About RAW Giving

What Is RAW Giving?
A Reflection of Who We Truly Are

Years ago we used to call ourselves the RAW Foundation. But because we gave away millions and did such incredible life-saving work– including Josh personally traveling to Ethiopia many times to both fund and help bring clean water to 7 of what are essentially hospitals run by the Sisters of Mother Teresa–the name RAW Foundation might have made people think we were a 501c3 IRS charity ourselves. The multi-billion dollar company Republic Tobacco actually claimed in court that just the word “foundation” made people think we were a 501C3 registered charity (obviously we weren’t). So we changed our name to RAW Giving back in 2021 to make it super clear that we just GIVE, we don’t take donations and never have! In fact, we took all of the net proceeds that we finally won from Republic Tobacco for their willful infringement of our trade dress and donated that to charities like the Last Prisoner Project and the Weldon Project as well. The important thing is that even with anyone’s mean-spirited attacks, you should never stop giving back! Darkness only wins if you turn off your light 😊

In fact in 2026 we launched The Josh Kesselman Foundation for Making The World A Better Place, which is a 501c3 with an initial starting endowment of $2.2 million dedicated to charitable initiatives globally and locally, the Josh Kesselman Foundation was created to transform lives and change the stigma around cannabis-driven philanthropy.

RAW Giving is not a 501(c)(3) organization, and does not accept donations. RAW Giving is what we call our humanitarian initiatives which now includes both the millions of dollars we have donated directly to various organizations and starting in 2026 we now have The Josh Kesselman Foundation for Making The World A Better Place which is a 501(c)(3) and now makes grants directly to extremely worthwhile causes.

I know it’s confusing, but basically this page is meant to highlight our humanitarian giving both past and present through various means (personal, business and through our foundation) in order to uplift our community and generally make people smile.  We want you to know that it’s not all doom and gloom out there with billionaires who only donate to their pet causes and sports teams.  Instead there are some of us like you that truly just trying to make a difference in the world, and make this planet better for all of us because we all get higher together.