Can Business Do Well While Also Doing Good?

Marc Benioff most of you know here in San Francisco. He is the founder; he is the CEO and Chairman of salesforce.com. That organization - that company has grown from a groundbreaking idea that is selling software as a service into a publicly trading traded company that is the technology leader in on-demand business services. In July of 2000, in other words very close to launching of his of the company itself he launched the foundation, the Salesforce Foundation which is aimed at bridging the digital divide, Salesforce Foundation has pioneered the one percent model and I will be talking to Marc about that and asking him to describe that to us. In 2004, he coauthored a book called Compassionate Capitalism, it was a best practices guide for corporate philanthropy, very much like the second book that you will be hearing about, The Business of Changing the World, which has contained in it essays from 20 business leaders who have chosen strategic philanthropy as integral to their business. Joining Marc tonight are going to be two of the book's contributors, Alan Hassenfeld and Laura Scher. Alan Hassenfeld is Chairman and he is the former CEO of Hasbro Incorporated which is one of the worlds best known sources toy manufactures, if you are part of my generation you know it as the source of Mr. the Potato Head - Mr. Potato Head of course was what we were all raised on and G.I. Joe. He helped to manage and grow this family company into a corporation with revenues in excess of $2.9 billion. He has been active in charitable causes from the start, both nationally and locally in his home state of Rhode Island, he is a board member of Hasbro's two philanthropic divisions, The Hasbro Charitable Trust and The Hasbro Children's Foundation. And he contributed, as I mentioned before a chapter to The Business of Changing the World. Laura Scher is a cofounder, Chairperson, CEO of Working Assets, a long distance credit card and wireless company that is dedicated to changing the world, dedicated to a more humane and more just and more environmentally sustainable world. This is a company that has as its core mission, social change. She has co-founded the company in 1985, shortly after graduating from Business School. Under her leadership that company has donated $35 million to progressive groups such as Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Children's Defense Fund, she contributed the 16th chapter to this book. So please join me in welcoming Marc Benioff, Alan Hassenfeld and Laura Scher. Jim is going to help them with their microphone, so we are about to get mic'd up. Alan flew in from Boston for this, running into one of my oldest friends in the Boston Airport, so we got a chance to knew about soft power, for those of you have heard Joe Nice, I think in the World Affairs Council before. I am going to start with you Marc, so we want to know whether you are well mic'd. I am. You are you are in good shape, because this is the second book that you have done on corporate philanthropy and on strategic philanthropy generally. Why? What is your objective? Are you hoping to see a contingent of philanthropy? Are you what is your goal in these two books? I think our goal is awareness, I think our goal is to demonstrate how easy and natural it is to be able to build philanthropy into a business from the start, or even existing business, one of the things that we have done as we have spoken about this more and more to different companies around the world always get the question how do we do it, you know, when I went to Business School, I had classes in sales, in marketing and finance but there was no class on corporate strategic philanthropy. It it really came about that in 1997 I started, I was working at Oracle and I started Oracle's Foundation which was a $100 foundation with computers in schools and our as we toured around the country and did that, actually around the world and we even did on 100 school in Hunters Point, we are doing a school for Colin Powel in Washington D.C. called McFarland Middle School. And the thing that was interesting about this school was I write about this in the book we had several employees dedicated to this initiative and very you know, very smart guys and ladies and we had a couple of them out there at McFarland and I got a call and so took care of the computers here and we have the network supplies, everything is here, we have a problem and so what is that problem? I said what the problem is that it's about a 110 degrees here in Washington D.C. We are from San Francisco, you know, we are used to about 58 degrees, overcast and we are not going to make it up, 35 to stair for all these computers and these boxes in theirs, no Oracle employees have turned out to help us. And part of the reason why no Oracle employees kind of turned out to help is it wasn't really cultural. They didn't know that it was important to Larry or to even you know, to board, everybody else, it wasn't part of their culture. So I called Colin Powel and I said General Powel, we are at McFarland Middle School, we got a quite a scram, a few blocks away, may be you can head over the school because we need a hand to get these computers, see that was a very hot day and I said, yeah, I heard about that, and he goes, well, let me see what I can do. So my our team calls us about 10 minutes later and they go, you know, a battalion of Marines just showed up and we you know, we are able now to get the computers up up the stairs and the point of the story is very, very simple simple which is that for philanthropy to be successful in a company it has to be integrated. Integrated, a simple word but very complicated when you think about a company as a collection of people, a collection of values, the common