Some donate 20 percent of profits—while others give everything away. Each is updating Paul Newman’s radical model for today. Decades later, a new wave of founders has invoked that legacy. It’s something Newman’s Own is championing.
Reprinted from Inc.com
To encourage more businesses to follow its lead, Newman’s Own Foundation launched a “100% for Purpose” club in 2025, aimed at recruiting the next generation of companies willing to build their businesses around giving—not just growing.
Over time, the commitment has been scaled down in some cases to fit smaller, venture-backed, or founder-led businesses, which allot a fixed percentage of profits—rather than the full amount—to charity. Such a move is seen as a more practical way to build purpose into a business that still needs to raise capital, turn a profit, and foster community along the way.
WellWithAll, a health and wellness brand best known for its low-calorie energy drink line, reinvests 20 percent of its profits into community health-equity initiatives. Founder Demond Martin directly cited Newman’s Own as inspiration for that structure, describing it as a way to “help society in those areas around health equity that are so desperately needed in the moment.”
That commitment shows up both in the business model at large and in smaller, local moments. At a recent event on Martha’s Vineyard, WellWithAll sponsored a 5K race and donated $10,000 to the community. “I do what I can,” Martin said, “and the community showed up.”
That comparison has stuck with people beyond Martin’s own team.
Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell, founder of Spill, pointed to Martin’s use of the model as one reason he admires the company. “Demond Martin with WellWithAll has an incredible company with a great mission to increase health equity, especially in the Black community, by rewarding the community using the Newman’s Own model,” he told Inc.
Hank and John Green, the brothers known online as the Vlogbrothers, previously told Inc. that they built their company Good Store around the same 100 percent giving structure Newman’s Own pioneered. When Hank first met the executive he’d eventually hire to run day-to-day operations, he opened with a question: “Have you heard of Newman’s Own?” When she answered yes, Hank replied, “I want to beat them.”
The brothers’ first venture, Awesome Socks Club, donated all of its profits to Partners In Health and signed up 60,000 paying customers within months. Since consolidating their charity-focused ventures into Good Store in 2023, the brothers have funneled more than $10 million to charitable causes.
Other companies are following a similar process.
Two Blind Brothers, an apparel venture founded by brothers Bradford and Bryan Manning, took no salary for nearly a decade, directing all profits to the blindness community and raising more than $3 million to date. In their first three years alone, they donated over $400,000 to Foundation Fighting Blindness.
This year, they took the model a step further, becoming a 501(c)(3) public charity modeled directly after Newman’s Own.
A company spokesperson told Inc. that giving 100 percent was never negotiable for the founders. They wanted philanthropy to be the reason the business existed, not just a line item that could shift year to year.
“Becoming a nonprofit was the natural next step,” the spokesperson said. “Taking a commitment the brothers had voluntarily lived by for years and embedding it into the organization’s structure for the future.”
These founders, whether they’re donating 20 percent or converting their entire structure to give away everything, are all chasing the same idea Newman stumbled into more than four decades ago: a business can be built to give, not just grow.
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