Group volunteer activities can engage your employees, but making allowances for them to pursue other volunteer opportunities can have a greater cultural impact.

Stanford University is the top university in California and the seventh-best nationally, according to U.S. News & World Report annual ranking, released Monday. The annual ranking includes data on more than 1,800 schools across the country. For the first time this year, the measured metrics include the graduation rates of low-income students. Acceptance rate, meanwhile, was eliminated as a factor, while the weight of expert opinions and SAT/ACT scores were among the elements reduced in the methodology. Click…

The newly minted Salesforce Tower ascends well above the San Francisco cityscape. Also sky-high are the clean energy plans of its anchor tenant, the software giant for which the LEED-certified office tower is named. Late last month, San Francisco-based Salesforce.com Inc. said the company had invested in its largest renewable energy agreement to date — an 80-megawatt wind energy project in Illinois — en route to being fully powered by renewable energy by 2022. The project, owned and to be operated…

Despite a sentiment from some that the city of Portland and Multnomah County aren’t doing enough to tackle the homelessness challenge, officials say they are making headway. In a release from the Joint Office of Homeless Services, the city and county provided an update on the goal of creating 2,000 units of supportive housing by 2028. (Supportive housing combines affordable housing with services for mental health, addiction and other areas.) “Homelessness begins and ends with a home,” said…

LumberUnion is about to debut its first TV show, “7 a.m. on a Saturday,” with Whole Foods Market as a sponsor in the first step of a partnership with Amazon.

A branch of Intel Corp. is relocating to Rio Rancho. On Monday, Gov. Susana Martinez announced Intel’s 3D XPoint technology development will be relocating to its Rio Rancho facility, bringing over 100 additional jobs to the site. In 2015, Intel and Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology announced the development of 3D XPoint, a new class of storage and memory technology that is faster, denser and non-volatile, but Intel announced in July that the technology would be pursued independently. For Intel,…