vision it has to be part of the culture and it was not part of the culture at Oracle from the beginning and so I said to myself that day that when I start my own company which would happen about a years ago March 8th 1999 You would have a bunch of marines? - that we would have a bunch of marines, exactly. And kind of it in that way that we would create these people from the start and what we did was on the day we founded the company, one percent of our equity one percent of our which was worth nothing at that point, one percent of our time, we had no employees, so it didn't really matter, four hours paid up a month and you know, six days a year didn't mean anything and one percent of our profits we had done, it was kind of irrelevant, what we said was if the company is going to be start to be successful and grow and so forth as it grew, as it would be successful, as things were happening, then automatically, without any effort¸ without any additional work from us it would be there. And it even gets down to like our new employee orientation you know, every employee is required and part of new employee orientation go out to do service work. So right from the beginning, the first day of employment, they know this is part of what we do at Salesforce. So whether its in south you know, whole San Francisco homeless connect here in the city or whether its doing you know, the special Olympics in Singapore or whether its you know, doing the YMCAs and so forth, you know in Ireland, wherever we are in the world we - this is part of what we do and who we are as a company. Its not we are not just remediate and its not just about writing a check 20 years after we started the company, okay, now we have all our you know, got billions of dollars, so here is your money, you know, what we do is a company, this is part of our mission. At the point which your company went public, that one percent of equity was worth what? Well, today I think our foundation holds $20 million to $30 million by assets and we have already given away more than $10 million in direct contributions and of course it's not just its not just the money its other things too. Its it's the time, it's the - you know, 50,000 hours of time now that have happened. It's - we run 1600 nonprofits or close to 2000 nonprofits now for free. It's it's -. What is that when you say you run them for free? We provide our our system, our tools, our capabilities to organizations where 501(c)(3) Public Charities for no charge. So United Way managed all the information for Katrina on our systems. The United Nations Food Program managed all of the Asian Tsunami on our systems. A lot of the - you know, the Red Cross here in the Bay Area manages all of the its disaster really for using our systems for no charge. We don't charge 501(c)(3) Public Charities or Universities for the use of Salesforce.com. We do that as part of our mission. Now, Google has since adopted your integrated approach - Uh-huh. - just one percent of -. Yeah, the 111 model, that's right. The 111 model, was that the result of did you present that to them? Yes, well basically what happened was, I was doing a presentation very similar to what we are doing right now. In 2003, at the Stanford, and Larry and Serge were in the front row and then at afterwards they came up to me said that we had never heard that this was even possible. And so we are going to adopt the 111 model wholesale and they have hired Larry Brilliant to run it and obviously must be he is a smart guy, so with the name like Brilliant. Or at least he is labeled with that name Brilliant. Absolutely and they have created a foundation worth a billion and a half dollars they won, which was pretty cool. So that will probably be the most successful thing that we will have ever done. So you could probably just go. We can just quit at this point. So -. This is what leverage truly is. Yeah. And that's really the and by the way it doesn't stop with Google I think that Suzanne DiBianca who runs her foundation is here and lot of what she does - is go out and evangelize and encourage and control. And that wasn't just that one presentation Suzanne had to make many trips obviously down to Google, and down - you know, down 101 to kind of educating, communicating, understanding even, you know, one of our competitors who is getting ready to go public, you know, email me and said, hey, you know, I know we are competitor but we really want to adopt your model or you know, we think that as the right thing for us and how do we do that? And so again, you know, where this is a part of our role it is to teach and educate and evangelize not just our new technology model and our new business model which is what salesforce.com is all about but this new full philanthropy model as well and this is very much part of our mission. And before we get deeper into that model that who came before you? I mean you were focused on who will come after but I noticed in your book for example that John Morgridge, former CEO now chairman of of CISCO has contributed a chapter. And there is somebody, who really worked to instill the culture of philanthropy at CISCO. Do we have a sense of the kind of impact that people like John Morgridge have had in Silicon Valley? Well I think that I think that the key to Silicon Valley is that it is done not enough. I don't know if anyone who would say the Silicon Valley is a philanthropic oriented industry or that the Bay areas kind of companies do enough. I think there is lot more to do. So I kind of gave the example of Oracle. Certainly CISCO is a very philanthropic company and to that extent Oracle is a very philanthropic company and on and telling on and on and on but are they hitting these best practices, you know, and are they measuring volunteerism, are they measuring