The trustees insist that they are not just a country club that happens to raise money for charity. “It’s not just a bunch of rich people who get together to have a party,” volunteers Sherman. But, at the same time, they admit that many of the features of the organization do reinforce that perception, particularly its implicit exclusivity. The trustees are unapologetic about their choosiness when it comes to expanding their own number or bestowing the privilege of paying to attend the auction itself and bidding on the lots. “The closeness with like-minded people is part of the magic,” Clinton argues. Another difference from conventional nonprofits that the group is quick to emphasize is that men and women are involved equally. “In other organizations, maybe the women’s contribution gets overlooked, but not here,” says trustee Don Ackerman, a venture capitalist.
The three-day event, which culminates in the Sunday auction, is interspersed with gourmet dinners at the trustees’ Naples estates. A different star chef, such as Daniel Boulud of New York’s Daniel, caters each event, which features wines from an elite vintner. Some 15 trustees throw open their homes to no more than three dozen guests each for the dinners, giving the attendees—who will bid at the
auctions— an opportunity to schmooze with the chef and the vintner. “They have to be among the best homes and estates in Naples,” Brian Cobb stipulates. The trustees pay heavily for the privilege of hosting these dinners: A party bill can hit $30,000, before adding the cost of flying in the vintners via private jets and, naturally, the fee for the local high school marching band to meet those jets and their occupants at the airport.
Charitable Expenses It is difficult to gauge exactly what it costs the group to make the venture work. The 2004 auction brought in $7.67 million, of which $5.2 million went to 18 children’s charities in Collier County. However, the cost of organizing the event greatly exceeded that $2.4 million gap, the trustees admit. It does not include the value of the donations or the trustee dinners. Moreover, trustee bidding is what makes the auction itself work. “Trustees contributed a substantial amount of that $7 million,” Bruce Sherman explains. “They are the biggest bidders on many lots—that is what is expected—so it’s our ‘treasure’ that makes this a success from start to finish.” |
This type of extravagance has spurred the event’s success, trustees argue. “The main thing that most businesses do better than most charities is execution,” asserts Brian Cobb. In the case of the Naples wine festival and the auction, execution means developing a strategic plan centering on ways to lure big spenders to the event and convince them to bid aggressively, in the same way that trustees would plan a new marketing campaign for their own companies. The first step in that process, says Gargiulo, was “understanding that people like us, the kind of people we needed to attract, can afford to do anything they want to.” From the start, trustees recognized the need to create a unique experience. “People can buy my wines; they can’t necessarily buy a lunch with me at my winery,” Gargiulo adds.Lush Life
A typical philanthropic gathering too often takes place in a crowded hotel ballroom, where guests are forced to eat mediocre, reheated food and drink the house wine. Drawing on their business acumen and their personal fortunes, the Naples organizers found ways to improve upon this traditional model. The initial lesson: Spend money to make money. This sparked the idea of the vintner dinner, and the agreement among trustees to take on the responsibility of devising exceptional auction lots. They decided to hold the auction itself at the nearby Ritz-Carlton resort, again with gourmet food prepared by the visiting chefs and world-class bottles of wine.
Above all, the trustees worked to convey a sense of exclusivity. They took a lesson from the world of high fashion, wherein denizens are not necessarily lauded for flaunting their new recherché Prada handbag, but rather for proving to their peers that they are one of a handful of VIPs able to buy it without spending a year on a waiting list. To give their event a similar cachet, Naples organizers capped the number of attendees at 500—and charged each of them to attend. This year, couples will pay $5,000 to attend the auction and a vintner dinner; for $12,000, two couples can attend, with a guarantee that both will be seated at the same dinner. “We figured the first year that by applying an entry charge, we’d have $1 million or so to give away right there, even if no one bid on any of the lots,” Brian Cobb says. TOP VIEW
The type A entrepreneurs and business leaders of Naples, Fla., have reinvented grassroots philanthropy at more lofty levels. The Naples Winter Wine Festival, organized and run by this close-knit clique, nets millions of dollars for local charities every February from an exclusive, invitation-only group of enthusiasts, and has become one of the premier events on the philanthropic calendar. Success, however, is forcing these hard-driven trustees to consider how they can maintain the event’s cachet while managing its unprecedented growth. |
That was not enough, the trustees quickly realized. They assumed, after all, that the wealthiest are not necessarily the most generous philanthropists. Focused intently on the goal of raising as much money as possible for their charities (see “The Auction’s Beneficiaries,” page 83), they needed a way to ensure that attendees perceive the event as more than just another social occasion, however elite. “We needed to attract the kind of people that not only could, but would, spend a lot of money,” Cobb says. Their answer: Limit attendance only to invited guests.Natural Selection
More specifically, organizers have devised a complex hierarchy to classify and retain high-end donors. Each year, they send the first round of invitations to high bidders from previous auctions. As an added inducement to return and spend generously again, these individuals are offered their first choice of the vintner dinners they wish to attend. Only after that group has signed up are newcomers considered. This exclusivity strategy, as predicted, has whetted the appetite to gain entry to what has become a premier charitable event of the Florida winter season. Ann Bain, who joined the ranks of the trustees with her husband, private equity giant Bill Bain, two years ago, says friends clamor for invitations. “This year we will have friends from Boston flying down with us, people we know will be bidders because we have seen them at similar events,” she adds.
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