Hollywood Charities Struggling

The “Circle of Giving,” as Lew Wasserman once called it, is going through change in Hollywood.

The ailing economy, shrinking corporate sponsorships and an emerging sense of new priorities and activism have left a number of Hollywood’s leading charities struggling to preserve their core cause and the bottom line.

Even with strong celebrity support, benevolent institutions have seen donations decline in the double digits in recent years, causing charities to consider the way they have traditionally done business.

“Everyone is hurting,” states Joel Hock, the CEO of Solutions With Impact, the event-management company that organized the recent the Rally for Kids with Cancer Scavenger Cup in L.A. “The days in which someone on a committee who knows you phones you and taps you on the shoulder to buy a table are ending. The days in which sponsors come on board because they get an ad in the program are gone.”

“Charities are the first to go because people don't have that extra income to give,” Laurie Grad, co-chair of the Alzheimer’s Association, told TheWrap. “A lot of loyal people have had to cut back their giving by half.”

But, she added, the business of Hollywood itself also has had an impact.

"Traditionally, most studios come in for a $10,000 table, same things with the networks, but we've also lost a lot because of the mergers,” Grad said. “We used to get both NBC and Universal for a table for $10,000 each, now we get $10,000 once.”

That loss is partially why, even after cutting production costs and streamlining organizational expenditures, the revenue from the association’s annual A Night at Sardis musical revue has declined.

The star-studded, Broadway styled evening, which has helped bring in nearly $16 million  over the years, slipped from $1.2 million in 2006 to under $1 million at its 17th anniversary show performance of “Damn Yankees” at the Beverly Hilton this March.
 
“A lot of publicly held companies can’t give as much as they used to, because they are held to a standard about how much money they are giving away when people are suffering from massive layoffs,” said Judy Levy of L.A. event-coordinating firm Levy, Pazanti & Associates.

“Across the nation, across every industry -- and even in what I think is one of the most generous industries of all,” Levy said, “fundraising is down anywhere from 20 to 40 percent.”

But it isn’t just the loss of corporate sponsors and a bad economy. “There are now so many charities in this town,” Grad said, “that giving has been diversified -- everyone has their own charities.”

And not all of these established charities in the “old” sense.

From Leonardo DiCaprio and the environment to George Clooney and Darfur to Angelina Jolie and Africa and Brad Pitt and New Orleans, younger celebrities in particular are now aligning not with specific charities but with general causes that are near and dear to them.

“The previous generation gave generously to United Way and big community-based organizations like MPTF and said here’s my money, we trust that you are doing the best for the charity,” Ken Scherer, CEO of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, told TheWrap.

 

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