the amount of capital that they are giving away? You know, is there a percentage of their equity reserved? It's more than just doing good works today it's really are you doing best practices? I mean the world is in a lot of trouble and really governments are not able to act probably as efficiently as quickly and even as globally as corporations can. So I think corporations have to step-up and be part of of the solution and not just comment on the problem. Now the core what core argument in in the book and in Mark's -. (Inaudible) listening to Marc keep making him talk. But the - his core argument in his evangelizing is that philanthropy is good for business and how is that been for Hasbro? Has that been the case for Hasbro when it comes to the relations with your customers, potential partners, even investors and certainly with your employees? What will this philanthropy play in their thinking? Well first one, I think you have to take philanthropy the choice I have to take overall Corporate Social responsibility because there are many legs to the table and when I say that there is sustainability, there is environment, there is human rights, there is philanthropy. Being a good a company that does break philanthropy, they doesn't mean you are a good company. You know I - you can go back to the Enron days. Enron is very charitable in certain areas, but I think it's a combination of a budget things. As far as - first of all being in the and it's not the toy business, it's the children's leisure and entertainment business. I'm still back with Mr. Potato Man. I only say that because that comments a higher multiple on Wall Street. You know, it's like a Silicon Valley word, you know, where multiple. But seriously Milton Friedman used to say, "The business of business is making money", the bottom-line and I think if Milton was really dealing today, number one, if you are good if your company has a good reputation both in philanthropy and the way you run it, you are able to attract better people. Because people, at the end of the day people want to work A) in a in a job or in something that they really enjoy that they like to work with the company that has a good reputation and really does things. Number two, you can't attract good people unless you are involved in the communities that you are working that you are living and working and because without good education systems, without good hospitals, you can't attract people. And, I also you know being in - I was managed to be an English major in college in creative writing and I can remember can indeed and it used to be, you know, Voltaire writing about, cultivating ones garden. And I think it's very important, we look all over the world, you know, whether it's China, whether it's India, whether it's Brazil. Those are future markets for us. And so many times I say that that some of the things that we are doing and I'm not really talking close related marketing, in this case I am talking philanthropy that you are really seeding the field for the future. If you have a great name in China - okay and you might not be doing much business. There are things that you can do in the future because you've set up relationships. And I think its true anywhere. So I think that, you know, there is the short-term that people worry about and there is the long term and you got to marry those two today. Because if we are going to be anything in the future, then we really you know, I try to say the people that if you really want to be part of the 21st century, you damn well had better be socially responsible because everything that we do at the end of the day, people are able to to know about. In many cases if it's a factory issue, they know before we know that something going wrong. But and at the same point in time being socially responsible, being philanthropic makes you feel pretty darn good. But last thing that I think is really important, that I and I don't have any numbers or anything, but the CEO of a company can't mouth these words. He's got to truly he or she has got to basically act those words. You know when I say act them, people can see through all of us very, very easily by your body language, by - whether you really mean something. And so, you know, my job as I become the Chairman of Hasbro is much more to be the guardian the ethics guardian, the guardian of the gate, you know, there are certain things we shouldn't make or or this and that. But I also beginning the question on the philanthropy side mark and this is interesting. Many of us talk about the company is giving and - yeah, we see the CEO salaries today. How much are the CEO's or the people that have made these huge fortunes, how much are they putting their skin where the company is putting their skin? And it's something that, you know, just beginning to play with right now. Sounds like the this sounds like another book. Just yeah - well. And then - You can write this one. No, no no. Marc has been - you know, Marc and I've been doing. You know have been and Laura have been at this for a while. And I should say that salesforce.com yesterday or or on Monday received the committee to encourage corporate philanthropy's small company - small company Marc got a lot of work to do. Small company Award for excellence in in philanthropy. But the last thing going back to the business question and this goes back to our friend (John Iye) and that's talking a little bit about what's called soft power. And I don't want to get political tonight because you know wouldn't be right but over the last six and half years as I traveled the world, its very hard for me to comprehend how much of the stature that America once had, we have lost. And one of the things by dealing philanthropy and by worrying about the environment, if you take those with you