I am very excited to announce we’ll be shipping the 2008 Agent for Change Zinfandel this week. Our new charity partner is with the Sustainable Life Project. This project, in partnership with Tender Greens (an outstanding, local, green restaurant - see tendergreensfood.com), helps to teach youth about farming and cooking. I hope you’ll support this program and spread the word. Or, just drink more of this great wine.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 (12-27) 09:06 PST — Without leaving the comfort of her home in Sonoma, Deb Carlen has assisted the American Red Cross, the National Park Trust and dozens of other nonprofit groups across the globe. Carlen edits newsletters and tackles other small volunteer projects through Sparked.com, a San Francisco startup that helps charities tap the power of the online crowd to fulfill their needs. From translating documents to designing logos, Carlen and other volunteers can lend their skills in tiny increments of time, sometimes for just a few minutes, at their own pace. “I can do it at 3 a.m. and no one cares,” the communications consultant said. It’s one of the many ways nonprofits are harnessing social-media strategies to recruit volunteers and raise money and awareness. Jumo, the philanthropic-oriented social network begun last month by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, is the latest example. It joins many more startups that are tapping Web 2.0 technologies, such as crowd-sourcing and social networking, trying to make it easier than ever to give and do good. “Social media has changed the game,” said J.D. Lasica, founder of Pleasanton’s Socialbrite, which offers social-media consulting for nonprofits. “Everyone can be a philanthropist.” Last year, about 63.4 million people, or 26.8 percent of the U.S. population age 16 or older, volunteered at least once, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Individuals also donated about $200 billion to charity, with about 2 to 3 percent of that coming through the Internet, according to Network for Good. But it could be better. Often when it comes to doing good, a number of obstacles get in the way. Donors can become overwhelmed by the number of organizations that need help. They aren’t sure how much money to give and to which ones. Volunteers don’t know which organizations need their help, nor whether they have the right skills and enough time to spare for a particular project. Other times, they burn out. “We live in a modern society,” said Jacob Colker, co-founder of Sparked.com. “People have kids and errands and 60-hour workweeks.” Sparked.com makes it convenient to lend a virtual hand. Charities - about 20 to 30 sign up each day - post projects, which can be completed online. The Family Center in Wisconsin, which offers services to domestic abuse victims, needs help translating a document from English to Hmong. The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless is looking for a cool background for its Twitter account and YouTube channel. In the past, Sparked.com, which is also known as the Extraordinaries and has a mobile app, used crowd-sourcing to comb through photographs to help identify victims of the Haiti earthquake. Last month, it also developed software for large corporations such as Google and SAP to let their employees volunteer their time and expertise during work hours. “They don’t need to leave their desk to have an impact,” Colker said. San Francisco’s SwipeGood also aims to make charitable giving as painless as possible. Donors sign up with their credit card to donate their spare change. Like Bank of America’s Keep the Change program, SwipeGood will round up each credit card purchase to the closest dollar and donate the accumulated change at the end of the month to the donor’s designated charity. “If I go to Starbucks and buy a coffee or I go to any department store, it shouldn’t matter which store I’m in, I should be able to make a small impact,” said co-founder Anthony Nemitz. It typically adds up to about $10 to $30 a month, Nemitz said. SwipeGood takes a 5 percent cut and passes on the rest to the organization. Introduced last month, it is available for American Express cardholders and a handful of nonprofits such as UCSF Children’s Hospital. But it is adding major banks in the coming weeks and eventually plans to offer a much longer list of beneficiaries, such as schools, from which donors can pick. Berkeley’s Causes taps the social network to fundraise. Through an application on Facebook, users can ask their friends to donate to their chosen charity for their birthday and, for the first time this year for the holidays, in lieu of a Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or New Year’s gift. Causes, one of the earliest startups to take advantage of social networking, has about 130 million users and has raised more than $30 million for 27,000 nonprofits. The average birthday wish - about 200,000 of them have been made - can draw about $100. “We’ve been focusing on making giving personal and trying to build giving into people’s everyday lives,” said co-founder Joe Green. This year, Causes began selling $25 and $50 charity gift cards at Safeway. Recipients can redeem them through its website and donate to a charity of their choice. They can, of course, share the news on Facebook. “Altruism is social,” Green said. “People want to do good.”Charities tap into social networks
$200 billion donated
$100 wishes
Wow, some difficult to watch videos produced by this group. They have a very fun T-shirt I recommend “Not cool”.
