“Our home is on fire!” the company wrote. “Your money will go straight to a family in need.”
It’s that sort of immediate cry for help that led RJ Falcioni, CEO of Outspoke.io, a cannabis business-to-business platform, to begin hosting fundraising efforts and donating proceeds directly to California growers impacted by the wildfires. The company started its fundraising work last fall, organizing donations during a concert at Terrapin Crossroads. (The concert had to be moved from its original venue due to the fires in the North Bay Area.)
At the show, the Outspoke team hosted a silent auction that brought in about $750 for cannabis growers affected by the Tubbs Fire. “We need to keep this issue going,” Falcioni says, pointing to the state’s long-running history of drought and a need for ecologically conscious water use. “It’s a big issue with conservation of water and what I call ‘theft of water’ by corporate AG in the Valley and their lack of conservation.”
This summer’s season of fire has only increased the momentum behind this sort of grassroots fundraising and this sort of conversation.
“A lot of people hadn’t even rebounded from the [October 2017 fires],” Falcioni says. “They were still reeling from that. … And now we’ve had this secondary wave of fires. Not only has it claimed lives, but it’s also eaten up a lot of land. These farms, in a lot of cases, are not insured … in a way that’s protective.”
Outspoke has taken its silent auction to the internet, where donations will be given directly to cannabis growers and families affected by the fires. The goal: $1,000 by the end of the month. Items include merchandise from California cannabis companies and seeds from Exotic Genetix.
The auction, Falcioni says, is also meant to facilitate that ongoing discussion about environmental practices in the newly regulated California cannabis industry. While the state’s history of intense wildfires is bordering on the routine in recent years, he says that this is no time to let important issues fall by the wayside of statewide discourse.
“It’s sort of a forgotten kind of issue,” Falcioni says, “and it’s something we’re going to need to continue raising funds for, because of the severe impact and the inability to stop it unless we change our water practices.”
Top photo courtesy of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