as you go when you are working in other countries, you really do help America become strong again. And I more on that later. You both I am about to turn to just by mentioning by saying that it wouldn't be right to talk about political causes, I have to turn to Laura but first before I do just wanted to note that both Marc and you have referred to Tsunami and of course there was a case where the public attitudes towards the United States had really plummeted, in Indonesia and in the region and after the American response to the Tsunami, including the response of individuals and of companies of the private sector as well as the public sector, there was this dramatic reversal. So in fact the demonstration of soft power that was really clear there. And we learned that I don't know if people notice that about $13 billion was raised for Tsunami relief around the world. But as of you know, last January 11 of 2006, one year after the Tsunami, only 21 percent of that money had been spent. Too often, you know, if you are going to do philanthropy or you are going to do the right thing you need partners and that's what Marc was saying, with the NGO's, the Non Government Organizations, the Civil Society, 90 percent of the NGO's were doing great work, but what we learnt there and what we learnt in Pakistan was as we put money in or we sent goods in, sometimes we mean well but we don't think and when I say that we sent the wrong clothes, we sent the wrong tents. And when you go back to the Tsunami relief it was a matter of many of the global NGOs weren't as good as the local NGOs in getting things done. But its good to do the right thing but you also have to be willing to partner with people and just a lot to do. Let me turn to Laura because here we have been talking about integrated philanthropy, what you have done is create a company whose core mission is social change. And so I would love to have you talk a little bit about that model, but you can't do so without telling the comedians joke about your master card. So so do at least start with that. Well, I do want to say a couple of things to respond to some of the other things that have been said. But we at Working Assets, I mean we are a phone company and so we have a phone billing, during disasters we raise money through the phone bill so, and a month we raise a $100,000 to sent to Pakistan to build a school and we actually worked for a partner who is in the room. So we reviewed a lot of proposals and we worked with global fund for women which has I mean the school was built in several months and the children are going to the schools, so there is an example of a partner that actually is located in the Bay area but has their partners around the world and very quickly was able to deploy resources and change the lives of the some of the people affected by the earthquake, so but in the book which you are going to get afterwards there is a line about Paula Poundstone and I don't think you know this part but the line in the book says that Paula Poundstone had used the mass you know, how much uses the Mastercard, well Paula Poundstone is a customer of Working Assets, so that's sort of the irony of the chapter as that she has been a customer of Working Assets and has spoken at one of our donations parties, so some of you may even have heard her if you are customers. But what we do at Working Assets is take so as you said . Better line is what you upon mic . Okay, how much money would be going to non-profit groups, because Working Assets donates a percent of the revenue, not just profit. So we we started before you could lead the way and we donate one percent of our revenue which is a very different number and is a bigger number and - you know, and we do it regardless of whether we have profitability, so in the beginning of Working Assets we chose to make donations instead of to earn the profit. So so you are turning consumers into philanthropists just by virtual consuming. Yes - right. So the concept behind Assets is that we are offering people products they can use everyday yet they have a donation element to that. And what we have done you know, we are now 20 years old if we have taken it beyond the philanthropy and we have created a whole activism within our customer base. We are giving our customers both the opportunity to generate donations for nonprofit groups and the numbers are actually 50 million since we started the '35, so every year it gets bigger and bigger so it's the power of sort of using everyday purchases to generate donations. And then our phone bill and our website are activists and newsletter that gives you information that you can speak out and try the effect social change both through donating money and through or using our voices. And we generate a 100,000 letters, phone calls, emails and faxes every month. And - And these are these are emails and faxes to policy makers? To corporate decision makers, to political decision makers I mean just this month this this one is kind of surprising but, I am going to just read this quickly but this is our phone this is what our phone bill from working Assets looks like. You have to dig through to find your there are phone charges on here but it's really a newsletter so a fair work place begins with (indiscernible) they sound like stories from a different era. A Georgia woman was fired when her company installed the policy against employing gay people. A married man in Kansas was refused the job because someone hinted he might be homosexual. Is there but the stories are recent. I mean these are not old stories. The stories are recent and the people had no recourse because only 14 states have lost barring discrimination against workers based on sexual orientation. So there is a federal employment on discrimination act which will