Ronan Y.

Villagonzalo
Student No. 11894768

1% Philanthropic Model

In the course of doing readings related to business ethics and case study analysis, I came across the 1%
Philanthropic Model.

Pledge 1% encourages and invites companies to invest 1% of their valuable resources – equity, time, product,
and profit – to philanthropy, non-profit causes, or community service.

Masid-Danas (What?)
According to Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce (a cloud technology company), “The business of
business is improving the state of the world.” It was also Marc Benioff who started and institutionalized the 1%
model in his company and has been running for 18 years now. Since the founding of Salesforce, the company
has given more than $240 million in grants, 3.5 million hours of community service, and provided product
donations to more than 39,000 nonprofits and educational institutions.

According to Benioff, his goals for the company was to do well and to do good. He had a vision to for the
company to offer a new technology model by way of a new business model. And he also wanted to help his
community by way of a new philanthropic model which is 1-1-1 or the 1% model.

Salesforce is involved and is supporting 30,000 nonprofits and NGOs. The interaction of the company with
health care workers, environmentalists, and other NGO volunteers has impacted the consciousness of the
employees. They become happier and more fulfilled knowing that their work help and support caused bigger
than that of work or the corporation.

The company ensures that employees are granted the opportunity and ability to be directly involved with these
philanthropic projects. He cited one of the company’s executives just went to set up a school in Africa. The
company gives its employees four hours a month paid time off, which translates to six days a years that the
company pays them for their volunteerism.

Suri-Nilay (So What?)

I have realized that the lessons of Doc Kit is applied by some of the most successful tech companies in the
world. And that these ethical business models or philanthropic models actually help the company grow
stronger in terms of employee retention, talent development, and market expansion.

Taya-Kilos (Now What?)

With these forerunners in ethical philanthropic models, it is not far in the future that Filipino technology
companies will follow suit. And I hope that I will be involved in this endeavor as well. Hopefully soon.

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