Announcing the Salesforce.org Community Impact Report 2020

By: Brian Komar, VP of Global Impact Engagement; Eric Barela, Director of Measurement & Evaluation; & Morgan Buras-Finlay, Measurement & Evaluation Senior Manager

Today, we’re excited to announce the Salesforce.org Community Impact Report 2020. The report assesses the value we’re delivering to the social impact sector and breaks down our approach to impact.

The world looks pretty different from 12 months ago, when we released last year’s report. People all over the world are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, countries are fracturing along political lines, trust in institutions is eroding, and inequalities are exacerbating. Our customers in the nonprofit, education, and corporate philanthropy sectors are on the front lines of these crises and more.

At Salesforce.org, we believe a way to shine a light through the darkness is to celebrate the successes of our amazing customers. We view our impact reporting as our main method to share back, and be transparent about our theory of change, our data collection, and our outcomes. We hope it offers insight into how we add value for our community of customers and partners, and provides other organizations with an example of what transparent impact reporting looks like.

Our Approach to Social Impact

We’re focused on closing the gap between the social sector’s current impact and its full potential. We close this impact gap in three ways:

• Technology: We accelerate social sector impact through our transformative technologies.
• Community: We convene, connect, listen to, and learn from our community of customers and partners to co-create a better future.
• Partnerships: We build social innovation capacity through partner services, pro bono, and impact-led partnerships.

Contributing Social Value and Impact Through Technology, Community, and Partnerships

Creating Social Value Through Discounted and Donated Tech

For Fiscal Year 2020, we contributed $1.09B in social value, which is the sum of the value of our product donation and discounts and pro bono hours.

In order to achieve intentional change, we must understand how our work affects our customers and the communities they serve. We have created a standard methodology to quantify the total contribution of our technology and employee pro bono services. It is our hope that our new methodology will be adopted by our peers to calculate their own contributions to making the world a better place.

While Salesforce.org is excited to be contributing, we also know that our giving by itself does not translate to impact. Understanding our social value is necessary, but not sufficient, for understanding our impact. We must understand how our community leverages this contribution, and we have great evidence that our customers and partners are driving positive change!

Increasing Efficiency with Technology

This year, 82% of our customers reported that their use of Salesforce has changed or improved how their work gets done. Our technology programs include our three clouds: Nonprofit Cloud, Education Cloud, and Philanthropy Cloud. We want our customers to do a better job with the resources they have, nurture deep connections with their constituents and with their peers, be equipped to measure their own impact, and better fulfill their missions. To that end, our community outcomes referenced in the report focus on measuring efficiency, effectiveness, community connections, and innovation.

Creating Solutions for, and with, Our Community

The explicit work we do with our community focuses on providing opportunities for our customers and partners to collaborate on technology solutions for the social sector. Specific programs in this area include:

• The Power of Us Hub, an online community for Salesforce.org customers, certified partners and staff.
• Impact Labs, a collaborative program to co-design innovative technology solutions that address the toughest social issues facing us today.
• Open Source Commons and Community Sprints, where our Salesforce-savvy community gathers to co-create solutions together.

Building Social Innovation Capacity through Partnerships

We have approximately 300 consulting and product partners worldwide, and 64% of customers report using a partner/consultant to build, expand or enhance their instance.

The goal of our partnership programs is to enable and qualify our partner ecosystem and Salesforce employees to build the skills and expertise needed to help our customers succeed with Salesforce. Our customer outcomes are efficiency and effectiveness, and employee retention and satisfaction. Our work in this area also includes our Pro Bono Program. Of our customers who participated in our pro bono program, 86% indicated that they’re better able to fulfill their missions as a result of the engagement.

Our COVID-19 Response

As organizations of all types and sizes face new challenges presented by the global pandemic, we found that 61% of customers reported using Salesforce technology to overcome or manage challenges presented by COVID-19. With 73% of global nonprofits reporting a drop in revenue as a result of the pandemic, we’re committed to providing technological and operational support to help organizations meet growing community needs with even fewer resources.

We are actively partnering with our nonprofit and education customers to support them in this time of crisis, including creating opportunities to share best practices and learnings and through our pro bono program. Salesforce pro bono volunteers have taken on 126 COVID-19-related projects, logging more than 5,000 hours of pro bono support.

How Salesforce.org Measures and Reports on Social Impact

Results matter. To accurately report on our social impact, we focus on outcomes. We also know that it is important to see results in action via community stories. This year’s Community Impact Report contains both quantitative and qualitative data: numbers and stories. The data in this report draws from a variety of different sources, including the 2020 Technology for Social Change Survey, customer interviews, customer and employee surveys regarding pro bono engagements, and internal Salesforce.org data.

The Continuation of Our Impact Journey

We are driven by the belief that technology, when used for good, can change the world. As our planet and our community are experiencing multiple crises, it is our mission to support our community–our customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders–as we all work to improve societal outcomes and address inequalities. The Salesforce.org Community Impact Report 2020 reflects where we are on our impact journey. Our approach, frameworks, processes, offerings, and reporting have evolved, and will continue to evolve.

Download the Report