ensure all Americans the right to a fair work place and it has wide support from Fortune 500 companies. So why do we not have that bill passed? So in your phone bill you can call for free your senator and tell them to cosponsor this bill. And this is something we were talking about earlier. Why don't we have a minimum wage? Why is the minimum wage not increased in this country. So I am sure that the minimum wage increase, probably has wide support from Fortune 500 companies just like this does. And for some reason, we as the voters need to speak out and ask our elected officials to affect the change that we want to see in the world. Now now - so you have policy changed though as as an expressive girl and you have chosen political issues as the core issues that that (indiscernible) things like reproductive health and but these are seen in policy terms. Would this be a problem for Hasbro to do the same? Is it is it off brand for a company that produces toys and entertainment to have a political message? Oh. I it's different I think, now that I am chairman I can do whatever I want. You can be off brand - I can do whatever I want. I I have already issues again, all of our success has been because of childrens children and families. And so anything that deals with children and family, we have a right to stand up and fight for. If you are going to fight, you know, when I say that one of the strange things is there is something called the convention on the child. Okay. There are only two countries in the world that have not ratified the convention on the child. Somalia and the United States, okay. There are very few countries that haven't has the land mind protocol. We are one of those and you know, one of the things is I think that is long issue of fighting issues for your constituency. If we are looking for a political gain, you know, from one of these things, then I think I would have to move you know, move away. I will tell you the few times that I testified at hearings on social issues. I am amazed how crowded the room is when a business man comes to speak on a social issue. If I am going to speak on an issue that deals with free trade with China nobody shows up. But I think that they are amazed when we do take our time out because this had to do with hunger and feed in universal feeding programs and in in doing that but I don't think there is any problem with company you know, absolutely being in front of an issue as long as its - you know, a holistic issue but if again if you are if you are there for your own special gain, no, we don't do that. But it's interesting that you picked fair trade as free trade as your example because of course the argument for it can be a social argument rather than than just a self interest argument from that particular company. But the gain is to come from a more even playing field. Okay, the free trade issue and the globalization issue I mean I you know, I find it fascinating once in a while I watch Lou Dobbs Tonight, not that I want to. And you know, when all of a sudden I there were expressions that I heard 30 years I am only 25 by the way. But I can remember 30 years ago and nearly doing a debate or something. We talked about Red China or Communist China. Lou Dobbs is still calling China Red China and I am still saying what is going on here no wonder the American people have no conception of what's going on in the world and I think that, you know, we could get into a long discussion on the (indiscernible) around and and farming subsidies. I know in my industry and this is something that - you know, I would fight against. There is a sugar cartel controlled by people really in the southern part of this country and I know of one major candy company that moved from Wisconsin to Canada. And the only reason that they moved it wasn't labor, labor in America was $19 an hour, in Canada it was $15 and $0.74. 99 percent of their cost was sugar. We subsidized sugar source $0.21 a pound. The real world market for sugar is $0.7 a pound. So by going to Canada, they finally they finally threw in the towel. Yes the jobs moved, but that had nothing to do. That was the converse of free trade.That was bought trade. And there is a lot of that that goes on. I think that if we all were dealing with a level of field that there are so many special interests that are playing around. I think it I think that the whole free trade issue gets a bad name. So the chair now that I have found out the chairman can say whatever he darn well please - this sounds like a great job. The - No I can't really. In fact anyway go ahead. I am not allowed to project. But you have you have taken a stand on camping finance for a firm which of course infuriates whoever is in office, right. Because whoever is in office, is somebody who has learned how to function within that system. Is that something that the company is taking that on or has it not and -? Well, I - I took it on because having done some reform work in Rhode Island it was important that campaigning finance I mean we in other countries I think they call it bribery. We call it campaign finance. And this was just a matter of standing up for something. It wasn't going to hurt the company, or help the company either way. Unless someone in Washington who we have said, we have upset a couple of people. I can remember that the funny story coming out of this was my the one thing that I got for fighting for campaign finance reform which we sort of got within the came bill was like at eight hours before the federal - was a subpoenaed for eight hours owned by the FEC and the republican party on campaign finance, because I had called it bribery. Marc, the you have focused in mostly on trying to bridge the digital divide both internationally and at home. Say a word just a little about