“Be the change you want to see happen.”

— Arleen Lorrance*

Every quarter I partner with a different non-profit to highlight their organization and bring awareness to their cause.

At the end of the quarter, I donate 5% of my total sales to that non-profit.

Below is the growing list of organizations that I have partnered with, that are opening the door for equality, fairness, and change. They inspire me to grow and give, so that we can all grow, together. By supporting small business, you’re helping to support others, and that connection is so important. Click on their logo to learn more, or make a donation.

The Lilith Fund supports the right of all Texans to make their own reproductive choices, regardless of income. Ever since the Dobbs decision, they have faced some incredible challenges, but one thing remains certain, and it’s their dedication to reproductive freedom.

Their hotline has remained open to provide resources and information to pregnant Texans navigating this more burdensome landscape. And they’ve worked hard to build out new programming to support our community and center a vision for reproductive justice, while we fight these unjust laws. The Lilith Fund now offers funding for non-abortion reproductive care including ultrasounds, STI screening, counseling, birth control, and Plan B.

Qwell is dedicated to helping every LGBTQIA+ resident improve their health, wealth, and wellbeing.

With your help, we can build a better future for our local LGBTQIA+ community here in Greater Austin. 

Community Energy Project

This organization runs out of Portland Oregon, and is near and dear to one of my vendor partners, Organics and Oddities. She was my first featured artist, and I had her choose which non-profit we would partner with.

The Community Energy Project believes that people are the experts of their own experience. By empowering people with information and tools and facilitating connections to resources, they can increase the capacity of the community to address many home, environmental, health, comfort, and safety issues while conserving natural resources. In short, they promote the use of renewable energy by diversifying energy supply and increasing home efficiency, to teach people how to become less dependent on fossil fuels and move toward a cleaner, healthier world.

I Live Here, I Give Here

Since 2007, I Live Here I Give Here has inspired Central Texans to give back to their local community. It all started as a marketing campaign designed to increase awareness about the importance of local philanthropy and drive support for the organizations and initiatives serving those not fully participating in Austin’s growing prosperity. Over the years, I Live Here I Give Here has grown, evolved, and made a transformative impact in the Central Texas community while remaining firmly rooted in its foundational values of collaboration and generosity.

In 2013, they launched “Amplify Austin Day” to create Central Texas’s first 24-hour day of giving. In just 9 short years, 750+ local nonprofit organizations have received more than $81.5 million from this campaign. The success of this program has paved the way for I Live Here I Give Here to produce additional year-round programs and activities that actively engage and empower individuals, companies, nonprofits, and foundations to be more generous and contribute to a more equitable community for all.

Good Work Austin

Good Work Austin helps locally-owned small businesses raise wages, provide benefits, and improve working conditions for a healthy employees, healthy workplace and a healthy community. By providing training, advocacy, and partnerships with some of Austin’s best non-profits, GWA helps small businesses implement paid sick leave, a living wage guarantee, and affordable access to health care, counseling, and wellness benefits.

In addition, GWA Community Kitchen pays local restaurants to provide nutritious meals to communities facing food insecurity, and are in the midst of opening Austin’s first non-profit café dedicated to training the next generation of hospitality industry workers.

A bit of an afterword regarding the phrase “be the change”

*I know what you’re thinking, “didn’t Ghandi say that?” And the answer is, no, he didn’t actually say that word for word. In 1913 Mohandas Gandhi published a piece about snakebites, and what he actually said was,

“… If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…”

Same sentiment, but not the exact words.

In 1974 an an author by the name Arleen Lorrance wrote a book about her journey as a teacher in a downward spiraling high school, and how she turned it around using her initiative of care and love. In a chapter called The Love Project she says,

“One way to start a preventative program is to be the change you want to see happen. That is the essence and substance of the simple and successful endeavor known as THE LOVE PROJECT.”

Arleen’s six basic principles for living in universal love are:

  • Receive all people as beautiful, exactly where they are.

  • Perceive problems as opportunities.

  • Be the change you want to see happen instead of trying to change everyone else.

  • Provide others with the opportunity to give.

  • Consciously create your own reality.

  • Have no expectations but, rather, abundant expectancy

And in 1978 the San Diego Union wrote an article about Arleen,
“She radiates energy with every word. She isn’t along for the ride.
She will make things happen. Be the change you want to see is her motto.”

source