Salesforce.com Foundation Announces Force for Change Innovation Grants to Accelerate Nonprofit Transformation

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Salesforce.com Foundation today announced the Force for Change grant recipients, selected for their inspiring work, to help scale innovation and transform the nonprofit sector in the coming year.

"Our Force for Change grants program is focused on increasing collaboration and efficiencies across the global nonprofit sector and rewards innovators working to accelerate change," said Suzanne DiBianca, president, Salesforce.com Foundation.  "These recipients represent some of the most inspirational change agents in the social sector."

The Force for Change program was started in 2008. In North America, the program funds the development of technology solutions that help nonprofits more effectively achieve their missions. Internationally, the grants focus on supporting partners, who are themselves nonprofits or social enterprises, help our nonprofit customers use Salesforce to enhance their effectiveness and social impact. The Force for Change Grant recipients will receive more than $1.3 million dollars. Another Force for Change round of grantees is slated for the end of the year.

The Salesforce.com Foundation leverages the full 1/1/1 model of integrated corporate philanthropy with its Force for Change grantees. The 1/1/1 model combines the company's time, technology and financial resources to help the nonprofit community. In addition to the financial grants, the Salesforce.com Foundation offers both technology and employee volunteers to the Force for Change grantees.

The announcement takes place on the MLK Day of Service, an opportunity for Americans to honor Dr. King's legacy through service. DiBianca commented, "As Dr. King's public service legacy lives on today, there could not be a more apt time to honor the individuals and organizations around the world using innovation to better serve their communities and those around them."

Below are the Saleforce.com Foundation Force for Change grant recipients:

North America

• Beyond12 is focused on increasing the number of low-income students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities. Through a technology platform using Salesforce combined with a student coaching service, Beyond12 acts as a data and service bridge between K-12 and higher education to help high schools and colleges provide their disadvantaged students with the academic, social and emotional support they need to succeed in higher education and beyond.  Beyond12's grant will fund development of their mobile app built on Salesforce1, MyCoach, providing students with automated text message alerts delivered to their mobile devices and the Beyond12 College Success Facebook application, all monitored within Salesforce in order to bridge the information gap for underserved students.
• Construction Junction is one of the largest reuse retailers in the U.S.  Their mission is to promote conservation through the reuse of building materials. Rather than ending up as landfill, they are redirecting these materials into new projects. Construction Junction's grant will fund their development and distribution of Reuse Retail, an innovative solution built on Salesforce1 to manage core operational functions including tracking, managing and selling donated inventory in a retail environment.
• Grameen Foundation has a mission to help the world's poorest people reach their full potential.  In early 2013, Grameen Foundation launched TaroWorks, a mobile tool integrated with Salesforce, enabling the collection and management of data to aid a new category of poverty fighting organizations called "inclusive businesses." The goal is to increase the number of the poor moving out of poverty based on a TaroWorks user's improved understanding of their needs and the development of more effective products and services. Grameen Foundation's grant will fund the development of enhancements to the TaroWorks mobile solution built on Salesforce, including mapping and scheduling capabilities.
• Mission Asset Fund helps financially excluded communities, particularly low-income and immigrants, become visible, active, successful participants in the U.S. financial mainstream.  Through their social lending model called Lending Circles, built on Salesforce, Mission Asset Fund provides needed financial education social loans to those most in need. Mission Asset Fund received a grant to help scale Lending Circles in order to make social loans more widely available.
• NCB Capital Impact is a leading nonprofit community development financial institution that provides high impact financing to community health clinics, charter schools, housing and social service agencies. NCB Capital Impact received a grant to enable their development of an application on Salesforce1 called CounselorKeeper. The application will service an industry of thousands of nonprofit housing counseling agencies and certified housing counselors, and significantly improve direction of resources to better assist lower-income households.
• Polaris Project has a vision for a world without slavery. They serve all types of victims through a comprehensive approach including social services, policy advocacy, training and hotlines. Their U.S. national human trafficking hotline, built on Salesforce, has received over 85,000 calls, helped identify more than 11,000 victims, and become one of the largest data sets on human trafficking in the world. Polaris Project received a grant to enable the packaging and sharing of their solution built on Salesforce1, including hotline and mobile communication tools, so that organizations in other countries will have the same technology to efficiently and effectively reach, empower and rescue victims.