what's Salesforce has done with respect to undeserved kids in the inner city and trying to provide them a kind of access they can have to information? Well as you know or as I mentioned at Oracle we started with this putting computers in schools and then 95, 96, 97 the big thing was wiring schools. Kids getting on the internet, as everyone on the internet and this type of thing and those issues still go on and you see that like we have one laptop portrayed and all of these things. And I think what was exciting for me about our philanthropic efforts at Salesforce and specifically the work of our foundation was that we started out with kind of this initiative in fact we did computer labs and we put, you know, computers on schools and we did some of these things but our foundation is really I think evolved and changed. Today it has - Suzanne, what is it - 16 employees, I never get the number right, 16 employees. We just did the did a talk on this, so I go the number finally. You know 16 employees around the world. And its job is really to take the power of the company, its 2000 some employees are growing and its assets - okay and its technology and to push that out into the communities where we are doing the business. That's really what we are doing today. I wouldn't say that there is a yes, we do a lot of work with youth and yes, we do a lot of work in these different areas like bridging the digital divide and so forth but I wouldn't say that we are a singularly focused as we were. And the reason why that is is, we look at our philanthropy kind of have a look at our product and that what kind of constantly listening to our customer in terms of where do they want this thing to go. I don't think that we have a specific outcome except for making the communities that we do business in better. But the place where we are going to hear that is from the employees in those communities. That's why we have employee councils, we have matching programs and why we really look to a lot of our employees to help us to kind to go to the places that are important. I don't feel especially confident anymore in choosing of what specifically our foundation should try to go and do like I used to. When we were small and when we have all kind of thing and we are like all right, we are going to go do X. Today I think it's a lot more defused. Yes, we have these things these base academy. But yes, we are also running a Homeless Connect here in the city. When we started the company there was no Homeless Connect but if you go to San Francisco Homeless Connect Program. Here this is only an example. Okay. You are going to find if you go to Homeless Connect, number one, you are going to register in for the program and you are going to see these homeless people they are going to registering and you know we are trying to provide - you know, the city's sponsored Social Service Program. We are running the technology, we are running the application, we are managing the data, we are managing the information and we do all that for no charge. Then, it's not unusual for 80 or a 100 of employees to be there doing the work and heavy lifting also. And then there is other things we are doing you know behind the scenes as well is that bridging the digital divide, is that, no. Is that something that we were kind of we've involved its not real - its just kind of happened and that's kind of what we want when I cut kind of cut back to that initial comment I made on cultural if you remember. And also for Katrina, I mentioned the united way as to using as for Katrina but one of the things that happened during the Katrina situation was that I got an e-mail from one of our employees, Oh, click here. And turn down that five or 10 of our employees and so forth organized that weekend imported all the Katrina data bases of all the missing people into our Salesforce database, had build a pole so that people who had you now missing relatives whatever could put their name in and find it or enter information, and then pushed it out on to the blogs and everything and like, oh, here it is. Now Suzanne is great, I am great, Alan is great. You know, and we are kind of leave, there is a we are not going to figure how to do this. You know, it's really the cut lowest grade, (voice overlapping). The point is is that those kind of things need to be all spontaneously happen. And people need to know that that is not just okay, but encouraged and accepted and that's really my point. And so we have not taken on a mission other than to encourage and to evangelize this this mission in our company and now of course I would say also one of the core tenants of our our foundation is to evangelize this to our industry into other industries also because I think this is just a better way for business by the way. I think that business is better because of this and when Milton Friedman is saying, "The business of business is business." Yes, I totally agree because guess what? We are more competitive, we recruit better people, our products are better, our morale is better, our employee attrition is lower, we have a better company because of this. And that's oh, that's really what it gets down to. And so I think its really important and this is - you know, what I think I would probably, you know, kind of separate is that I if if we were really to take a goal, that is you know, as you mentioned this is the second book and we have other books you know, that we are working on and other ideas and places we want to go and I will give you an let me give you an example. One of the things that I have been hearing a lot lately and I am very I am very excited about this but I don't understand it at all. And then I will pretend to understand as micro finance. So you talk to these people, like you are all smart, I am not