By Jocelyn Ho, little word studio fall intern
November is a month for gratitude and giving, the perfect time to feature the charitable work of one of our fantastic clients, Andrew Manning, an established luxury REALTOR® with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties. Recently, Andrew and his husband, Steve, transformed their Encino home into the site of Oktoberfest, an annual fundraising event organized by California Properties to raise money for The Charitable Foundation. Lederhosen were worn, giant pretzels were set afloat in the pool and the crowd reveled in a delightful evening … all to bring festive cheer (and funds) to those who need it most. Read on as Andrew shares the inside scoop!
JOCELYN: You hosted the Charitable Foundation Los Angeles Chapter Oktoberfest Fundraising event at your house, can you tell me about how that went and what made it such a special event for you?
ANDREW: The event was amazing. I think it’s the third or fourth time we’ve done it at our house in the last 10 years. We were supposed to sell out at 100 people but we ended up with about 125 people who we squeezed in, which was great. At The Charitable Foundation, we support hyper-local, smaller charities rather than national or international charities with giant budgets. Every month, we focus on different charities. This month and for the fundraiser, we were raising money for The Ovarian Cancer Circle, which was founded by Paulinda Schimmel Babbini in honor of her daughter, Robin Babbini. Robin was a UC Santa Barbara student who sadly passed away from ovarian cancer at just 20 years old. At the event, we were lucky enough to have Paulinda speak about her daughter and the mission of the organization she founded in Robin’s memory. Our goal was to raise money for The Ovarian Cancer Circle and also for a local organization that helps wounded soldiers and service dogs. We ended up raising over $25,000, which was a real sense of accomplishment. And it was all themed Oktoberfest, so we had people dressed in lederhosen and dirndls, the native outfits from Germany. Super cute. We had wonderful food, great caterers, live music, and auctioneers. It went really well and everybody had an excellent time. We’re always happy to open our house, so it was nice to do something big like that for the first time in years.
Looking back, what was your favorite memory from the night?
I loved seeing people just excited to be out and about. So, my favorite memory was definitely seeing everyone together having a good time and networking, especially since we literally hadn’t seen some people in years because everyone’s been working from home or doing their own thing. It was nice to reconnect with a lot of fellow agents. Some clients of mine attended as guests, and they were so impressed that as a company, we were doing this kind of thing.
How do you feel giving back has contributed to your decades-long career in real estate?
It’s always so important to give back. Everyone says we’re lucky because we do very well in real estate, and while I agree the harder we work, the luckier we get, it also makes us want to give back to our community. And it’s our pleasure to open our home. Steve and I bought this big house almost 23 years ago for just the two of us and it’s so nice to be able to use it for entertainment. That’s one of our favorite things to do.
Has there ever been an “aha” moment when you realized the positive impact you are making on the lives of others?
It happens all the time, but every time we do one of these charity events and we see people raising funds, it feels really special. We have a vacation home up in the Santa Ynez Valley, in the Los Olivos area, so we donate a stay at that property to a lot of different charities. Over the last 10 years of owning our home, we’ve probably donated tens of thousands of dollars indirectly just from people at charity auctions who have purchased stays. It’s fun to realize how big impacts can start in small places. Even if someone can only afford to give $10 – that’s great. The people who are donating on the small scale to stay in our house are still giving money to the greater good and they get a nice place to stay. We’ve made some amazing friends in the process, and it’s been a lot of fun.
What are some of your favorite charities and what makes them so meaningful for you?
We love animal and dog rescue charities because we’re huge dog people and have owned a group of rescue dogs at all times for the last 30 years. They’re part of our crew and come with us everywhere. One of my clients is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), so we work with them often. RaiseAChild is another special charity that one of our other clients works for, which advocates for people adopting kids all the way up to teenage years who have been passed over in the regular adoption process. One of our main focuses, though, is doing work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. That one is meaningful to us because they were clients from 1999. We became personal friends with them, and we’ve been with them and their foundation for a long time now.
With Thanksgiving and the holiday season coming up, do you do anything special in your professional or personal life to celebrate?
Usually we’ll make a big donation to several of our key charities in our clients’ honor, and let them know we donated in their name. Most of the people we work with don’t need anything, so I think it’s special to be able to give to someone who needs it more. I especially love organizations like Heifer International that let you donate animals like cows, sheep, goats, chickens, donkeys and more to villages in third-world countries. They teach the whole village how to take care of the animals so they can get milk from the cow or shear wool from the sheep. Instead of killing the animal for meat once, they can make cheese, yogurt, cream, and even clothes for many, many years. The kids also get to learn animal husbandry, and it really becomes part of the community. It’s very basic but it’s a fantastic service where you not only change one person’s life, but also an entire community’s existence for a relatively ridiculous sum of money, which people would probably otherwise spend going out to dinner. It’s just unbelievable. And there’s something for every budget. Like, you could buy a chicken so someone has eggs. Or you can buy 10 chickens. You can buy a donkey if they need manual labor to pull a plow. Without that help, they might not be able to plant their crops that year, but with the one donkey, they could plant three times as much in half the time. It’s a brilliant game changer for some of these third-world countries and is one of my favorite gifts to give to clients.
How do charitable giving and giving back play into business?
Giving back has let us meet and connect with some really interesting people who have become our friends and clients for many years. Like how our clients with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation ended up renting our house while they were building a house in Napa. They had nowhere to go after we sold their house in Sherman Oaks, since their new house wasn’t ready yet, so we rented them our house because we happened to be moving at the same time. And we became very close friends with them and have been friends for 24 years and counting. That evolved into our charitable work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation because the wife was the head of charitable giving. Through the foundation and its charitable auctions, we’ve been able to take trips all over the world where we’ve met so many interesting, like-minded people. We’ve persuaded a lot of clients to participate in these trip donation charities, so it’s furthered relationships business-wise, but also has expanded our charitable network, a win-win for all sides.
How can someone reading this get more involved with their community?
Some people get overwhelmed or think they have to do everything on a large scale, but it could be as simple as helping a neighbor. Maybe you have a widow or a widower who lives next door who’s lonely. Cook them dinner or go to the market for them! You might think you don’t have time to do anything, but if you’re that busy, and have the means but not the time, absolutely attach to a charity or organization that has meaning to you and write a check. There’s nothing wrong with sending money to an organization, but I think part of the fun is getting involved, meeting people, and seeing how your money changes lives. The focus should be finding something that resonates with you, whether that’s two or three charitable organizations you want to get involved with physically, mentally, or financially, and just jump in. And it can be simple things like volunteering at your kid’s preschool, going to a farmer’s market and buying fresh vegetables for someone who maybe couldn’t afford them, or serving meals for Thanksgiving at a food bank. It doesn’t have to cost a cent, you just have to be willing to volunteer time. There’s really no excuse, and everyone can get involved!
| Photos courtesy of Araya Doheny Photography |