International

• Charity Technology Trust (UK) works with the third sector in the UK to use technology to enhance the way they work and collaborate. Their grant is being used to increase the success achieved by nonprofits using donated Salesforce licenses by creating a 'meeting place' for these organizations to engage more effectively with the salesforce.com partner community, and target nonprofits that don't have budgets that allow for fully-funded, larger scale projects.
• Enclude (Ireland) is focused on building apps for specific verticals within the nonprofit sector. They have received a grant to enhance their work providing low-cost implementation and consulting services to nonprofits in Ireland using Salesforce. They will also be expanding to provide these services in Africa.
• NPO Support Center (Japan) are using their grant to partner with Japan consulting partner Fundrex to strengthen the use of the Nonprofit Starter Pack in Japan by creating promotional materials of Salesforce resources for nonprofits, holding seminars and trainings on Salesforce technology and developing the supporting tools to use that technology.
• NPTech Technologies for Nonprofit Organizations (Israel) promote the use of Salesforce technology among Israeli nonprofit organizations so they can more easily make data-driven decisions, advance transparency and accountability within their organizations, and more effectively and efficiently accomplish their missions. Their grant will enable them to continue development of their Technology Education and Implementation Model to broaden successful Salesforce use among Israeli nonprofits and to provide training and workshops, develop a customer support service and offer on-boarding, project management, implementation and consulting services to nonprofits using Salesforce.
• Third Sector IT (UK) is a social enterprise supporting nonprofits to use Salesforce through training and consulting services. Their grant is enabling them to offer free Salesforce training for nonprofits to advance their missions more effectively and efficiently.
• U-Turn (South Africa) is a homeless agency offering low-cost Salesforce consulting and implementation services, together with a monitoring and evaluation tool called DELSTAT built on Salesforce1, to smaller nonprofit organizations. Their grant is being used to make this service provision profitable, so the income can be used to enhance U-Turn's core mission of the provision of rehabilitation and reintegration services to homeless people.
• Vera Solutions (Kenya & India) believes in the power of data to transform the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations working for social change. They provide low-cost implementation and consulting services to nonprofits and social enterprises in Africa and India.  Their grant will enhance their services including consulting, marketing, advocacy, training, capacity building, and online learning.

COMMENTS ON THE NEWS:

"These grants represent the largest Force for Change grants in our history and this growth is enabled by our social enterprise model," added DiBianca. "As we continue to grow, our ability to provide time, technology and financial resources to the nonprofit community also increases."

"Polaris Project is excited to partner with the Salesforce.com Foundation in an effort to enable and distribute its human trafficking hotline solution around the world. Our Force for Change grant allows us to build a community of NGOs dedicated to harnessing technology to support survivors of human trafficking and to combat slavery," said Bradley Myles, executive director and CEO, Polaris Project.

"Our Force For Change grant has been so much more than a financial grant. The Foundation has been supporters and partners in so many other ways. It's been a fantastic and mutually beneficial relationship, stemming from a strong alignment in our visions for how Salesforce and Force.com can benefit the East African and Indian NGO, social enterprise and commercial sectors. We look forward to a continued partnership!" said Karti Subramanian, co-founder, Vera Solutions.

"Our Force for Change grant has played a critical part in the development of our TaroWorks application. Grameen Foundation is tightly focused on helping the poor create a world without poverty. Our relationship with salesforce.com and use of its platform allow us to stay focused on that, and rapidly build powerful mobile tools and get them in the field where they can improve lives. This partnership, where we both bring our strengths to empower the poor, is a powerful force in our work," said Steve Andersen, chief technology officer, Grameen Foundation.  

More information about Force for Change, including previous grantees, can be found at http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/force-for-change.

ABOUT THE SALEFORCE.COM FOUNDATION:

The Salesforce.com Foundation is the social enterprise arm of salesforce.com and is based on a simple idea: Leverage salesforce.com's people, technology, and resources to help improve communities around the world. We call this integrated philanthropic approach the 1/1/1 model. To date, the Foundation has spurred more than 530,000 hours of community service, dispersed $53 million in grants, and more than 20,000 mission-driven nonprofit organizations are using Salesforce products for free or heavily discounted rates.

Salesforce, Salesforce1 and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com.

SOURCE The Salesforce.com Foundation