that smart. Alan will say, hello its micro-financing, its really important. You got yourself a Garmeen Bank and all these folks all around the world are really transforming these kind of underserved communities and underserved countries through micro-finance. So I was just thinking about this you know, at a meeting and then like Jeez you know, we got this application thing and we have Merrill Lynch can work on it and Morgan Stanley runs on it and Barkley's runs in the (indiscernible). We could build a little micro-finance app and you could put it into our app exchange and we you know, for non-profits you know, which are these micro-finance companies you know, they could just click on it and just have it all, because they need to manage all their information and all the what works on the cell phone and everything and else and we are not going to charge for it, we should just do this. And you know, I think that that is Suzan was getting tired of hearing this but now because I have been talking about it for a whopping two days but that just makes sense because we can create instant microfinance companies and that can be very exciting. But really it's just about that the framework is in place for us to be able to do it. Forget the specificity that in itself is not important. What is important is a framework and the values and the culture has been established in our company and with our customers and so forth. And including even for me, so that can be my little thing you know, so that it will be able to be received and accepted and people will know what to do. And it won't be that hard, by the way, because we have relationships with social entrepreneurs and with NGOs and with all these, you know, crazy people around the world who are doing all this unbelievable stuff. Once we have this, we have to kind of blast that link out and say oh you have a friend who knows like I meant, I was in the World Economic Forum in Davos and I have a friend here in the audience who has built a new house and it was just a random thing that his wife is a who was the architect and I saw him at Davos and I was talking to him and he is like oh, I am building these micro finance companies in Mexico and in Latin America and you know, but I don't really, you know, I am having problems with infrastructure development because we want to get them going and I am like, Wow! You know, we could do this like in five seconds in Spanish. It would be like, because this is just what we do. And then we were in a meeting on Monday, I don't even what day it is anymore and the committee to encourage corporate philanthropy and they are talking about the importance of micro and it just it just reoccurred to me that we still had needed to kind of make that connection and then now I can pass that baton on to Suzan. But the power is that is just, you know, it's easy for us and that's and the point it's got to be easy, its got to be simple because if its hard and if its labor intensive and if its expensive, and if the capital is not available or if the social networks are not there to make it happen, none of its going to happen. But I you have built and you have built culture and framework, its going to be just instant and that's what we want ultimately. It sounds like you actually do have an objective and that is to build capacity of the social sector worldwide. So that the social sector can continue to innovate and continue to respond and continue to adapt and come up with such things as micro finance and other mechanisms for affecting social change. But you are it seems to me that sort of the fundamental goal you are discussing, you are referring to as a goal of building that capacity ensuring that that capacity But don't forget that the only thing that makes all of it possible is the 111 model. Without that 111 model you know, that's you know, what you are saying is we are enabling that sector, that with information management, that's one thing we are doing. Yes but there is something underneath, the seed that we planted was the right seed. And what we need to do is we need more companies on their founding, in their beginning or even in their early mid stages or even in their late stages to plant those seeds so that those frameworks exist to be able to encourage that creativity and that innovation. But let me take take us back to Laura, because it really is it's an extraordinary reality of the sort of the last 10-15 years, that we have seen a convergence of the private sector and the social sector take place. I mean, in essence your private sector company achieving what we always think of as social sector goals. To what extent Laura is this happening the other way around. Our non-governmental organizations, charitable organizations taking on some of the practices and methods and mechanisms of the private sector themselves. This is is this convergence happening in every tell us about that? We now, we call it social enterprises as opposed to non-profit or for-profits and I think, medical finance is an excellent example. Those are non-profits. Many of them are non profits doing banking essentially. And so I teach at Stanford, is that one of the other things and we teach a class on social entrepreneurship and social enterprises. And they are building organizations as students of my class come up with ideas and build, this is (plans) for organizations that may or may maybe a non-profit, maybe a for-profit but the goal is that it has a social mission as its underpinnings and what their real objective is to figure how to turn it into a for-profit because in today's world the capital is behind the for-profit. This is much easier to raise the capital to do some of these things but we also see many non-profits taking on more business activities as a way of generating an ongoing