Christmastime, and the giving back is easy.
ONEHOPE Wine
Sometimes, giving to your nonprofit of choice is as simple as buying a bottle of wine. In a wine-making partnership with Robert Mondavi Jr., ONEHOPE Wine donates 50 percent of its profits—that is $750,000 since 2007—to charities such as Share Our Strength and others for autism, breast cancer, and AIDS. ONEHOPE Wine provides signature bottles to the Grammy Awards and Sundance Film Festival. Order it locally at Foreign Cinema and the Lone Palm in the Mission.
SF City Guides (Civic Center)
The SF Public Library’s City Guides tours are for more than just backpack-toting visitors. Led by knowledgeable insiders, the tours shed light on the landmarks and lore of a city often unknown even to its denizens. For instance, one of the tours offers a rare chance to view a Diego Rivera mural inside the Pacific Stock Exchange. Anyone can donate to City Guides or become a sponsor. Or go the extra step, and become a volunteer tour guide.
Glide Foundation (Tenderloin)
Can’t give enough to earn a power lunch with Warren Buffett? You can still join Glide Foundation this season as they spend their 50th year under the tutelage of radical Reverend Cecil Williams, spreading charity around the city. With daily volunteer opportunities tending to the homeless and underserved, plus holiday giveaways and toy drives, there’s plenty to choose from. Tonight, help with the filling and distributing of 5,000 bags of groceries to those in need.
Surfrider Foundation (Ocean Beach and Presidio)
Surfers, fisherman, Frisbee enthusiasts, and sunbathers unite among the 1,200-plus volunteers of Surfrider Foundation’s SF chapter, which keeps the five miles of shoreline at Ocean Beach and the three-mile stretch of Baker Beach tidy. Join the clean-up on Dec. 29. Then hang with the crew at the afteparty.
Bike Kitchen(Mission)
Hipsters may look cool on their fixies, but there is more than one reason to ride a bike—just ask the folks at Critical Mass. At the Mission’s Bike Kitchen, volunteer mechanics provide the wisdom and tools to help you maintain your ride for just $5 a day (membership is offered on a sliding scale). Volunteering for six hours gets you unlimited access to the shop and “earn a bike” rights so you can build your bike from scratch in-house. Bike Kitchen also donates partial proceeds to Lyon-Martin Health Services for women and transgender people.
Year Up (Embarcadero)
This national organization is dedicated to bridging the opportunity gap for young adults in urban settings by providing real-world training and internships at companies such as PayPal, Wells Fargo, and FM Global. The nonprofit made headlines in September when SF-based Salesforce donated $2.5 million in funding. Meet the students at Year Up’s next happy-hour mixer on Jan. 31. While you’re there, learn how you can get involved as a mentor.
Spark (Pacific Heights)
Geared toward empowering women around the globe, Spark provides consulting services and networking resources to female-driven grass-roots organizations and startups, such as Kenya’s female mentoring program Akili Dada and Tanzania’s urban refugee assistance program Asylum Access. More than just an opportunity to make a monetary gift, Spark’s interactive volunteer program offers all of its partners everything from legal
advice to logo creation.
This article was published in 7x7's December/January issue. Click here to subscribe.
