiply after COVID hit. “In the pandemic, it was CEOs in many, many cases all over the world who were the heroes,” he said. “They’re the ones who stepped forward with their financial resources, their corporate resources, their employees, their factories, and pivoted rapidly — not for profit, but to save the world.”
Peter S. Goodman, author of “Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World,” slammed that viewpoint in the New York Times earlier this year, pointing out that billionaires like Benioff benefit from taxpayer-funded infrastructure and asking the question: “Why was the wealthiest, most powerful country on earth dependent on the charity of a profit-making software company to outfit medical personnel with basic protection in the face of a pandemic?”
COVID response is just one arena where that question applies. Education is another. We often argue that if billionaires paid their fair share of taxes, we would have a stronger public sector, and wouldn’t have to turn to the ultra-rich to address this country’s pressing social problems — including underfunded schools and the many other issues fueled by wealth inequality.
The fact is that billionaires and philanthropy in general could be giving much more, and there are initiatives underway to encourage them to do so. It is impressive and praiseworthy that Benioff has given millions of dollars for education over the last decade. In 2018, he also supported a measure to fund homeless projects by taxing corporations, a proposition that many San Francisco tech leaders opposed. He and his wife also provide funding for Bay Area children’s hospitals and have signed the Giving Pledge, among other charitable work. But all of this giving represents only a small fraction of Benioff’s net worth.
Fulfilling an ongoing need
Still, until we see a major overhaul of our tax system — and a greater national commitment to our public schools — public-private partnerships like those Salesforce has forged with Bay Area schools may be the only way to fill an ongoing need.
There’s a lot of good to be said about Benioff and the Salesforce Foundation with that in mind. They’re known for their collaborative approach to philanthropy: listening to school leaders to find out what they need and providing no-strings-attached funding rather than imposing their own ideas, for example. Salesforce employees get time off during their work week to volunteer, and have donated close to 1 million hours volunteering for schools and education over the last decade. Salesforce employees have “adopted” 130 schools around the world, including 34 in San Francisco and Oakland.
Benioff also regularly encourages Salesforce staff — and anyone who will listen — to pitch in, as he did at the Presidio Middle School event. “Please adopt your local public school. Please come by and find out what you can do,” he said. “Everybody can do something… This is a moment when all of us can do something for our public schools.”
The educators at the Presidio Middle School celebration certainly appreciated what this hometown tech billionaire is doing for their schools. It was a beautiful autumn day, and outside the tent where the press conference was held, we could hear middle schoolers running and shouting in their schoolyard — newly renovated thanks to Salesforce. Inside the tent, too, the mood was festive, as Benioff pledged ongoing support for Bay Area schools. As one middle school principal told me, “One hundred thousand dollars a year isn’t all we need, of course, but it’s awesome. And we get to decide how to use it.”