Seven years ago, billionaire Marc Benioff’s cloud-computing company Salesforce gave San Francisco schools the biggest corporate gift the district had ever seen.

The check was for $2.7 million, enough to buy hundreds of iPads and wireless access for the city’s middle schools.

Benioff then told officials to ask for more, noting that his San Francisco company was “loaded” and committed to spending 1% of profits on philanthropic endeavors, including education.

They have been asking ever since.

This year, Salesforce will top the previous seven years, giving the city’s schools $8.5 million and $8.7 million to Oakland schools, which started getting the annual grants as well in 2016. The gifts bring the total donated to the two districts to $66 million. Oakland Unified’s annual budget is $570 million, and San Francisco Unified’s is $1 billion.

Salesforce remains the biggest donor in each district.

“We’re just as excited about it as we were day one, year one,” said Ebony Beckwith, Salesforce chief philanthropy officer. “I just love it’s something we’ve really stayed committed to.”

While initial funding was focused on technology, math and computer science, this year’s grants will support a wide range of programs, including services for refugee or recent immigrant students in Oakland as well as teacher recruitment and retention in the middle schools.

In San Francisco, administrators attribute the funding to helping boost math scores and put computer science courses in every middle school and high school, as well as in two-thirds of elementary schools.

Currently, 25,000 students take computer science, up from 700 prior to the grants, said Superintendent Vincent Matthews.

The district “has been able to go much further faster in transforming our schools,” he said.

The Salesforce funding also includes up to $150,000 in “innovation grants” for each middle school to be used for whatever the principal and school community want. It’s a rare, no-strings-attached donation that principals have eagerly anticipated each year.

Some have purchased furniture to create a more collaborative classroom with clusters of curvy desks. Others have created “maker” labs, launched coding classes, or paid for field trips and tutors.

At Presidio Middle School, every student has a Chromebook to use courtesy of Salesforce, while the library has new books and a librarian, who helped launch a Wednesday morning reading club for African American male students — led by the school security officer.

The students loved it, at one point taking a field trip to Oakland to meet author Angie Thomas and have her sign her book, “On the Come Up,” which they had read, said the school’s principal, Emma Dunbar.

“All these African American boys and some Latino boys joined in — (students who) maybe weren’t super motivated to be at school on time,” she said. “They had breakfast and read together every week.”

In addition to money, Salesforce also provides volunteers for the schools, who help paint, tutor or do whatever is needed. Benioff volunteers at Presidio, where his personal support helped build a new schoolyard, replacing the blacktop built in 1932, Dunbar said.

The new yard has trees, green spaces, a variety of seating and play areas, designed by students and staff in collaboration with a professional design team provided by Salesforce, the principal said.

“I think it’s made kids feel really loved, valued and important,” she said.

In the early years of the funding, Benioff vowed to pour $100 million into the local schools over a decade, saying people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10.

Benioff joined a growing group of high-tech titans — including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Netflix’s Reed Hastings — tossing money at education reform efforts with varying degrees of success or failure.

The Salesforce founder was something of an exception among the crowd, taking more of a hands-off approach, holding listening sessions with principals at his home or top-floor offices to hear how they were using the innovation grants and what they felt was still needed to help students.

Benioff’s nondisruptive philanthropy is rare in the public school world, where reform can mean take-it-or-leave-it money tied to a benefactor’s vision — small schools, smaller class sizes or an overhaul of high schools, for example.

“This is not just parents or local businesses contributing,” said Janelle Scott, UC Berkeley education professor. “These are big dollars dedicated to moving public education policy or curriculum in the imagination of the donors.”

While the Salesforce grants are less prescriptive than most, the question is still whether they will have a lasting impact, said Jason Dougal, executive vice president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.

While technology and tutors are great, they don’t change schools built for an industrial workforce 120 years ago, he said. The education system needs an overhaul, with educators and support systems — such as teacher training, recruitment and retention — that address the needs of all students.

“You don’t see a lot of sustained, improved performance for students long after the investment,” Dougal said. “More money into a broken system won’t help long term.”

It’s also unclear how long Salesforce will continue to make the annual and anticipated announcement of funding, something the districts and schools have come to rely on for extras.

Salesforce, however, won’t stop the gifts after 10 years, Beckwith said.

“We’re definitely not walking away,” she said. “We’re never not going to support the Bay Area.”

Benioff echoed that, saying the company “is committed to a long-term investment in public education. Everyone can adopt a public school. The results are felt throughout the community when you do. ... The dramatic results that we have seen over the last five years has motivated me to do even more.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker