SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — If you have the money, you can get things done in San Francisco. In 2023, Salesforce CEO and philanthropist Marc Benioff complained about crime, homelessness and drugs in San Francisco, even threatening to move the Dreamforce Conference to Las Vegas. The city panicked. Then Mayor London Breed pushed back, saying that things were getting better. Nonetheless, the city moved at lightning speed to appease Benioff, much to his satisfaction. “Why can’t San Francisco be like this every single day?” Benioff asked Governor Gavin Newsom in a Dreamforce interview. RELATED: Salesforce fallout: Benioff says he no longer believes National Guard needed in SF, issues apology Then, most recently, Benioff suggested that President Donald Trump send the National Guard to San Francisco. He has since apologized after facing criticism, claiming, “No one has given more to San Francisco.” That’s when philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs decided it was time to speak out. Jobs wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal stating, “That’s the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one’s will. It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.” Ten years ago, Steve Heilig of the San Francisco Medical Society wrote an op ed piece about adding the name Zuckerberg to San Francisco General Hospital. “That’s seen as meddling often now and the more current trend of philanthropy is hands off, give the money to the people you believe in and what they are doing and let them do it,” said Heilig. Let’s examine more closely how some of the region’s biggest donors stack up. Jobs’ foundation, Emerson Collective, focuses on driving social change with no naming rights or public recognition attached. MacKenzie Scott has given Bay Area nonprofits large grants with, in her words, “no strings attached.” RELATED: Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donates $42 million to Bay Area nonprofit for low-income students On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan donated $75 million towards the San Francisco General Hospital expansion in 2015. It was the largest single private gift to a public hospital in the U. S. Chan did her pediatric residency at General. “The gift happened as a result of her deep alignment and that it was very much that she had worked with the patients and the staff here, so she could see the importance of investing in public health and building a new hospital,” said Kim Meredith, CEO of the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. But San Franciscans’s already agreed to find the expansion, approving an $887 million bond to rebuild the hospital. “The people of San Francisco voted for $800 million in bonds that are being paid off by every property owner, by every tenant and all of a sudden Mark Zuckerberg comes along with a handful of dollars and ends up with his name on the people’s building,” complained Former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Since then, voters approved another $222 million for improvements to the hospital. In the end, the Zuckerberg’s donation was less than 10 percent of the total cost. Adding the name Zuckerberg to the hospital was controversial then, and now. Heilig: “People did not want to speak out.” Lyanne: “Do you think it was because they were going to sound ungrateful?” Heilig: “Yes, part of that and partly because some people just don’t like Facebook. The evidence was coming out then that social media was bad for really young people in particular.” In 2020, the Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to condemn the renaming of the hospital. It was a symbolic vote. Benioff has also been a champion of San Francisco and Oakland schools, donating millions to fund education. No public schools are named after him. After donating $100 million to build a new children’s hospital in Mission Bay, Benioff insisted that his name not be included. But UCSF convinced him to add the name, believing it would encourage other big donors. “What’s in a name is that it attracts other investors and philanthropic investment and so the reality is peers give to peers, people give to people,” insisted Meredith. When it comes to his company, Salesforce, Benioff has been highly effective in promoting the company’s brand. Not only is the tower that Salesforce rents and bears its name, the tallest building in the city, but in 2017, Salesforce agreed to pay $110 million over 25 years for naming rights to the transit center. They get little from the deal, but did make some demands about how the area around the tower and center operated and was landscaped. Keep in mind, the Salesforce Transit Center, with its rooftop park, was funded largely with public dollars. Jane Kim was a supervisor during that period. “At the time, Salesforce wanted some unilateral say over park hours which seems like a pretty minutia issue, except that if you start to let one entity, because it gives some private dollars, to make unilateral decisions over park hours, what else can they make decisions about, especially when the majority of the funds came from taxpayers themselves,” said Kim. Kim protested, but in the end, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority sided with Salesforce. “I think San Francisco should lead this country in reminding everybody that our public buildings are not for sale. If folks with means want to participate philanthropically they should do so with real charitable intent,” added Peskin.
https://abc7news.com/post/price-philanthropy-big-money-gifts-often-come-strings-attached/18152084/