Selfless Serving

"The entire purpose is to promote Habitat for Humanity and the Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store," explains Greenwood. "Robb & Stucky helps the thrift shop year-round. If we've got an RTV [return to vendor] item that the vendor tells us to keep rather than pay a high amount for postage, we bring it right over to the Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store. Last year Habitat sold enough out of their thrift store to finance five houses."

Philanthropy isn't restricted to large corporations; charity also starts in small businesses, as with Carol Simontacchi, owner of Island Nutrition Center on Sanibel. She holds a support group for approximately 20 parents of children with autism at her home in Fort Myers.

After the publication of her book, Crazy Makers, which focuses on America's food culture and the building blocks of a healthy brain, she became interested in the relationship between autism and diet. Now working toward a Ph.D. in nutritional neurobiological chemistry, the nutritionist has a professional interest in the subject of nutrition and diet as it relates to disease. The support group formed as a result of a need she saw in the parents, mostly mothers.

"This endeavor is self-serving only in the sense that I get a great deal of gratification from it," she explains. "No-body's paying me, and it certainly does not work out economically. The main purpose of this group is to give these moms a place to meet each other and share their lives. I do believe that businesses have a social responsibility."