What makes wine so fascinating in our lives? You can be imaginative with good wines and by socializing with others with those wines. If you are into giving back to community and sustainability in our future, then you are at a right page of Agent for Change.
Here are “15 ways to practice the art of philanthropy” by William Upski Wimsatt. Most likely, we are aware of the followings, but it’s even better to reiterate them for good causes. Of course with a glass of wine, such as AFC :)
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1. You don’t need to be rich to be a philanthropist. According to Independent Sector, an umbrella association for nonprofits, 82 percent of the money donated by individuals in this country comes from people with incomes under $60,000.
2. Spread Love. People can give away millions, but if they mistreat others in their personal or work lives, then this hypocrisy is going to catch up with them and undermine their cause. It makes more sense to help people who spread love wherever they go build a viable organization than it does to support an established organization that still needs to learn about spreading love. Support really good people who have a total commitment to doing good in the world and who are willing to put their asses on the line to do it.
3. Seek out originality and imagination. If an idea makes you laugh out loud or say “Wow!” then support it.
4. Support unpopular truths. Look
for people who speak from the truth of their experience, no matter how unpopular it is.
5. Fund players with a long view. Seek out people who are strategic and thoughtful about how their work fits within the context of what’s gone on before and what’s coming next.
6. Look out of the loop and under the radar. Support people no one else is supporting-people who are less likely to have connections or be endorsed by others who give away money.
7. Be effective and cost-effective. Support people who will stretch your dollars as wisely as-or more wisely than-you would stretch them yourself
8. Fund passion. Support people whose work is their passion in life, not a day job.
9. Invest in self-help. Support organizations that empower disadvantaged people rather than those that merely service their needs. This usually translates to organizations led by people who come from the class of people they are helping. If a charity focuses on “at-risk youth,” I want to know that its leadership is composed mainly of people who either are or used to be at-risk youth.
10. Attack root causes. Self-help isn’t enough. The solution to many social problems demands changing the rules of the system as a whole. Yet the organizations that have the hardest time gettin money are the ones fighting to change the system. These groups are where your money will go the furthest.
11. Fund doers, not grant writers. I am drawn to people who are more int rested in doing their work than in raising money. These people are usually not good fund raisers, so I give them a copy of Kim Klein’s incredible fund-raising video series along with my money. Let the savvy and sophisticated fund raisers get their money from someone else.
12. Foster combinationism. Support people who combine fields-they aren’t just into art, they aren’t just into politics, they aren’t just into science, but instead they blend the strengths and insights of many fields.
13. Go for net gains. Funding an excon to become a community organizer is a bigger net gain for society than funding someone with a college degree. The college student can get another good job. The ex-con probably can’t.
14. Pay general operating expenses. If you really believe in an organization, help it buy a building so it can become sustainable and quit paying rent to a landlord. Don’t dictate how it should spend the money.
15. Trust what inspires you.
William Upski Wimsatt is the author of Bomb the Suburbs (Soft Skull, 1994) and No More Prisons (Soft Skull, 1999). He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Detroit Uncorked: A premier charity wine tasting event
The video is from a while ago, but it’s one of a good example for charitable wine tasting events! Detroit Uncorked was one of the largest charity wine tasting events in the midwest. All proceeds benefit The Children’s Center. Enjoy hundreds of wines from around the world, light hors d’oeuvres, entertainment, silent auction and more…
This is the unique wine tour for charitable objectives! Here is an excerpt from http://www.worldwinetour2010.com.
