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Salesforce.com Honored for Its Work with San Francisco Public Schools

San Francisco School Volunteers' Allies for Education Award recognizes the outstanding partnership between salesforce.com and Chinatown's Jean Parker Elementary

September 8, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – September 8, 2004 – Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in customer relationship management (CRM) on demand, today announced that Allies for Education, a program of the San Francisco School Volunteers dedicated to creating, establishing and sustaining school/business partnerships, has recognized the outstanding collaboration between salesforce.com and San Francisco’s Jean Parker Elementary with a 2004 Allies for Education Award. The award, which picks out three of 66 exemplary business/school partnerships for special recognition, acknowledges the more than 100 salesforce.com employees who have worked directly with the young public school students – as tutors, mentors and friends – to enrich their learning experience and give them positive role models to look up to.

The partnership is managed by the salesforce.com/foundation, the leader in fully integrating business and the community. Established in 1999, the salesforce.com/foundation harnesses the enthusiasm and energy of the salesforce.com community to make a positive difference in people’s lives through service and technology-related projects for youth. The foundation provides technology resources, programs, and mentoring to underserved youth through more than 60 technology centers in 12 countries, and supports a wide variety of global initiatives designed to empower youth to express their unique voice on current affairs and issues of relevance to their immediate community. The foundation also manages outlets for employee volunteerism and leadership. To date, salesforce.com employees have donated nearly 10,000 hours to the community through collaborative programs like that at Jean Parker elementary.

“Salesforce.com is an inspiring example of corporate community involvement,” said Alan Lessik, executive director at San Francisco School Volunteers. “The commitment of the company and its employees mean that our public school children of San Francisco are being given a unique opportunity that would be otherwise not available to them.”

“The constant presence of energetic, involved salesforce.com volunteers working side by side with us to help each child succeed is like a breath of fresh air,” added Janet Dong, principal at Jean Parker Elementary. “Our kids know salesforce.com – even the ones who haven’t yet met the volunteers. Salesforce.com is a key part of our students’ success.”

Located in San Francisco’s Chinatown district, Jean Parker Elementary serves a diverse group of 330 children, over 70 percent of whom speak English as a second language. Salesforce.com first developed a relationship with the school in 2000 through the salesforce.com/foundation, when the foundation helped to set up an after-school technology lab to give students at Jean Parker access to computers and digital media technology. The salesforce.com employees who provided staff training and technical troubleshooting as part of that effort raved about the school’s students and staff, and wanted to know how they could be more closely involved in the daily life of the school.

In response, salesforce.com and Jean Parker Elementary turned to San Francisco School Volunteers. San Francisco School Volunteers offers businesses the opportunity to directly affect the quality of tomorrow's workforce by helping students and teachers gain a better understanding of the work world and how to better prepare for it. The organization, which has established nearly one hundred school/business partnerships with companies including AT&T, Charles Schwab and Levi Strauss, helped to develop a partnership plan based on the school’s needs and salesforce.com’s interest and resources.

The first salesforce.com employees entered the classroom in 2001. Since then, more than 100 employees have donated over 500 hours to a wide variety of special programs. These paid volunteer hours are covered by the company as part of its commitment to donate one percent of all employee time back to the community through volunteerism. As a consistent presence at the school, salesforce.com employees interact directly with the children in a variety of joint activities ranging from weekly reading clubs to special events at both Jean Parker and the salesforce.com headquarters in the heart of the financial district. The company also continues to donate computers, technology and classroom supplies for special projects.

Over the course of the partnership, salesforce.com and Jean Parker have expanded the number and type of programs available to students. :

I’m All Ears Club – Now in its third year, the I’m All Ears Club is a Wednesday institution at Jean Parker. Every week, salesforce.com employees actively listen as Jean Parker students in a bilingual first and second grade class read their favorite books. Employee volunteers do the same in a third grade and a fourth grade classroom, and will add a fifth grade class to the rotation in the upcoming school year.
I'm All Ears To The Office – Jean Parker students are also invited into salesforce.com’s offices on a regular basis to continue the I’m All Ears program in a corporate setting. Art projects and math games round out the day at the office.
Read Aloud – As part of the national Read Aloud program celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday, salesforce.com employees share their favorite books with classes at Jean Parker. With boas, hats, and silly voices, the salesforce.com team brings these classic children’s stories to life in Chinatown.
Principal for a Day – Instituted in 2004, this program brings a salesforce.com executive into Jean Parker as an honorary principal. From attending meeting to reading to a class, the principal for a day is out of the office and into education.
E-pal Program – Upon entering fourth grade, Jean Parker students are matched with salesforce.com employee mentors as weekly email pen pals. Discussing topics that range from sports to careers to family life, the students hone their language and communication skills while exposing salesforce.com employees to a new perspective on their city.
Beacon Center Computer Lab – Salesforce.com provides computers and digital media technology, as well as staff training, access to basic curriculum, web-hosting and technical troubleshooting support, to a computer lab located in the school and used daily by all classes.
Honeybee Jamboree – Salesforce.com employees help staff Jean Parker’s annual fundraiser, raising money both for the school and the adjacent Chinatown Beacon Center for youth.
Banana Splits for Spirit Day – Partnering with the Jean Parker Student Council, salesforce.com employees rolled up their sleeves to scoop out and serve 330 banana splits to the entire school.

“One of the things that initially attracted me about salesforce.com was its strong culture of community service,” said Peter Gassner, senior vice president and general manager, sforce products division, salesforce.com and Jean Parker “Principal for a Day.” “It is great to get out of the office and spend time with the kids at Jean Parker. They’ll do great things in the future and it’s good to be helping them realize their potential.”

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market leader in customer relationship management (CRM) on demand. Through its award-winning salesforce.com family of products, the company provides a comprehensive suite of CRM services to help enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies meet the complex challenge of managing customer information. Salesforce.com also offers sforce, the salesforce.com client/service platform, to allow customers and independent software vendors to customize and integrate salesforce.com, as well as build their own on demand enterprise applications. As of July 31, 2004, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 11,100 customers and approximately 168,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), Dow Jones, Polycom and SunTrust Banks. Salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM”. For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

About salesforce.com/foundation

Salesforce.com/foundation is the leader in integrating philanthropy and business. Through its goal of donating 1% of profits to the community annually, 1% of salesforce.com equity to its programs and 1% of employee working hours to community service, the Foundation is building a new model for corporations to better serve the communities in which they operate. The Foundation also strives to better the lives of youth by providing relevant access to technology for youth in underserved communities both domestically and abroad. The Foundation works with other corporations, youth development agencies, and NGOs to create a society in which children, regardless of socio-economic background, ethnicity or learning level, have access to technology and understand how to use it to enhance their lives. Since July 2000, the Foundation has opened over 60 Community Technology Centers across the globe serving nearly 50,000 youth and other community members; has provided nearly 10,000 hours of service to the community through salesforce.com's 400 employee volunteers; and supports Salesforce.com in its efforts to offer its award winning online customer relationship management application to more than 250 qualified nonprofits globally saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. It is the recipient of the national 2003 Points of Awards Award for Excellence in Corporate Community Service and the national 2003 U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s first annual Corporate Stewardship Award. More information is available at www.salesforcefoundation.org.

About San Francisco School Volunteers

San Francisco School Volunteers (SFSV) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving public education through informed community, family and business involvement. SFSV was founded in 1963 with 14 volunteers working in two schools. Currently, SFSV recruits and places 2,500 volunteers, who work in over 114 schools, impacting 30,000 students annually. For more information contact (415) 749-3700 or visit www.sfsv.org.

Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of salesforce.com, inc., San Francisco, California. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.