For folks who could not make our summer recruiting party, below is 30 minute movie of Suzanne’s talk. If you are interested in corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, this is a must see.

Suzanne is the current and founding Executive Director of Saleforce.com’s Foundation. Suzanne is also on the board of the national Entrepreneur’s Foundation and is an alumni of the University of Colorado.

Suzanne started the talk by playing a video of all the good work that the Salesforce.com Foundation has done. At the end of the video below, Suzanne explains how the newest part of the foundation works as a social enterprise. It serves non-profit, and university markets with an 80% discounted subscription of the complete Salesforce.com offering. This is very interesting funding model that is really worth the listening to.

Thank you again Suzanne and the Salesforce.com Foundation for supporting the Entreprenuer’s Foundation of Colorado.

During our first 2 years, we recruited 27 companies and the exits of 5 of those companies put over $100,000 into the community. So we are having a party!
If you do not have an invitation, please contact us to join the Board of the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Colorado and its executive members in attending our 2009 recruiting party. This party for member companies, prospects and local service providers aims to connect socially minded, entrepreneurial executives along the Front Range in a dialogue of corporate social responsibility and give-back. Sponsored by Boulder Ventures, Cooley Godward-Kronish,LLP, Ground Floor Media, Hogan and Hartson, Kendall, Koenig & Oelsner, Rally Sofware, Quist Valuations, Salesforce.com Foundation, Square1 Bank and TechStars Investors.
The event will feature a presentation from Suzanne DiBianca, the Executive Director of the Salesforce.com Foundation and graduate of CU Boulder. Suzanne was instrumental in forming the Foundation with Marc Benioff as Salesforce.com was just starting in 1999. In addition to forming and actively managing this shining star, she as been instrumental in sharing their 1% model with other organizations. (Share the Model) Suzanne and Marc have donated materials to EFCO and product to local non-profits including EFCO/Community Foundation and Intercambio. Following Suzanne’s talk and questions, we will introduce companies to EFCO model, beneficiaries and local resources for corporate volunteering and give-back.

On May 28th, the Boulder County Business Report will present its Mercury 100 awards for the fastest growing companies in Boulder County.
As part of the presentation, Tom Keller will present a quick overview of the Entrepreneur Foundation of Colorado. Tom’s story is great. He is a serial entrepreneur who worked at 5 different companies in Boulder County in this decade. Tom was recently the CEO of Intense Debate that was acquired by Automatic.
Tom will tell his personal story with regards to EFCO, the story of EFCO’s impact on Boulder Community in 2008 and his personal involvement with BlueSkyBridge. BlueSkyBridge works to prevent child abuse here in Boulder County and was one of the recipients of funding from Boulder Community Foundation in 2008.
Come listen, learn, get inspired and help lead Boulder County.

On Friday Mike Platt (a founding partner of Cooley in Colorado and a Founding Trustees of EF Colorado) and I gave a lunch presentation about the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado to the staff at Silicon Valley Bank’s Colorado office.  SVB and Cooley are in the same building so a handful of Cooley partners joined in. 

Scott Bergquist – the Division Manager of this region for SVB – coordinated the meeting.  His comments summarized things nicely.

“Gentlemen – thank you both very much for spending the time with the group.  With lots of young folks in the audience, I believe the message resonated well beyond the specifics of EFCO – e.g. philanthropy feels good and dollars amounts don’t matter, so get started.  Thanks for broadening the thinking of our team and we will evangelize the program at every opportunity.”

Scott – thanks to you and everyone at SVB Colorado for your support of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.  And thanks for making sure I had a special veggie potato for lunch.