4.28.2008 - 09:01am ET

(CSRwire) SAN FRANCISCO, CA - April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The Salesforce.com Foundation, the global leader in integrating philanthropy and business, today announced that The Center for Employment Opportunities, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the formerly incarcerated and others with criminal records return to the workforce, is using donated and discounted licenses of Salesforce to improve operations and increase its overall success as part of salesforce.com's 1% Product Donation Program http://www.sharethemodel.org. Using Force.com and the AppExchange, The Center was able to quickly and easily customize its Salesforce deployment and add functionality to meet its specific organizational needs.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO)

"Salesforce has empowered our organization to better collaborate on furthering the achievements of our participants in the labor force, which is how we measure our own success," said Brad Dudding, chief operating officer at The Center for Employment Opportunities. "We've gained so many benefits from organizing and streamlining customer data and haven't had to waste time installing and maintaining software. Salesforce has proven to deliver a tremendous advantage."

After deploying Salesforce, The Center used Force.com to integrate with a legacy database, and to build and add custom tabs to track and manage participant, placement and post-placement information. The nonprofit then turned to salesforce.com's AppExchange for additional functionality, downloading Jasper4Salesforce, a reporting tool from JasperSoft; MapQuest for AppExchange; and crystalreports.com from Business Objects, among others.

"We were looking for a more effective way to track customer data on work readiness and on job placement and retention, but more than a database, we needed a better way to access and use our information in real time," added Dudding. "Salesforce is now used to support our daily operations, but it also allows us to gather, report and analyze data more effectively so we can understand and increase our impact over time."

About The Center for Employment Opportunities
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) is committed to building an open and level playing field for people with criminal records who are looking for work. The organization intervenes at the most critical phase -- immediately after release -- providing rigorous pre-employment training, short-term transitional job experience, and long-term job development services leading to support through the first year of permanent employment.

Most men and women returning home from prison are seeking to turn their lives around. They need jobs. CEO's Vocational Services and Transitional Jobs programs run concurrently to help employable people with criminal records manage their re-entry into the workforce and society.

About the Salesforce.com Product Donation Program
The salesforce.com 1% Product Donation Program provides qualified nonprofits around the world with unprecedented access to state of the art, enterprise-class technology to fuel innovation in their organizations and allow them to spend more time focused on their missions. Today, over 3,500 nonprofits are using Salesforce to manage a wide range of organizational needs including managing constituent relationships, fundraising campaigns, volunteers, program delivery, and much more. Salesforce.com donates 10 licenses to qualified nonprofits. Additional licenses are offered at an 80 percent discount. For more information on this program, please visit www.salesforcefoundation.org/product.

Developers interested in creating applications for nonprofits can get started for free by joining the Salesforce Developer Network www.salesforce.com/developer/, which provides instant access to software development tools and information on how to develop on the Salesforce platform.

About the Salesforce.com Foundation
The Salesforce.com Foundation is the leader in pioneering, evangelizing and implementing the 1/1/1 Model and using it as a means to improve the lives of people around the world. The 1/1/1 Model harnesses the power of people and technology through 1% Time, 1% Equity, 1% Product, and being "one" with the earth, to build deep relationships with communities around the world and increase the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations in achieving their goals. The Foundation concentrates on the use of technology, specifically as it relates to organizations with youth development programs. It has supported technology projects around the world that help kids in bereft urban and rural areas access technology to create better futures for themselves. The 1/1/1 Model has had a profound effect on salesforce.com and its communities: Since July of 2000, salesforce.com employees have given over 70,000 hours of their time and expertise back to the community. More than 3,500 nonprofits in 56 countries around the world are using donated licenses to run their businesses more efficiently; and numerous organizations are benefiting from technology related grants from the Foundation. For more information on the 1/1/1 Model, please visit www.sharethemodel.org. For more information on the Salesforce.com Foundation, please visit www.salesforcefoundation.org.

For more information please contact: