Lake County >> Lake County Rising never asked for a million dollars. It just happened.
Mere days after the Valley Fire destroyed the southern end of Lake County, the Wine Alliance, the Winery Association and the Winerape Commission came together to form a fundraising entity known as Lake County Rising. It was simply a way to collect donations that were pouring in from wine industry members both inside the county and out.
“We really did very little soliciting of money,” said Bill Groody of the Wine Alliance. “This is an organic thing that came out of the wine region.”
The initial push was by Andy Beckstoffer, owner of Beckstoffer Vineyards, who donated $50,000 at the very beginning. A year and a half later and Lake County Rising has brought in over $1,100,000. About two-thirds of that money has come from wineries all over Northern California, but especially from Napa and Sonoma, and the other third from private individuals. Congressman Mike Thompson’s political action committee also contributed.
Lake County Rising had hoped to bring in such a large amount, but they knew it wasn’t guaranteed. Toward the end of 2015 they stalled at $750,000, but as the year drew to a close, donations rushed in. They hit the one million mark at the very start of 2016. At that point they stopped soliciting funds entirely, but over the course of the year, another $100,000 rolled in, mostly from corporate matching programs.
“The generosity was extraordinary,” said Groody. “It really shows the interconnectedness. We’re all much more interconnected than we’ve ever been.
The wine community is just that — a community. And when one area suffers, so do all the others. It’s about sustainability. In order to for the industry to be healthy and functioning, wine professionals have to prop one another up.
“If you’re going to be a sustainable winery organization you need to be involved in the community and have a strong community to support you,” Groody explained. “That’s a big part of what the community believes in.”
When Lake County Rising first began, the initial goal was to meet immediate needs in the Middletown, Cobb and Hidden Valley areas, with a focus on conserving a sense of community. The wine organizations felt that the schools were where they were most needed.While many sporting teams received donations of new equipment and uniforms, students had also lost band instruments and art supplies, and then there were those kids who had nothing to do after school at all. Lake County Rising donated straight away.
“Preserving the atmosphere in the schools was the best thing we could do to preserve the sense of community,” expressed Groody.
Another immediate course of action was giving over $100,000 to Lake Family Resource Center for psychological services.
As they moved forward, it became increasingly clear that Lake County Rising needed to help replace the homes that had been destroyed, so that families could have a house to go home to. They gave $450,000 to Hope Crisis Response Network for Hope City’s construction of new homes in South Lake County. Another $137,000 went to building permits.
During this time, Groody and other wine industry individuals made trips to the fire ravaged areas and spoke with survivors. They realized they had been so focused on building homes that they hadn’t considered that families had nothing to fill them. Lake County Rising ended up funneling $37,000 toward furniture for fire victims.
The winery organization has donated to numerous other projects over the past year and a half, such as a reforestation fund to replace the burnt trees covering the hills. Now, Lake County Rising has a little more than $379,000 on hand, which has already been allocated for Hope City. $250,000 was set aside as a matching grant to encourage Hope City to raise more funds. Lake County Rising also continues to fund building permits through Hope City, and they will distribute money as residents apply for permits.
Groody estimates that it will take five years to send the all money out the door, but the important thing is that it has been assigned a destination. “We really tried to get the money out and into the community, if not physically out, at least allocated. We don’t want to sit on it,” he said. “Like good wine, if you sit on the money too long it goes stale.”
Throughout the process of gathering donations, members of a steering committee reviewed where the money was headed, and then the Wine Alliance board made the final decision. By the time an entity or organization received funds, the money had been approved by three or four separate groups. “I think that was why we were able to raise as much money as we did, because people trusted the way that that worked,” said Groody.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
