What motivates people to give? It’s something that we at the Yahoo! Employee Foundation (YEF) think about a lot. YEF was started in 1999 by our founders, Jerry and David, along with a few other motivated Yahoos who wanted to create a unique program designed to help Yahoos give back to their communities. They hatched a grassroots organization that has since contributed nearly $6 million to more than 250 non-profits in our surrounding communities, donated 2,500 holiday gifts to low-income children, held countless volunteer events, and has chapters in every U.S. office.

The most special and unique thing about YEF is that it’s 100% employee driven on an all-volunteer basis. All of the money is donated by Yahoo! employees (many allocate a portion of their paychecks), all grant recipients are championed by Yahoo! employees, and all YEF activities are run by a volunteer committee of Yahoo! employees. The coolest aspect of the foundation is that it can turn a modest contribution into a windfall for a favorite non-profit. A donation of at just $50 can turn into a grant of up to $40,000 for a charity you support. You do the math — that’s a good investment! The foundation focuses grants on the areas of Youth & Education, Family & Community Building, and Environment — causes that come directly from an annual employee survey to be sure we are properly aligned with what Yahoos feel is important. (Note that YEF doesn’t accept unsolicited requests, but you’re more than welcome to sidle up next to a committed Yahoo for grant championing.)

Every fall, we try to remind Yahoos about the power of YEF and increase our enrollment. This year we used a two-pronged approach. First, Jerry and David baited us with a $1 million donation if we were able to meet 25% participation among U.S. employees. Then many of our leaders upped the ante by promising to subject themselves to public humiliation, which turned out to be just as much (if not more!) of a motivation.

It did the trick. We beat our goal and raised a lot of money that will be given in future grant cycles. And now it’s time for Yahoos to cash in on the degradation of their leaders. Executives from our Search, Listings and Search Marketing groups have donned fantastic Mod Squad-era wigs and fed breakfast to an army of Yahoos in our Burbank office. Engineering leaders threw a beer and pizza party and volunteered to get submersed in a dunk tank — in jeans and sneakers, no less. (Nothing quite beats giving your manager a good soaking.) Up next, still more executives will host karaoke parties, invitation-only group dinners, hairnet-shielded pancake breakfasts, and raffles for choice parking spots (the only reserved parking at Yahoo! is won at our annual year-end auction, benefiting YEF… and it’s quite a sacrifice to give that up!).

I’m proud to say that the Yahoo! Employee Foundation is one of those things that distinguishes the experience here. It’s a collective effort showing that many of us Yahoos share a common gene. One that compels us to give back and make a difference.

Ben Baker
President, Yahoo! Employee Foundation Board
Director, Customer Care

Photos from Jeremy Johnstone

We regret to inform you that you did not win the Yahoo! lottery. Because there is no Yahoo! lottery. Please don’t send us money to claim your “winnings.”

Like other highly visible brands, ours is a tempting one for fraudsters to hitch their wagons to. You may receive an email or even a text message on your cell notifying you of a fabulous windfall you’ve won in a Yahoo! lottery. It instructs you to send money to cover the taxes on the winnings or reply with confidential personal information. Don’t fall for it.

First, we would never send you information about a contest you never entered. That’s the definition of unsolicited: you never asked for it. It showed up out of nowhere. And although the email may look like it’s from Yahoo!, don’t be fooled by the sender’s address. Anyone with a Yahoo! account also has a Yahoo! email address. Phony emails and messages are also usually poorly written with inventive spelling and grammatical errors:

“So we appeal to you to have a bite patients to enable our Account Department carryout their works more effectively for smooth and sucessful tansfer of your winning prize $ 0ne million us dollars without any delay…”

But, as more and more folks are getting wise to these scams, the scammers are getting more and more creative — and not just in their use of the English language. Pictures of the Yahoo! campus and our logo (which are available online to anyone) give an appearance of authenticity. My favorite is the one with a photo of “Lotto Coordinator Vinton Cerf.” Mr. Cerf, recognized as one of the founders of the Internet, certainly isn’t spending his time running a lottery — not to mention that the photo looks nothing like him.

As ridiculous as some of these cons may seem, we take them seriously. Our Yahoo! Mail Abuse team looks into all reports of these scams and takes appropriate action.

We’re currently evaluating new filtering technology that may be effective in catching scams like this. In the meantime, if you receive a message claiming to be from Yahoo! notifying you of a cash prize, please let us know! Just forward the message to mail-spoof [at] cc.yahoo-inc.com. Include the full email header (info on how to do that is here). The full header shows us the route the email took to get to your Inbox and helps us track down the culprits.

Also, if you receive this hoax as a text message or SMS, email us about that, too. You’ll need to include the Yahoo! email address referenced in the SMS message, the time and day of the message, and the complete text of the message. Also, we encourage you to report the message to your wireless carrier to see if they can take corrective and/or preventative action.

We despise these scams — maybe more than you do. So help us knock them out before they hit someone else’s inbox. It’s a more dignified way to honor Mr. Cerf’s legacy.

Ben Baker
Director, Yahoo! Customer Care