Making a difference in the fight against breast cancer

Making a Difference in the World, Uncategorized August 31st, 2009

I recently received an email for which I had to do a double take upon reading. It’s about a man who after losing his wife to breast cancer decided he was going to do his part. Determined man with a neat story. Read on and please it pass on to others:
I wanted this project to be on your radar for any coverage of someone / business making a big difference.  Here’s a story about what one man is doing to fight breast cancer:  Cleavage Creek wines.

Don’t let the name throw you off.  Cleavage Creek is owned by Budge Brown who lost his wife of 48 years to breast cancer.  Mr. Brown obtained the Cleavage Creek label after deciding that he wanted to fight the disease and raise awareness so that others would not suffer as his wife had. Budge Brown released his first Cleavage Creek wines on October 15, 2007.  His second wine release took place on October 4th, 2008.  Cleavage Creek wines have won numerous awards in international, national, and regional competitions - 22 medals won thus far in 2009. These are seriously good wines doing seriously good work. The next release of new wines will be on October 1st, 2009.
Dedicated to fighting breast cancer, Brown and Cleavage Creek donate 10% of gross wine sales to breast cancer research.  At least 10% was the original commitment.  Brown have far exceeded that number, reaching deep into his own pocks to bolster the contributions made by Cleavage Creek. Over $55,800 has been contributed to efforts to fight breast cancer. Most recently, Cleavage Creek has funded a new Integrative Oncology Research Center for breast cancer at Bastyr University.(see below for details)
On each bottle of Cleavage Creek is the image of a breast cancer survivor — her story is told at the Cleavage Creek website.  www.CleavageCreek.com Carson Daly’s mom Pattie Daly Caruso appeared on 2 bottles of Cleavage Creek wines in 2007.  Former Entertainment Tonight producer Noreen Fraser will be on the next release this October.  These ladies are not paid to do this, but they lend their time and experiences to our efforts. A total of 20 breast cancer survivors will have appeared on the Budge Brown era of Cleavage Creek wines as of this October.

In a time when about all we hear news wise is negative, this is a wonderfully positive story — amazing what one determined 76 year old man can do!

Here’s the story:

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies. He is founder of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go towww.TimRichardson.com
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Building Morale (and profit) by Giving

Corporate Philanthropy August 26th, 2009

For the last several months, I received daily emails from HARO (Help a Reporter Out). It’s a cool service that allows journalist to let subscribers know about stories they are writing. This week I posted my own request for stories about how companies give back and what difference it makes. My post just listed about 24 hours ago but the responses I have received have been terrific. So many organizations and individuals are doing amazing things to give back. While most probably don’t give with the expectation that they will get something back, it seems most do. Here a just a few examples from many responses:

- At Pacific, we budget at least 2% of net profit to go toward charitable giving. Ever since we have done that, people all over our community have begun listing Pacific as a leader in the community when before we were just kind of behind the scenes.

-  Fox’s Pizza Den in Punxsutawney, PA has given back over $100,000 to the Fire Company & to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.  It has proven to be the most profitable & rewarding marketing we have done.

- I am a partner at a small translations business located in Nashville, TN. We offer all local non-profits a free English to Spanish translation so that they can communicate with their Hispanic clients.   legal services, animal shelters, and medical services. We feel good about knowing that Spanish speakers have access to important information in their language.  The non-profits are thrilled that someone gave them something for free. It has also helped our bottom line. We get the benefit of the “donation” (we send an invoice with the value of the translation with a balance due of zero), and several non-profits have turned into paying customers.

From small companies to large international organizations, I am convinced that if you want your organization to profit, try giving and if you want to be uplifted during these challenging times, take the advice below. 

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how givingincreases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies. He is founder of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go towww.TimRichardson.com

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