Foundation encourages firms to invest time, skills and money to helpothers.

The former Amnesty International campaigner knew exactly what not to wear for her job interview with a fast-rising, new technology company - "No embroidered waistcoat."

Ms Isabel Kelly gives a jolly laugh. "It's not only presenting yourself, but breaking that image" of what an activist in a non-profit organisation is supposed to look and be like, she says.

That attitude exactly fits the job she got, which also has a lot to do with challenging suppositions and breaking images. The Englishwoman heads up the European, Middle East and African (EMEA)office of what she'll only tentatively refer to as a 'philanthropical' foundation for Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a Californian company that delivers sales automation services via the web, and has its European headquarters in Powerscourt (yes, the gardens).

The foundation - or, to give it its proper, lower-case and internet-structured name, salesforce.com/foundation - has a goal of integrating social consciousness into corporations, tackling the negative connotations of globalisation along the way.

As Salesforce.com's ebullient and in-your-face chief executive and founder Mr Marc Benioff has written: "In a business culture that values shareholder profit above all else, the typical global corporation is completely disenfranchised from the communities in which it operates." That's what made Ms Kelly somewhat wary of working on the corporate side of, well, philanthropy.

"I had a preconceived idea of what people would be like," she admits. "And I think some of my former colleagues thought I was a bit of a turncoat."

But now, she is herself a symbol of what the foundation is trying to do - to break down oppositions and meld the corporate world with the global community, so that companies reinvest time, skills and profits back into the local communities in which they situate themselves.

Mr Benioff, writing for the World Economic Forum's magazine, calls such a business an "integrated company".

He doesn't like the word philanthropy to describe what such a company does because it suggests a distanced form of charitable handouts rather than community involvement.

The foundation, which Mr Benioff established at the same time as the company, is a vehicle for giving that "offers a hand up rather than a hand out", Ms Kelly says.

The foundation's model is to donate 1 per cent of its corporate time, equity and profit. Thus, 1 per cent of equity goes into the foundation; 1 per cent of profits is returned to the communities the company works within; employees are encouraged to give 1 per cent of their paid company time to the organization of their choice; and the company works to use its influence positively on behalf of its global communities.

Ms Kelly, who directed Amnesty International's human rights and Tibetan support campaign in China, says that directing the foundation's EMEA office "is a natural progression and was really what I wanted to move into. Working with China, I'd started to realize that companies had so much more influence [on international policy] even than governments sometimes."

A company that wants to "influence for good" can be very powerful in global communities, she argues.

Mr Benioff talks about making commitments to "stakeholders, not solely our shareholders", an approach that could replace global protesters with corporate advocates, he hopes. "It's important to engage businesses in responsible practices," says Ms Kelly.

In the US, Salesforce.com launched its foundation with an initial $2.5 million in equity, which has gone towards creating 17 technology centers in the San Francisco area, and one each in Kenya, Transylvania, and Hawaii; providing technology to schools and Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal; and, with Cisco, establishing eight technology centers in Palestine and Israel.

For the latter work, Israel gave Mr Benioff its Promise for Peace award in 1999.

The launch of the EMEA office in Dublin this March will see the development of a technology centre in Dublin as well, through the Camden Street YMCA. The centre will be part of a new facility for homeless youths, says Ms Kelly, and will offer training as well as internet access in a housing centre. Irish employees are already donating time to a number of programmes, including the centre and another technology programme for kids in the Liberties called Upward Bound.

"The remit of the foundation is really youth and technology, bridging the digital divide, bringing the internet and computers to kids in underprivileged areas," she says. It's the donation of time that Ms Kelly thinks is most important.

"It's the 1 per cent of time that people