It’s hard to believe another holiday season is here. I think I began my “Countdown to Christmas” right around June 25, and now here we are practically in December. The whole Baking for Good team is excited for this year’s holiday orders. If you’re in the market for gifts, swing by our website (our holiday favorites are here) or email info@bakingforgood.com to receive a copy of our gift guide. We’ll help you make this holiday season the sweetest one yet!

Before starting Baking for Good, I considered going into event planning. I love the little details that go into planning parties, and I’m inspired by the work of some of the very talented event planners I’ve met in NYC.

Given my love for special events, I’m always thrilled when friends of BFG send us photos of our treats on display. These peanut cookie photos were sent to us by the lovely Nicki Sebastian, aka pbj4life. They are from her baby shower, which was artfully designed by event planners Cait & Jules. Ever since Nicki shared Cait & Jules’s site with me last year, I’ve been eagerly following their blog to get a peek into some of the fun and festive events they plan.

Congrats to Nicki – we can’t wait to meet your new baby girl!

I’ve talked a bunch about our Instagraham cookies and my love for Instagram, and this week I’m excited to share that Instagram is featuring us as a “suggested user” on their app! When new users download the app, they’ll see a list of accounts that Instagram recommends they follow…including ours! When we learned we were being featured last week, we had fewer than 2,000 followers, and now we have more than 15,000. We’re so excited! If you use instagram, search for our account at @BakingforGood. Each day we’re posting a fun photo from around the bakery or elsewhere in NYC. Let me know if you’re on Instagram and I’ll follow you back!

When I started Baking for Good in 2009, I wanted to build a fundraising platform that would allow organizations large and small to support charities that were close to their hearts. I was tired of the same old school fundraisers that encourage students to go door to door selling wrapping paper and chocolate bars (especially since I’m pretty sure most kids aren’t allowed to wander door to door in their neighborhoods anymore). I wanted to create a website — an online bake sale, if you will — that would offer really delicious, gourmet baked goods that would be perfect for gifts and special occasions AND that would help great organizations raise money for projects that matter.

Three years later, I can say with confidence that lots of organizations, large and small, were excited about this model. Our list of charity partners started out at about 50 and grew to 200+ in a matter of months. The downside, however, was that the list grew to be so long that many of our customers felt overwhelmed at checkout, and we found that even though we were donating a lot of money each month, it was spread across so many organizations that it was sometimes difficult to see it making a difference in any one place.

Surely the list couldn’t keep growing forever, so I knew from pretty early on that we would need to make a change in our donation program. The true catalyst for us making a change came earlier this summer, when we learned that commercial co-venture laws in several states restrict nonprofits’ ability to promote companies like ours, and discourage businesses like ours from linking the names of nonprofits directly with the purchases of products. It’s complicated, and the rules vary from state to state, but we decided it was time to simplify the way we make our donations.

Change is good. We’re really excited about the changes we’re making to our cause program, and we hope you’ll enjoy them. Now when you shop at Baking for Good, instead of choosing one nonprofit from a list of dozens of organizations, you can choose from a shorter list of causes by category. Each month we will choose one nonprofit within each category to receive the funds for that month. We’ll be using nominations from our customers as well as rating systems like Charity Navigator to determine which nonprofits to support.

We know that sometimes you really want to choose a specific organization that has important meaning to you or to your recipients, and we want to still allow that to happen. For wedding orders and other big events and gifts (any purchase over $300), you can select a specific organization of your choice. Contact us anytime at orders@bakingforgood.com to talk to us about these types of orders.

If you haven’t visited Baking for Good lately, swing by the site and check out the new cause program. We’ll be sharing stories about the nonprofits we’re supporting on our blog, and we welcome your nominations for organizations to support in the future at causes@bakingforgood.com.

Thanks for being on this journey with us!

I often say that one of the best parts of running Baking for Good has been getting to know our awesome customers from across the country. Earlier this summer I posted on Twitter asking if there were any “budding filmmakers” who wanted to help us submit a video for a contest to win a van. Little did I know that we would hear back from Tom Gorman, a beyond talented filmmaker who just so happens to love our cookies! (We baked for his wedding last summer…happy anniversary, Emma & Tom!)

Before I knew it, Emma and Tom were ditching their Memorial Day weekend plans to spend a day with me and boxes full of baked goods. The video above is what resulted. Sweetest 60 seconds of your day, right?? Thank you, Emma & Tom — we love it!!

Even better, the Instagrahams have become a huge hit on social media and blogs. With a teeny budget, we selected four brands we love to follow on Instagram and baked 1/2 a dozen cookies for each of them (Warby Parker, Kate Spade, DANNIJO, and Man Repeller), featuring their own Instagram photos. We created small gift boxes and added in some chocolate bars and marshmallows so they could turn their Instagrahams into Insta-smores. Within just a few hours of delivering these gift boxes to their offices, our Instagram feed was abuzz with hundreds of new followers and we started hearing from new customers, brands, and blogs across the country that wanted to work with us.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if this Instagraham project would drive new business or just be a fun way to generate some buzz, but I’m excited to say that it’s already done both. Check out our Instagrahams and order your own here. Happy instagrahaming!

Here are a few of our favorite recent projects:

1. Nicki and Roni’s gender reveal cookies. It’s a girl!

2. A cake for Pencils of Promise.

3. Pig cookies and cupcakes for a pig-themed party. 

4. Anna Banana cookies for a little girl’s first birthday. 

Three years ago I started Baking for Good with $40,000 of savings. We have been lucky that our sales have grown quickly from the beginning, and keeping the company very lean has allowed us to avoid taking on outside investment.

Keeping a close eye on spending means there are often new projects, partnerships, and events that would be GREAT to do, but we can’t justify them with our small budget. When I saw that Chase and Living Social are teaming up to give twelve grants of $250,000 each to worthy small businesses across the country, I jumped at the chance to put Baking for Good’s name in the ring.

In order to be considered for one of these grants, we need to receive 250 votes at https://www.missionsmallbusiness.com/ by this Saturday, June 30, 2012. You’re eligible to vote if you have a facebook account, and it only takes a moment. Just follow the link, then click “log in & support,” then search for Baking for Good and vote.

Every vote counts, so after you’ve voted, it would be AWESOME if you could share it with your friends via facebook, twitter, email, etc. Please help us continue to grow so we can raise more funds for causes in our communities!

Vote now: https://www.missionsmallbusiness.com/. THANKS!!!

The person who gets less credit in the story, but is at least as responsible for turning me into an entrepreneur, is my dad. My dad is the most curious person I know. He’s constantly reading and learning, and he has a great ability to brainstorm creative business ideas.

When I was about twelve, we were skiing together one day and found ourselves frustrated by the inconvenience of having to take off our gloves and risk frostbite in order to retrieve the trail maps from our pockets. Over the next few months, we devised a prototype of the Trail Snap, our first (and only) invention together. It allowed you to store your trail map inside your ski pole, and you could access it whenever you wanted by pulling it out via a window shade-like contraption. The Trail Snap was brilliant, and though we never took it beyond that prototype stage, I know that this experience of building something from nothing made an impression on me.

I’m often asked if my parents were supportive of my decision to start Baking for Good. The answer couldn’t be a more resounding yes. After I told my parents the idea, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation about whether or not I should do it; instead, my dad had a million ideas right off the bat, and his energy and enthusiasm for the company have never wavered.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you!