Downturn may affect Naples Winter Wine Festival fundraiser

Last year's Naples Winter Wine Festival raised a jawdropping $14 million for Collier County kids.

This year? No one knows.

The recession looms large in organizers' minds, and they worry the black economic cloud could dampen their shot at reaching anywhere near that amount during Saturday's auction.

In the past, the glitzy, wine-soaked affair has seen millionaires bidding as high as $2 million for a Rolls Royce.

The festival is considered the most financially successful wine festival in the world. It raises more money than any other fundraiser in Southwest Florida.

Saturday's auction lots include a Smart Car, a private dinner with country star Martina McBride and a trip to the "American Idol" finals.

Ann Bain - grant-committee chairwoman for the Naples Children and Education Foundation, the group that holds the annual auction and hands out the resulting millions - said she's optimistic and hopeful about Saturday.

It's particularly important this year for bidders to bid high, she said. Without the auction, many kids simply might not get the health and social services they need.

Despite Collier County's reputation as a haven for the wealthy, its unemployment rate hit 8.1 percent in November and December, nearly double a year earlier.

On top of that, Collier saw a 32 percent jump in the number of people on cash welfare in the past year.

Times are tight, Bain said. There’s been a steep drop in donations and grant funds for charitable and social agencies that help those very same people.

“If there is ever a year that the kids need the wine festival to be successful, it’s this year,” Bain said. “We really need to come through for them.”

Since it started in 2001, the Naples Children and Education Fund has reported handing out $40.2 million to local social and charitable agencies, and another $18.5 million for long-term projects such as helping build a Boys & Girls Club in Naples.

The foundation gives money to 15 or so charities every year. Those millions of dollars pay for dental and health care, tutors, low-cost housing, shelters for abused children, after-school sports, foster care programs and more.

“They do amazing work,” said Deb Millsap, spokeswoman for the Collier County Health Department, one of the beneficiaries. “It’s absolutely fabulous.”

Every dollar of the wine festival goes to charity, Bain said. The festival, itself — including fancy dinners tonight with ticketholders wining and dining with famous chefs and wine makers — is paid for through donations, ticket sales and sponsorships.

Last year, the foundation gave out $6.5 million to local agencies and groups, plus another $10.8 million to long-term Immokalee projects to train teachers, expand an existing children’s medical facility and help build the much-needed Boys & Girls Club.

Those totals include the $14 million from last year and money set aside for the long-term projects.

Lesa Peterson of Collier Health Services oversees a new children’s dental clinic paid for by the foundation — something she said has been needed for years.

The nonprofit Collier Health Services also runs a Ronald McDonald Care Mobile program that screens kids for health problems. For years, that rolling medical center had been seeing kids with terrible dental problems, Peterson said.

“Literally, three-quarters of the kids we saw had multiple cavities,” she said. “We were seeing kids who shared toothbrushes, and we were seeing kids who had never been to the dentist.”

The foundation gave Collier Health Services more than $4 million to build the dental clinic and another $1.58 million for operating expenses. Since it opened Dec. 3, the clinic has treated about 500 kids, Peterson said. At capacity, it’s expected to treat about 5,000 a year.

The Boys and Girls Club of Collier County — along with abuse shelter Youth Haven — has been the longest-running beneficiary of the wine auction. Before the foundation got involved, the Collier club had just 30 kids who went to a couple of broken-down, double-wide trailers. Now about 1,500 kids come every year to the 5-year-old club facility (including the 3-year-old main building).

Ninety percent of those kids attend the club through foundation scholarships, said Threasa Miller, the club’s senior director of resource development.

Earlier this week, the facility was full of kids getting homework help and playing basketball, ping-pong and other games. In one classroom, a group of teenage boys hunched over desks as they studied how to prepare meals in a culinary arts class.
Later, they prepared a snack from raw vegetables, chopped chicken and fresh garlic and ginger.

Yvens Herard, 16, of Naples said he loves the class and everything else about the club. It’s better than staying at home.

“I’d just stay there and sleep,” Herard said. “When you’re at home and have nothing else to do, you’ll just go mad out of boredom.”

Now those children need the auction more than ever, said Bain of the foundation.

No one knows for sure how generous Naples millionaires will be Saturday. Last year’s $14 million auction haul was itself a drop from the previous year’s record $16.4 million. And that’s before the recession really hit Southwest Florida and the rest of the country.

Bain hopes to make at least as much as last year, but she realizes the economy might be against them.

Even so, she pointed out the obvious: Anything they get will help poor and at-risk kids.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

“Every dollar we raise for these charities is more than they’d have if we didn’t raise it,” Bain said. “If we raise $2 million, that’s $2 million that they didn’t have before. And we’ll raise a lot more than that.

“I think we’ll do fine.”