“This Project is made possible through the gracious participation of many sponsors and through the generous help of many other friends. During this project, Georges and Anja will travel the globe collecting wine bottles from participating wineries. All bottles will be shipped back to California thanks to JF Hillebrand, where an auction will be held at Robert Mondavi Winery in 2011. All proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Lao Rehabilitation Foundation Inc, helping change lives in Laos. The Charity works on a variety of projects, from caring for a school for blind children, to operating medical missions in remote areas, to building schools, building clinics, and bringing medical supplies into the country. The charity is currently supervising the construction of an aqua duct to bring water to a village of over 500 inhabitants whose fresh water supply has dried out. The funds raised by the auction in 2011 will go to help rebuild a school destroyed by massive flooding of the Mekong River in 2008. “
As Agent for Change was inspired by a wine maker, Greg Martellotto, his initiatives were to give back and engage with our communities. Likewise, many wineries are actively presenting themselves and their wines as vehicles of “good cause”. You can also check the following link about “Thirsting for a Cause –Wine as a Philanthropic Catalyst” http://www.thewinenews.com/junjul99/philanthro.html
Drink Good Wine. Do Good Works.
Be An Agent for Change!
January 27, 2010
The Story of the Birth of Agent for Change wines
Agent for Change wines is a portfolio of wines launched in 2008 to raise awareness and donate a significant portion of the proceeds to worthy charitable organizations.
A4C as a Concept
The idea of a socially significant wine clicked into my consciousness (while meditating) as I was building my wine company. Coinciding with the growth of Martellotto wines was my increased immersion into yoga not only as a physical practice, but also as a philosophy for living and doing business. I began my yoga practice with sincere dedication in late 2007, following a week-long retreat at the Chopra Center in San Diego, CA.
My original concept was to produce a socially significant wine and invite a Hollywood celebrity to be the face of the brand to help market the wine. Driving demand for the wine while telling a story about a good cause or charitable organization while selling wine seemed logical to me. If the Girl Scout’s could achieve self-sufficiency and sustainability by selling cookies, then why couldn’t wine be utilized as a girl scout cookie for adults. Many non-profits can’t legally be involved in wine production, let alone sales and distribution of wine. Given the relationships I’d developed with winemakers, wineries, and retail/restaurant clients, I believed I could bridge these people through the concept of this wine with a purpose. I was in a unique position as both a wine maker and owner of a wine distribution company, and given my background I was compelled to figure out how I could share the abundance and wealth in my life.
Greg’s Background
I was inebriated early on by the Jesuits with this concept of being a “Man for Others”. While in college at Stanford, I studied humanities and completed the pre-medical school requirements. I was involved in recycling food for homeless people and leading students on volunteer tours to learn about homelessness. Later, in graduate school at the University of Texas I completed a Masters Degree in Public Health. Some of my work involved travels to the US-Mexico border to learn about migrant health issues and health disparities and health indicators. For this reason, it made sense to me give back 50% of the proceeds of the sale of the inaugural wine to support organizations (I didn’t know which one at the time) that helped to provide healthcare to the migrant farm workers who complete the vast majority of the hard farming work in our country. In particular, migrant farmers pick the grapes that go into our wine.
A4C Launch in the midst of Recession
In the midst of the recession in October 2008, I pulled $35,000 out of the business and invested into this concept and I called the wine, Agent for Change. There was certainly some trepidation about doing this given the economic climate. However, I was increasingly feeling called to do this. I am not a millionaire or wealthy or a person with a history of philanthropy by any means, but I know that one day I will be and I figured why not start doing and acting like the person I wanted to be, rather than wait until I have created a fortune to become the most effective person I can be. I knew in my heart that this was an opportunity to take my yoga ‘off the mat’ and implement a strategy to give back to the community. I believed this project could help define the wine company and communicate to the world our corporate values of being good citizens, of giving charitably, sharing abundance, and leveraging expertise for the greater good.