flow of donations, so they are not constantly having to raise money and spending more time raising money as opposed to spending more time doing the services. And sustainability is of course an objective for each of them, so. You were taking notes Alan and so I know you are dying to say something. No, no. I just you know, they were Did you just hear from Marc for the first time? No, no. You know, I just wanted to make sure that, you know, when we talk about you know, the convergence of, you know, the private sector and the social sector and one of the things is we are still arguing a little bit of a mating dance. In the sense that people are trying to figure out especially from the NGO side, can they trust business. And I think that you know, more and more I am seeing that people are beginning to realize that we need each other and it's a great thing that's happening in the last couple of years and you can see more and more of this because I think all of us have had certain frustrations with the way government is doing things right now and we are not taking care of, I mean, we talk and we look at the problems at Katrina if we look at. You know, with Tsunami and we look at Pakistan, wherever in the world but we still have 38 million people here that go hungry everyday. We have 13 million children in America that do not get three meals a day and that of those 13 million, probably 90 percent will go hungry tonight and yet you know, we blissfully go on and we don't we pretend to do something about it but how long you have been hearing about how many are uninsured. You know, medically, we talk, we talk, we talk, we study, we study but we don't do. And so there are some of us that really basically say it's now time to do. And we need help in doing it. And I think that's really important. Business cannot do it alone. The NGOs can't do it alone but together we can become an incredible force. Okay well I am going to move to the topic of partnerships in a moment but there is one area where I think we have always sort of associated governments with the setting of standards. Setting of environmental standards, setting of labor standards. Minimum wage standards, sorry. Well that's part of labor standards - - and in fact though we are starting to see the private sector take on that job by virtue of exporting standards we will have in one country to their subsidiaries in others. And I think that (indiscernible) of from Levi Strauss may be here and they are an example of a company that's really been a leader in setting labor standards in their subsidiaries by you know, meeting standards that are much higher than the countries that they are in and exporting those models. You have wanted to set standards with respect to Toys/entertainment aren't they right? Well we are trying to create. I am chair co-chairing something called the International Counsel of Toy industries care program which is trying to set up one world, one code for labor standards. You don't need you know, I think we play around but whether you know, Paul and I have talked a number of times whether its coffee, whether it's apparel, whether its electronics, whether its toys whatever there should be one labor standard around the world. I mean, each country will have to adopt that to their living standard in that but we know what child labor is. You know, what political prison labor is, we know what over time is, we know what minimum wage is, we know these things. But you know, sometimes I laugh because you know, when you are dealing with many of the different, you know, charities that we all give to there might be 10 different charities dealing with mental health for kids. 90 percent of what they do is the same. Why can't they come together rather than having nine or 10 different overheads. It's because none of us and I am one of those too, none of want to give up any territory. You know, we are very territorial as people but we are going to have to make you know, if we are going to really make a difference and get cost efficiency in all of this. As we are going to move our microphone to the center out right now, that we can take questions but I want I have been struck by the fact that Laura Scher started this company basically fresh out of Harvard business school. Aren't I right? I was 16. You were 16? Since I started everyone knows my age now. But wasn't it fresh out of school. Oh yes, yeah. And in a sense will you did you feel kind of freer to be that innovative because you hadn't been already in the business world as before or trained in Harvard school. I haven't heard a no yet. So I hadn't heard a no yet. Right I am in the same sort of, I mean, almost all entrepreneurs are like that. They don't, they don't understand the word no, maybe forever. And so I mean, the only challenge is that we had really no models. I mean, so we started working assets. You know, Ben & Jerry's was still in the garage scooping ice cream in Vermont. I am not sure where Anita Roddick was. There were no real models and so we had to start this based on sort of a set of personal beliefs that one could combine a business with philanthropy and with social change. And so we got to make up the rules on how one does that. And so which is definitely freeing and which gave us a tenacity that we are still here. So I mean, you ask about, how you measure whether this is good for business, I mean, working assets still has long distance customers, many of them and some of you are probably here. AT&T is essentially gone. I mean, our number one competitor has really not, I mean, it has the name AT&T but its SBC that bought up all these different companies. And so the power of our social mission is that we have survived because customers care about doing this with an organization that reflects their social values