Giving......With a Difference

Each year brings new wrinkles to how the gulfshore's philanthropists donate their money. This season, experts tell us, keep an eye on the handling of corporate donations, charity auctions and personal estates. The trends in giving there will be all about customizing and making connections.

Businesses Go Hands-On

Gone are the days where the "corporate" component of "corporate giving" ends when the check is signed. Businesses across the area are starting to recognize the benefit of engaging charities in more than a financial sense.

"It's one thing to give money," says Claudine Leger-Wetzel of Stock Development, a residential development firm based in Naples. "But it's another to give time and money."

Stock Development has been financially generous with charitable causes-donating $100,000 annually to the Liberty Youth Ranch-but after Hurricane Charley devastated Charlotte County, employees rolled up their sleeves and left the office.

"We basically mobilized a dining/kitchen center," says Leger-Wetzel. The company pulled together an impromptu emergency food station and was responsible for preparing and serving more than 30,000 meals in the weeks before electricity came back.

The result was overwhelmingly positive feedback from the community, and employees reported a stronger sense of camaraderie. Those benefits were not lost on the company. Stock Development now actively encourages employees to volunteer at company-sponsored events like Habitat for Humanity days.

"There's so much to be done in more than their work day," says Leger-Wetzel. "Our job is to let them do it."

Other businesses are taking that notion a step further and actually running their own nonprofit organizations. When chef Skip Quillen opened his flagship restaurant, Chops City Grill, 10 years ago, he followed a traditional model of restaurateur philanthropy. He hosted an annual New Year's Eve event to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

"But he said, 'You know what? We can do better,'" says Jennifer Chin, director of internal operations at Culinary Concepts, the restaurant group that now includes Chops, Yabba Island Grill and Pazzo! Italian Café.

So Quillen brainstormed with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and came up with the idea of Karma Klub, a full-fledged charity run through Culinary Concepts. It allowed the restaurant group to efficiently identify and donate both funds and meals to local organizations as well as individual families.

"There are a lot of other charities out there," explains Chin. For that reason, Karma Klub employs an application process to review local charity requests for a portion of the $250,000 the restaurants raise annually.

Culinary Concepts still runs traditional fundraising events at the restaurants, but proceeds from designated cocktail menu items (the Dream Tini and the Dream Shot) channel money into a special project, Kids Club, year round. Kids Club pampers needy kids and their families with a swanky dinner at one of the group's restaurants. The meal is free and the servers volunteer to wait on the families.

Like Stock Development, Chin has found that what's good for the community is good for the employees of Culinary Concepts. "It gets our servers involved," she says. "It gives them a little bit of karma."

The Artful Approach

As private industry gets more involved in philanthropy, some of the nonprofits are taking a cue from the businesses. In a market saturated with charities and charitable functions, having an edge is as important for a nonprofit as it is for the businesses that support them. Offering something unique and valuable, like a work of art, is one increasingly popular way to lure donors who get something more material than warm feelings out of charity.

Wyeth on Helga, the book of Thomas Hoving's interviews with artist Andrew Wyeth, was printed exclusively by the Naples Museum of Art when Hoving donated his transcripts of the rare interview. Selling at $29.95 per copy with all proceeds going back to the museum, the book is expected to raise around $150,000.

Even the artist has supported the charitable book. "Mr. Wyeth's agent bought 200 copies," says Myra Janco Daniels, president, CEO and chairman of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts and Naples Museum of Art.

While intellectual property and art sales are gaining popularity with charitable causes, Hoving's Wyeth interviews are unusual in that Hoving approached the Phil with the idea. "We were having dinner and he said, 'I want to do something for the museum,'" says Daniels.

Generally, it's the charities that approach artists looking for a donation that can be used in a fundraising auction or sale-and asking an artist to donate is a delicate subject. Unlike a collector who can claim a tax break for the market value of a donated work, the artist may only claim the cost of materials. And depending on the level of the artist's career, constant requests for free works can be daunting. (One local artist representative declined to comment on the charity auction trend, concerned that any publicity around the subject would increase requests for a client already swamped with charity petitions.)

It's difficult enough to turn down a worthy cause. But saying "no" to philanthropists is like saying "no" to people who, in many cases, are potential collectors.

Still, local artist Joan Sonnenberg says she's usually happy to donate a piece for a good cause. "It depends on what you have available. You want something that represents you well, but you don't want to lose the important work you might use for future exhibitions," she says.

The artist's worries don't end once the art is donated. Witnessing the auction of a piece can be difficult too. "You kind of squirm and wonder," says Sonnenberg, who paints large mural-scale works on canvas. "I hope they respect the work because of the amount of time that went into it ... a lot of times people want to buy as cheaply as they can, and you understand that too."

Leaving Valuables and Values

The rise of the legacy statement, or ethical will, is further evidence that trends in giving are increasingly about individual connections-even in death.

It's not enough for many people to leave their values behind. They also want to leave some idea of what it meant to them when they were alive. The legacy statement makes that connection as a nonbinding personal statement accompanying the traditional last will and testament. The value statement can be a guide to how the benefactor would have wanted the funds spent.

"The best statements are those that are shared while living," says Jane Billings of the Community Foundation of Collier County. For the past few years, the foundation has held a series of information sessions with ethical-will advocate Charles Collier.

Billings herself is setting up a fund at the foundation with her husband. Her 13-year-old daughter is included as an advisor. By sharing her values with her daughter now, she is ensuring that eventually her estate will be parceled out to charities in a way that would be agreeable to her.

"It's a powerful way to leave a legacy," says Billings.

"It's been one of the best things our family's done together," agrees Naples resident Dottie Gerrity, who attended one of the seminars on ethical wills. After she was introduced to the idea of an ethical will a year ago, she and her husband held a meeting about their estate with her four adult children and their spouses. She says the ongoing discussion takes the guesswork out of future "mom-would-have-wanted-us-to-do-this" discussions. It was also a vehicle for establishing a philanthropic legacy.

"I was very happy to learn everyone has a charitable interest," says Gerrity. Too often with charity, she says, "it's not talked about, so it doesn't become a consolidated effort." The discussion let her children learn how she and her husband made their donations over the years. "They always had those interests latently, but no one ever brought it to the table. We want to leave a charitable interest in their hearts and minds," she says. "It's really a great concept."