Home
 

News

Press Releases

Articles | Awards | Press Releases

U.S Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans presents Salesforce.com with First Corporate Stewardship Award

United States Department of Commerce and U.S. Chamber of Commerce recognize salesforce.com for compassionate leadership

December 5, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – December 5, 2003 – Salesforce.com, the world leader in delivering on-demand applications, today announced that it has received the first ever U.S. Chamber of Commerce Corporate Stewardship Award. The award is part of the 2003 Annual Corporate Citizenship Awards presented by the Center for Corporate Citizenship of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The award winners were announced yesterday at a reception and dinner co-hosted by U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas J. Donohue and the Honorable Donald L. Evans, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce at the historic U.S. Chamber of Commerce building. Presented to only three companies, salesforce.com received the 2003 Corporate Stewardship Award in the mid-sized company category.

“Responsible corporate stewardship is practiced every day by millions of businesses across the United States. Yet, much of the good work by American businesses takes place without notice. The stories of America’s best corporate stewards deserve to be told. I am honored to recognize the corporate stewards that make our economy the world’s strongest engine of progress and prosperity,” said Secretary Evans.

“Salesforce.com, and all the award winners and nominees, represent the best of a business making a difference in its community,” said Thomas J. Donohue, Chamber President and CEO. “The leadership of salesforce.com serves as an inspiration for others to follow.”

The 2003 Annual Corporate Citizenship Awards showcase businesses and chambers of commerce that have demonstrated ethical leadership and corporate stewardship, made a difference in their communities and contributed to the advancement of important economic and social goals. Specifically, the Secretary of Commerce Corporate Stewardship Award seeks to recognize one small, medium and large company for its total performance and contribution to economic, community, and social progress.

“We are extremely honored to receive this award,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com and the founder of the salesforce.com/foundation. “Our ‘1% model’, giving 1% of our time, profits and equity to the communities in which we operate has proven to be successful in making a positive impact in the world in ways we never imagined when we began. This award is a direct result of properly aligning corporate resources with ethical values, and most importantly the outstanding commitment of salesforce.com employees who have given time and energy to make a difference in the lives of underserved people.”

From a pool of nominations, the Center for Corporate Citizenship selected three finalists in each category for consideration by an Advisory Board to the Department of Commerce. The Advisory Board, comprised of leaders of business, academic and non-profit organizations and corporate citizenship experts, then selected an award winner from the finalists.

The Center for Corporate Citizenship is a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that promotes business-society relations and assists corporate community engagement. The CCC publicizes effective corporate citizenship practices to encourage improvement in business-society relations and recognize leadership in business ethics and community and economic development.

About salesforce.com/foundation

Salesforce.com/foundation is the leader in integrating philanthropy and business. Through its model of donating 1% of profits to the community annually, 1% of salesforce.com equity to its programs upon founding 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 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 43 Community Technology Centers across the globe serving nearly 50,000 youth and other community members; has provided close to 8,000 hours of service to the community through salesforce.com's 400 employee volunteers; and offers the salesforce.com award winning online customer relationship management application to more than 100 qualified nonprofits globally saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. More information is available at www.salesforce.com/foundation.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the world's leader in delivering software-as-service. It offers the award-winning salesforce.com family of on-demand solutions for integrated sales force automation, campaign management, customer service and support, and document and file management to help companies meet the complex challenges of global customer communication. It has also introduced sforce, a new service that will change how applications are built as significantly as salesforce.com changed how applications are delivered. Sforce allows business application developers to use the tools that developers already love, combined with Web services provided by sforce, to rapidly build and deploy applications at a substantially lower cost than ever before. Salesforce.com has received considerable recognition in the industry, including Editors' Choice and two Five-Star ratings from PC Magazine, two Deploy Awards from InfoWorld, Investor's Choice Award from Enterprise Outlook, Editors' Choice from TMCLabs, Top 10 CRM Implementation from Aberdeen Group and InfoWorld's 2001 CRM Technology of the Year. The company has more than 8,000 customers and 110,000 subscribers in 110 countries running its services in 11 languages. Founded in 1999, salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia.

###

Salesforce.com and sforce are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.