For decades, Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry has made philanthropy and community involvement a central tenet of their business, but Jared and Stephen Silver wanted to make a more immediate impact to address the significant challenges facing impoverished children and their families due to Covid-19. Working together with longtime friend and ally NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott of the San Francisco 49ers, the Silvers now announce their pledge to donate a 10 percent cash match for every dollar spent buying secondhand jewelry through their remote buying program, directly benefiting Eastside College Preparatory School and Eat REAL. The Silvers have kicked off the program on Giving Tuesday Now with a personal donation of $10,000 to each charity, and their goal is to raise $100,000 for each organization over the next 30 days. Ronnie Lott will help the Silvers drive awareness and engagement with the campaign. The program has the potential to generate thousands if not millions of dollars to help feed, educate, and meet urgent needs for local Bay Area families.
Stephen Silver, CEO of Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry: “This is a devastating time for so many, and the reality is that none of us as individuals can address all of the different needs in people’s lives without the help of others.” For him, partnership with local charities and allies is key, and he believes the best place to start is to help children: “We can make a big impact through this campaign and with our partners to take care of children. We want to feed them, educate them, house them, and address all of the different areas that can affect them. I think that is very important.”
Ronnie Lott, like the Silvers, believes in a team approach to doing good. For years, he has helped raise funds in the community to improve the education, health, and life skills of disadvantaged youth. Life, he explains, is always being in the huddle, finding a way to touch everybody.
“I saw an opportunity to huddle with people in the community, with my veteran teammates Stephen Silver and Eastside College Preparatory School, and now this promising rookie, Nora LaTorre, CEO of Eat REAL. We have unity as a team and we’re all trying to figure out how to take this bad situation and turn it into a better situation. I realized this is a moment where I can help, whether it’s myself or by joining with some of the young niners. There are a number of guys on the team that want to help and give back during this time.”
Even prior to this pledge, the Silvers’ support of Eat REAL as angel donors had already been transformative, enabling the non-profit to quickly scale from supporting 51 Northern California schools serve nutritious meals to partnering with 1,000 schools statewide. Today these schools serve 1.5 million crisis meals to students from low-income families per week, and through this campaign, they hope to help more schools increase that number even more dramatically. According to Nora LaTorre, CEO, “The generosity of the Silvers has been catalytic. We created a lot of good together, increasing real food access and education to create a healthier generation. In our last campaign, they helped us create a donor match challenge. He [Stephen Silver] not only participated in a donation challenge but also challenged back which helped us attract even more donors and raise more money.”
The Silvers have long supported Eastside College Preparatory School in their quest to educate and provide opportunities for historically underrepresented students, addressing long-term needs with scholarships, employment opportunities, and more. Chris Bischof, Co-Founder and Principal notes that the need now is much more immediate: “We want to support our families going through really difficult times with solutions that range from remote learning programs to providing technology, meals, and emergency support, all of which require expanded funding and resources that the cash-match remote buying program can facilitate.”
