View From the Team

Susan B. Noyes Founder & Chief Visionary Officer susan@makeitbetter.com

Leah Bronson Publisher lbronson@makeitbetter.com

Lotus Abrams Managing Editor labrams@makeitbetter.com

Warm Wishes

This month, as we welcome the onset of cooler weather, we’re delighted to celebrate the season in Marin County with content that warms the heart and nourishes the soul, from sharing some nutrient-packed soup and stew recipes (p. 38) and pumpkin spiceinspired product picks from local businesses (p. 34) to profiling a Tiburon-based entrepreneur who launched her edible bouquet business amidst the global pandemic (p. 29). Our senior content manager and digital editor, Jessica Gliddon, also shares fond memories of her childhood visits to a historic Belvedere house her great aunt once called home (p. 36), and New York Times best-selling author Katy Butler recalls her time spent at a West Marin writers’ retreat focused on nurturing authors to pen works focused on social justice, the environment and the economy (p. 44).

We’re also heralding some news of our own here at Marin Magazine this month. Leah Bronson, who has been part of the team since 2008, is grabbing the reigns as publisher of Make It Better Media, parent company to Marin, Better and SPACES. We’re all excited to see where her leadership takes us next.

While we’re always looking ahead to what’s coming next here at Make It Better Media, we also wanted to take a moment to remember our core mission and motivation since our inception: helping others. When we launched the better.net website in 2007, which features content that serves Bay Area, Chicago and national audiences, we grew support for it through innovative media sponsorship fundraising techniques on behalf of local nonprofits. We published online stories that brought their mission to life and promoted their events, and we donated $5 to them for every new subscriber to our email newsletter “Better Letter,” which each organization generated, too.

Turns out, our innovative digital strategies and mission to be as helpful to our audience and partners as possible has also been ideal for these pandemic times. We soon found ourselves working with more powerful and helpful organizations than ever — growing audience, business and donations to causes that our entire team is incredibly proud to support. In the digital world, there are only two degrees of separation between you and anyone working with Marin Magazine, Better, SPACES and our Make It Better Foundation.

In the past, we kept track of the amount of money our campaigns raised for nonprofits. We also counted the number of lives made better by our work, and included audience, satisfied marketing partners and the people helped by the funds that our nonprofit campaigns raised. Although we stopped announcing these numbers publicly many years ago, you, our readers, have become such an important part of this success that we want to proudly share these numbers again. And, we promise to update them each month.

At the time this issue was sent to press, since Jan. 1, 2020, Make It Better Media Group and our engaged readers and audience members like you have generated this incredible impact:

$5.5 million raised for nonprofits 17 million lives made better

Your attention and your subscriptions/follows/ shares/comments are incredibly valuable. Thanks for trusting Make It Better Media to help you make your life, your community and the lives of others better, too.

Happy reading.

Susan B. Noyes, Founder & Chief Visionary Officer

Leah Bronson, Publisher

Lotus Abrams, Managing Editor

IF YOU LIKE US IN PRINT, YOU WILL LOVE US ONLINE! For the best of Marin Magazine delivered to your inbox, subscribe to the Better Letter at marinmagazine.com/subscribe. And follow us on social media:

@marinmagazine @marinmagazine @marinmagazine marinmagazine marinmagazine marinmagazine

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