Developer Fashion Show Raises Money for Salesforce Nonprofits
The first ever Developer Fashion Show was coordinated with the Salesforce Raleigh User Group in Research Triangle Park, NC on August 20, 2015. The theme of the event was the Dreamforce Devzone and event sponsors, including Salesforce Partner, Progress DataDirect and Johnson Automotive, donated money to local nonprofit organizations that use Salesforce to increase their impact.
The Raleigh/Durham area has a thriving Salesforce community and the User Groups listed on the success community also include the Raleigh Durham Nonprofit User Group and RTP Girly Geeks.
How did we select the nonprofits?
Pretty simple actually – I posted on the Raleigh Durham Nonprofit User Group chatter feed and selected the first three organizations to respond:
It was a diverse collection of local nonprofits such that each donor was able to find a charity that met their guidelines and preferences for giving and we’re excited to have raised $3,000 in donations for this inaugural event.
What exactly is a Developer Fashion Show?
The hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer has gone viral over social media challenging stereotypes of what engineers look like. In response, this fashion show featured real Salesforce Developers and Admins walking the runway wearing popular items worn in the Devzone such as hoodies, tees, jeans, messenger bags, tech wearables, and other attire for personal expression. The event was a celebration of diversity in the Salesforce community.
Many of the Salesforce models were out of their comfort zone, but they ALL did a fantastic job and were motivated by the charitable cause.
Pictured below sharing their organization’s missions are Haley Terry, Director of Mission Delivery, Children’s Flight of Hope and Lenore Donaldson, Volunteer & Agency Programs Manager at the Volunteer Center of Durham who attended the event:
Amanda Byrne (named Community Hero in 2014 by Salesforce.org) responded on behalf of the Carolina Tiger Rescue, but was unable to attend.
Pictured below are Lauren Jordan (leader of the RTP Girly Geeks User Group) and Deb Martin (co-leader of the Raleigh User Group) who rocked the runway.
And I had the privilege of being the host for the evening, which was definitely outside the comfort of the devzone.
But we succeeded in pulling off this first-ever event with the two most important things, helping our community and having fun!
For me personally, I have been developing data connectivity solutions for nonprofits using DataDirect products and cloud services for several years, including Stanford University. During that time, I was unaware of Salesforce.org 1-1-1 integrated philanthropy across product, equity and time. While FashionForce was a great event bringing new sources of generosity, it represents a small part of the giving culture established by Salesforce.org.
Check out all the amazing photos from the event on the Developer Fashion Week Facebook page:
Developer Fashion Show to raise money for local Nonprofits #ILookLikeAnEngineer
Posted by Developer Fashion Week on Saturday, August 22, 2015
About the Author
Sumit Sarkar is Chief Data Evangelist for Progress DataDirect, Speaker and leading expert on open data standards connectivity with Cloud Data. He has been working in the data connectivity field for 10 years with a recent focus on the Salesforce platform for real-time data connectivity across ODBC, JDBC and OData. He has presented related sessions at Dreamforce ‘12, ‘13, ‘14 and will be hosting a session at Dreamforce ’15 on DataDirect Cloud titled, “Lightning Connect: Lessons Learned” in the devzone. Follow him on Twitter, @SAsInSumit.
You Might Also Like
Salesforce’s Summer ‘23 Release features offer stronger solutions in programs and grantmaking.
A CRM is a customer relationship management tool that helps organizations such as nonprofits and education institutions manage relationships with…
This Women’s History Month, we celebrate the innovative women leaders of the Salesforce Catalyst Fund who are helping to bring…