We’ve had a lot of toasts with wine so far. Now I’d like to make a toast to the wine itself.

For those of you who’ve been able to visit wineries in Napa, you’ve probably seen and heard stories about the grapes, the land, the family, and the chemistry of making wine. But there’s one winery where, along the walls during the tour, there are pictures of the wine growers—the people who toil every day in the fields, working to make the grapes perfect for what they’re meant to become. That’s a sign that the winery and winemaker cares more about people than process.

That winery was owned by Jack Cakebread, the patriarch of the Cakebread wines, and he has an interesting story. He grew up in the Flats of Oakland. When you hear cities described as “the Flats,” it conjures images of other neighborhoods like the South Side or East of the River, places that have struggled economically. Jack grew up there, born in the Depression, but went on to run one of the most well-known wineries in America. There was a hunch that he still had a strong connection to his past.

With a little nudge, a charter school in Oakland reached out and invited Jack to visit, hoping he still had an interest in what was happening in his old neighborhood. Jack accepted the invitation. He came to the school one day and was deeply moved by the students, the teachers, the work ethic, the progress, and the hopes and dreams of those students.

Jack made a financial contribution to the school; an anonymous one. He later said that over his lifetime he had been asked to support many organizations, but he chose to give to only two: the Napa Valley hospital that treated his wife for brain cancer, and this charter school in Oakland.

This story doesn’t end there.

A few years later, a colleague of mine who had returned to a well-known business school called me and said, “You’ll never guess what just happened.” I told her, “You’re right, I will probably never guess what happened. A hint might help”. She told me her school had a wine club, where wine guys come in to talk about the business and try to get students interested in the industry. For the most part, the students just drink the wine. One day, an old man came in to talk about his winery. As he told his story, he stopped and asked, “Have any of you heard of charter schools?” He went on to talk about a great charter school in Oakland that was helping students set a path to college and stopped talking about his wine. His name was Jack Cakebread.

A month later, another colleague who had also returned to another east coast business school, called me and said, “You’ll never guess what just happened.” Now I’m getting the hang of this so I say, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe Jack Cakebread came to your wine club and, instead of talking about wine, talked about charter schools?” Long pause, phone drop.

Here’s a guy who was supposed to talk about his wines and to recruit business school students into the wine business, which is a tough industry and needs talent. Instead, he chose to spend his valuable time talking about a charter school. For some reason, that work mattered more to him.

That conversation stayed with me. Jack is one person, but there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people like him all across the country who care deeply about the work our schools are doing and the impact they have on students’ lives. For a long time, there was no real way for those people to be involved beyond making a chance connection or donating.

When Waiting for Superman came out in the late 2000s, six million people watched it and walked out of theaters – Kleenex in hand – wondering how they could help. At the time, there was no answer. People cared, but there was no way for them to be involved.

Now, there is a way. People can invest in a scalable model. They can have an impact, create savings for schools, and put more money back into the classroom to help students succeed. They can choose to receive their money back or give it back. You’ve created a way to bring people across the country into the charter school sector in a more thoughtful and intentional way.

Tonight, our toast is not just to the wine, it’s not just to Jack Cakebread, but to the thousands of others like him across the country, including all those who have helped create and support you; those who believe in our students and our schools, who care enough to be involved and share their treasure. May we toast to our benefactors, who sometimes care even more deeply about this work than their own companies. Here’s to your work and the power of building programs that bring people together around education.

Cheers.