This Is for Charity?
Raising Money for Good Causes Has Gotten a Lot More Wacky

By Julia Feldmeier
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 21, 2007

Popular opinion in a crowd of beer-guzzling 20- and 30-somethings is this: Mustaches are sexy. And if not entirely sexy, then utterly hilarious.

The guzzlers are gathered at Tom Tom in Adams Morgan, Budweisers in hand, cheering and hooting at the parade of men strutting across the stage.

Welcome to Washington's first Sweet 'Stache ManPageant, where facial hair is flaunted in the good name of charity.

Thrown by a group called SMASHED -- formally, the Society of Mature Adults Seeking to Help, Entertain and Donate -- the hirsute spectacle raised more than $3,000 for Capital Queen for a Day, a local nonprofit group that aids children with cancer.

"There's nothing that this 'stache wouldn't do for the kids," says Steve Weldon, a 26-year-old from Arlington and the newly crowned Mr. Sweet 'Stache 2006. With sparse growth atop his lip, he is a doppelganger for Goose from "Top Gun."

"Lip hair," Weldon says, "is because we care."

Consider this the changing face of philanthropy, one that looks more to the "fun" in fundraising. There is no shame in heavily imbibing, no emphasis on the kind of propriety that one might find at a more conventional $250-a-plate charity dinner. Hence, the SMASHED motto: "Remind me tomorrow that I helped someone today."

Events like the Sweet 'Stache ManPageant reflect a nationwide trend: Young professionals are looking for more innovative, entertaining and entrepreneurial ways to do good. Increasingly, business schools are starting programs dedicated to social entrepreneurship. The fall marked the launch of Good, a magazine aimed at 20- and 30-somethings "who give a damn." In May, a philanthropic services consulting firm called Changing Our World started a blog called FLiP, for future leaders in philanthropy ( http://flip.onphilanthropy.com/).

"The term 'social entrepreneur' is getting more and more traction," says Jessica Stannard-Friel, 24, a founding editor of FLiP. "A lot of the ways that young people do fundraising tend to be really creative in ways that might set them apart from people more high-ranking and established in their careers."

So it's no surprise that the District -- a city filled with young professionals big on networking if short on disposable income -- would be ripe for new twists on old do-gooding.

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Ellen Shortill, a 38-year-old event planner, calls herself the "co-president of cockamamie." And let's face it: As founder and co-president of SMASHED, she's responsible for some indisputably ridiculous events.

Take the group's first event: Called the D.C. Idiotarod, the spoof of the famous Alaskan dog sled race had more than 130 costume-clad participants zooming shopping carts through the District's streets last March. Or the Amazing Race Scavenger Hunt in June, which had all the tomfoolery of the Idiotarod, minus the carts. Or the Rec Room Olympics in April, designed to re-create the parents-out-of-town/beers-in-the-basement kind of gathering -- a flashback to high school, an exercise in immaturity.

If the means are ridiculous, the ends are anything but: In total, SMASHED raised nearly $9,000 for charity last year. People may speculate on how much of that money came from altruistic intentions -- but, some would argue, who cares?

"You can have a great time and help somebody, or you can help somebody and have a great time," Shortill says. "It really doesn't matter what your motivation is."

Local bar managers say that young professionals are increasingly turning up for charity fundraisers. Brian Vasile, general manager of Tom Tom, estimates that his bar hosts at least one charity event a month in winter and about three a month in summer. At the Front Page in Dupont Circle, owner Craig Merrills estimates that more than 70 percent of the restaurant and bar's organized events are for charity -- that's four to six events a month.

Four years ago, Arlington resident Trisha White had signed up for the 39-mile Avon Walk for Breast Cancer -- an undertaking that necessitated raising $1,800. The thought was overwhelming, so White dreamed up a date auction, dubbed Babes for Boobs, at Whitlow's on Wilson in Arlington.

"The one thing you hear about in D.C. is that it's so hard to meet people," says White, 38. "So I thought, let's just cut to the chase: We'll just sell people."

For that inaugural auction, White auctioned 20 of her friends, male and female, raising more than $3,000. And on both sides of the transaction -- those buying and those being bought -- there is always, unapologetically, the cop-out: Aw shucks, I did it for charity.

"If I were just doing this to pocket money or for a Budweiser promotion, people might think it's kind of hokey," White says. "This gives you an excuse to sort of let your guard down and let go of some of your inhibition."

