Innovation Through Philanthropy - Silicon Valley Community ...

Dan Warmenhoven, left,
and Emmett D. Carson.
not quite at our normal profit levels. But giving is
important to our employees. Recently, we had to reduce
employment, about 6 percent of our global work force.
You could argue that if we didn’t give $2 million to
nonprofits, we might have more to support employment.
Recently, we agreed to give about $250,000 in used
equipment to help Second Harvest develop a database.
One of our employees agreed to do the install. Turns
out he was one of the people affected by the reduction
in force. It was the week
that he was to do the
install, and he lost his job.
He showed up anyway.
He lost his job on Monday,
and he showed up
on Thursday to do
the installation.
Finding the balance
between what’s fair to all
parties is challenging.
So how do you make
those choices
The issue for us comes
down to cash and how
much you put forward. The
volunteer time-off program
is popular, and it’s not going away. And in-kind
donations are going to continue. You can’t just take one
of the constituents and say, “Too bad. We’ll get back to
you later.” This is a very challenging time, and the needs
are even higher than usual. More people are out of work.
I’m sure contributions to the nonprofits from the donor
community are down. It’s a situation where the needs
are greatest and yet the capacity is the lowest.
One of NetApp’s founders has just written a
book. Can you tell me about it We understand
he’s generously donating his royalty proceeds
to the NetApp Fund, a corporate advised fund
at Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
It’s called How to Castrate a Bull, and it’s Dave Hitz’s life,
and a story about NetApp, too. Dave is a remarkable,
gifted individual who was invited to attend a very select
college called Deep Springs on the California-Nevada
border. The students, besides being students, also work
as farm hands. This is a life experience, and the class
president every spring has to castrate a bull. The reason
for the title, he says, is that was the first time he really
understood the issues around managing risk. He had to
figure out how he was going to do this without getting
“We would like the
people in each of these
communities to feel that
we’re a good neighbor.”
himself kicked in the head and killed. When you’re in
a startup, it’s all about risk management, so he found
great similarities in that. How to Castrate a Bull is more
about how to form a company and get through the very
difficult times. It’s a great little read.
What do you see going forward a few years,
past the end of the recession
Philanthropy is going to continue to grow, and we’ve
been pretty creative at keeping it going through the
downturn. One example stems from the policy we
have here that vice presidents and above don’t officially
have a vacation plan. So when we promote somebody
internally, there’s vacation that’s accrued that they’re
going to forfeit. What happens to the accrual The
money’s already been set aside, so Jan [Stewart,
community relations manager] said, “Let’s give it to
our communities,” and created the NetApp Fund.
The point is, there are ways to come up with creative
funding to continue growing.
Why do you work with the community
foundation We’re proud of the fact that you’re
the first company to do so after the merger.
This is going to sound like we’re not interested in hard
work, but, frankly, it just makes it easy. It takes away all
the administrative and compliance issues. We don’t lose
any control, but we make sure that everything is done
the right way.
What advice would you give other companies
seeking to contribute as you have done
Tie your efforts and programs back to the employees.
As a policy, I don’t think we’ve ever given any funds
or equipment to an organization where we didn’t have
employee involvement first.
The volunteer time-off program is an employee
benefit and a community benefit. Most of the things we
do are in that zone. It’s not either/or.
Even when we were a very small company of perhaps
100 employees, the employees quickly became active in
support of Second Harvest. That certainly has grown.
Another one is the heart walk for the American Heart
Association. We’ve participated in that now for over a
decade. There are more NetApp employees at the walk
than almost any other company. one
Robert houser
14 innovation through philanthropy www.siliconvalleycf.org