Marc Benioff challenges Bay Area's tech leaders to give more Benioff challenges peers to donate, change image

Salesforce.com employees Ernest Ng, left, helps Courtney Loomis dump her bag of canned food into a drum during a food drive at their Market St. offices in San Francisco, CA, Thursday, March 6, 2014. Salesforce.com employees Ernest Ng, left, helps Courtney Loomis dump her bag of canned food into a drum during a food drive at their Market St. offices in San Francisco, CA, Thursday, March 6, 2014. Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Marc Benioff challenges Bay Area's tech leaders to give more 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff is challenging fellow tech leaders to raise millions to fund a new antipoverty program - and recast the industry as a local hero.

"We don't want to be the industry that looks like 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' " he told The Chronicle. "We want to be more benevolent."

On Friday - the software company's 15th birthday - Salesforce and the nonprofit Tipping Point will announce the formation of SF Gives, an initiative to raise $10 million over the next 60 days for Bay Area antipoverty programs.

Persuading 20 companies to contribute $500,000 apiece is just the start. Benioff, one of the city's leading philanthropists, said he hopes to eventually expand the program to $100 million. It's a challenge he hopes will inspire his future colleagues to believe local philanthropy is a part of their DNA when they start their companies, not an afterthought once they have piled up millions of dollars.

After only a few days working the phones, Benioff and Tipping Point have already landed more than $5 million in commitments from tech concerns large and small - including LinkedIn, Google, Zynga, PopSugar, IfOnly, Jawbone and Box. Tipping Point will distribute the money to some of the 45 Bay Area organizations it works with in fighting poverty.

'You can't just take'

Along with Google's recent pledge to give $6.8 million to fund two years of Muni rides for working-class youths, the challenge is the latest example of how some tech players are heeding public and private pressure to give back. City leaders hope SF Gives is a crystallizing moment for a new generation of philanthropists - something like a 21st century incarnation of longtime cultural patron and investor Warren Hellman.

"We have to keep a light on this idea that if you come to San Francisco, you need to also be committed to giving back," Benioff said. "You can't just take from our city. You can't just come here from another city, another state, another country, start a company, take advantage of all of our resources - and then leave with all of your money that you created.

"Now is the time that we have to make it crystal clear that tech is an industry that not only adds value through innovation, it adds value through philanthropy," said the native San Franciscan, whose family has lived in the city since the 1800s.

In recent years, Benioff and his wife, Lynne, have donated $100 million toward the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, more than $1.5 million to help homeless families and $2.7 million for public middle schools.

Since its inception, Salesforce.com has followed a 1/1/1 model - a promise to donate 1 percent of its equity, 1 percent of its employees' time and 1 percent of the firm's products to charity. What's different about Friday's challenge is how Salesforce, Tipping Point and Ron Conway, venture capitalist and head of the tech group sf.citi, have rallied other tech companies to join forces in giving.

While the tech boom has lowered San Francisco's unemployment rate to 4.8 percent, 1 in 5 Bay Area residents lives in poverty and soaring housing prices have forced many low- and middle-income residents to leave the city.

"The idea that Marc Benioff is putting out - to build community by giving back to the community - is one that will resonate beyond the dollar amount," said Kim Meredith, executive director of Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.

New generation of giving

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee called the challenge a "milestone" moment and put Benioff at the front of a new generation of philanthropy.

"For him to say that we can do more, that we can also ask others to join in this effort, is to me defining success for more than themselves," Lee said. "To me, that's what Hellman, (Donald) Fisher and (Charles) Schwab have done, and he is representing a new generation."

Lee said Google representatives spoke privately with city staff members this week about how the search behemoth could help address the city's affordable-housing crisis.

Daniel Lurie, the founder of Tipping Point, said Friday's announcement "represents a sea change, a cultural shift that's going on" among San Francisco's tech industry. He said many of his early fundraising calls have gone well. Getting Google to jump on board, for example, was easy.

'There is a dark side here'

But Benioff said not every tech executive that he has chatted up has been ready to join hands. Philanthropy insiders and those knowledgeable about the industry say tech founders tend to be fiercely independent entrepreneurs who prefer to go at it alone. Plus, many newer organizations are so heads-down focused on building their companies that they overlook needs in the community.

"We still have some pretty epic companies here who have had IPOs and aren't giving - and aren't part of this and won't join. And entrepreneurs who don't believe in this. This is not all easy," Benioff said. "There is a dark side here. We get a guy on the phone, and he will say, 'No. No. That's not for us. We're not doing this.' "

Even the loudest critics of the region's tech boom praised the new initiative, though housing activist Ted Gullickson said he wished the money would be focused exclusively on the city's affordable-housing crisis.

The tech industry tends to attract highly paid workers from outside the city who bid up the city's housing stock, "so their impact is felt far less on health care or other social services," said Gullickson, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Benioff brushes off criticism that some tech companies are making contributions because it is the political price of doing business in San Francisco - a way to tamp down the public outrage. He said he will take the charity "any way I can get it."

"Let's just get the cash and give it away," he said. "I don't care what the motivation is because I know at the end of the day when they actually do give we will get results. It can be a domino effect."

Charity party at kickoff

Salesforce.com employees will celebrate the company's anniversary and kick off the challenge at Justin Herman Plaza at 11 a.m. Friday. Singer Janelle Monáe will perform.

In typical Salesforce fashion, it won't just be a party - employees will put together 15,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now and donate more than 15,000 pounds of food to the needy. It's also open to the public, but, as Benioff pointed out, there is a price of admission: a donation of 15 cans of food.