When I launched the brand, I knew of one or two other small wine brands that operated in a similar way to my concept. However, they were donating only 10% of profits to charity. I knew that my competitive advantage of partnering with wineries to make good wine at a fair price and direct distributing it, I could give away more. So, I wrote on the back of the first release of 500 cases of Zinfandel, 112 cases of Sauvignon Blanc, and 112 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot blended wine the following: “The Agent for Change portfolio of charitable wines creatively combines good wine with good works. Thanks to your purchase, 50% of the profits from this wine will be donated to community-based, non-profit organizations that tirelessly work to care for our uninsured and underinsured. Improving our health status and eliminating health inequity are attainable goals. Drink Good Wine. Do Good Works. Become an Agent for Change.”
At the time of the launch, in a post 9-11 era, immigrant issues were rampant and President Bush was spending a lot of time and money related to tightening the border, building a fence between the US-Mexico, and protecting our homeland. There was certainly a fair amount of suspicion and witch-hunting, and I never concurred with this political mindset. It doesn’t mesh with a yogic approach of living or a life trusting in our innate goodness and living love either.
There was another aspect of launching this wine brand. I was increasingly inundated by charities and non-profits to make a wine donation for some kind of auction or event. It shocked me how impersonal and frequent these letters, phone calls, and anonymous emails arrived. I suspect somewhere, somehow these non-profits find value in this type of marketing, but I find it exhausting and fruitless. I wasn’t clear on how a donation of wine would really benefit the charity or how it would be a marketing benefit for my brands. With the launch of the Agent wines, I now had a reply for these charities about how they could be involved with us, and how they could work toward achieving self-sufficiency by using wine to raise funds in an on-going way for their activities.
Goal: To make businesses be more charitable and charities more business-minded.
I considered applying for 501 (c) 3 status and forming a non-profit entity, but I looked at social entrepreneurial ventures like Google’s charitable projects, and realized that the charitable entity might hinder the flexibility for the project. I can still imagine forming a non-profit entity that has the sole function of multiplying the model for various other charities and takes charge of doling out the profits raised from wine sales.
Over the next two years, I envision the Agent for Change portfolio of wines to expand significantly to 6-12 wines. As this is a negociant wine brand, meaning I buy finished wine and blend it and then market the wine under the Agent label, there is great flexibility in the production and an opportunity to rapidly increase production based on sales. I would like to see the Agent for Change wines create meaningful partnerships with progressively minded charities that join us as marketing champions. These charities will understand that the more wine we sell, the more money the charity will receive. I can see that the Agent wines will develop regional flavor and many individuals will volunteer to support the brand and marketing effort. I can imagine a wine that is marketed in the southeast US that raises funds for hurricane relief. I can imagine wines that help support jazz education, environmental issues, and other wines that contribute to an array of global health agendas. It’s very fun to imagine what this trip is going to be like. I also envision Agent for Change as a concept traveling to other countries. It’s not a coincidence that Agente por el Cambio, Agente per il Cambio, and Agent pour Change are virtually identical in Spanish, Italian, and French. I would love to launch this concept in these three wonderful wine producing countries within the next three years. I’ve already identified potential winery partners, I just need to find the right means of capitalization, sales and distribution abroad.
In the meantime, thank you for reading about Agent for Change and please tell your friends about our intentions behind this wine project. We need as many Agent for Change advocates as possible. In fact, if you’re interested in becoming an ambassador please reach out to me.
Cheers,
Greg Martellotto
Friday 12:00 a.m. San Francisco
Dear Friends,
I am literally hunched over my computer, head in hands, despairing over the stories coming out of Haiti. I’ve just finished a delectable meal in my cozy flat, following another comfortable day of wine, work, and yoga. Yet, for nine million Haitians, the world stopped turning on Tuesday. I can help and so can you. From now until 12:01 A.M. on Monday (MLK Day),
If you’re not a wine drinker, please forward this email to someone who is.
You may wish to donate directly to MSF at http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
If your wine and charity budgets are limited, then quietly consider donating clothing or anything else that you have in abundance this weekend. We’re all in this together and “they” are “us”.
Peace,
Greg
PS: I will alert all through facebook the total amount raised next Saturday.