D.C. resident Marie Campos, 29, also leveraged dating into dollars to benefit the breast cancer walk. But instead of hosting an event at a bar, she and two friends started an online dating pool, building a Web site, setting up a PayPal account and inviting participants to fill out a preference questionnaire (Do you prefer the beach or mountains? Scooby-Doo or Shaggy?). And -- presto! -- they raised $1,000.

Not much science went into their 2005 matchmaking scheme, Campos admits, but "I think people were just happy to do something fun and wacky and give money for it."

* * *

Terry Axelrod, author of "The Joy of Fundraising" and chief executive of Benevon, a Seattle-based fundraising training firm that works with nonprofit groups in the D.C. area, has a slightly disenchanted view of the entertainment bait when it comes to charitable giving.

"I often wish it were gone, because it distracts people from the mission," she says. "A lot of times people come away from those things, and they honestly don't know a thing about the charity."

But what of the SMASHED motto, "Remind me tomorrow that I helped someone today"? Is there a way to ensure that a charity's aim will resonate with revelers?

To that end, SMASHED says it sticks with local charities and invites the organizations to its events so that the participants may learn more about the cause. At its Couch Potato Party bar crawl over the summer, the group not only raised $500 for the Homeless Children's Playtime Project, it got more than 80 participants to sign up for an upcoming walk for the homeless.

Involving the charity is imperative, Axelrod says. She advocates giving a representative of the charity 10 or 15 minutes to talk about its mission and, ideally, to introduce someone whose life has been changed by the organization.

"These events that young people are doing, I would call them 'point of entry' events," Axelrod says. So, while the money these events raise is helpful, more helpful is the exposure -- the chance for the charity to collect business cards and follow up for further contact.

Jason Kelly, a 31-year-old District resident, donates to D.C. Central Kitchen -- to the tune of Christmas carols. He and a few former band mates from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School put on an annual concert that boasts everything from Tchaikovsky to the Chipmunks. The $700 they raise every year may not add up to much of the community kitchen's overall fundraising, but it does help get word out about the nonprofit group.

Attendees happily pony up the suggested $7 cover charge when they see it's for charity, says Kelly, who held last year's concert, the seventh, at the Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights. "It gets everybody in a good frame of mind," he says. And it's a lasting frame of mind: Audience members have donated food to the kitchen throughout the year, and Kelly, who knew little about the charity before his Christmas concerts, has since helped with a number of its functions.

Robert Egger, president of D.C. Central Kitchen, says donations from these types of fundraisers give him a better sense of his future donor base.

"The era of checks in the mail, that's ending really fast," he says. "I want to get my head around what these younger people are thinking. How are they going to give in the future? What pushes their buttons?"

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In understanding fundraising, it's important to understand the limitations of disposable income -- which, for young professionals in the area, can be a significant handicap.

SMASHED, for example, is committed to keeping the door costs for its events below $20 -- and the group has yet to ask for more than $10.

"It's pretty hard for someone to say $10 is too much," Shortill says. A donation that size "is incidental to a lot of people, but when you add up all the incidentals, it becomes a sizable check."

Online charitable giving has helped underscore the potential of accumulating small donations.

"In the online world, it's definitely easier for someone to conceive of doing a quick transaction for $10," says Jenn Thompson, managing director at the Washington branch of Changing Our World. "Similar to shopping on Amazon, it's too easy not to do."

For independent fundraisers like Campos and White, the women who turned the appeal of dating into money for the Avon walk, the Internet has simplified the solicitation of donations. How do you know whether your friends have money to give -- and how comfortable are you asking them?

"It's nice to be able to hide behind the veil of an e-mail or a Web page that you forward to someone," says Bill Strathmann, chief executive of Network for Good, an online hub for charitable giving. "You don't have to go through that socially awkward moment" of asking face to face.

Like similar sites, Network for Good has introduced the concept of charity widgets, or "badges" that link to charitable giving sites and track donations. Strathmann, for instance, has a badge in the signature of his outgoing e-mails, and if recipients click on it and donate, the amount goes toward the total he has raised.

Ultimately, whatever the method -- charity badges or cash donations at the door -- it's possible for anyone to be a social entrepreneur, to build charitable capital through a social network.

This, after all, is the one thing most of us have.

"I'm not a researcher; I can't find a cure. And I'm not Bill Gates; I can't give millions of dollars," says White, whose Babes for Boobs auction generated nearly $5,000 last year. "This is what we're left to do when we can't do anything else: Raise money to contribute, tell people and walk."

And if we should garner a few laughs -- and grow a few lip hairs -- in the process? All the better.

"Everything associated with our events ends up being good," Shortill says, "except for the hangovers the next day."