Hunka Hunka Burning Love (For Charity, Of Course)

Firefighter charity calendars are bizarre things

It’s a new year, which means two things: you’ve made your New Year’s resolutions and you’ve just set out your new 2025 wall calendar. Same here. My 2025 resolutions are straightforward: (1) go to the gym more, and (2) eat more fois gras. Both feel achievable.

I got a new desk calendar for Christmas but—my sweet reader—I’m sorry to report that it’s not even a little bit sexy—like the kinds that hang in mechanics shops and places like that. My new calendar features cartoon owls. Which led me to pose two important questions during dinner last week to the staff over here at Fundraising for Breakfast HQ:

1. Why don’t we have sexier calendars in our house?

2. Are beefcake firefighter calendars a good way to raise money?

Read on for PG-13 fundraising beefcakes to ring in the new year.

We are what you might call “calendar traditionalists” around here. Below is a sample of the calendars you’ll find at HQ:

Birds. Snoopy. National Parks. Bor-ring! Not a suggestive calendar to be found in the mix.

Let’s focus on the most popular sub-genre of sexy calendars for charity: beefcake firefighters. According to Google, barrel-chested firefighters have been featured on charity calendars since sometime in the 1980s. Apparently, the FDNY Foundation brings in between $150,000-$250,000 a year from calendar sales. At $20 a pop, that’s somewhere between 7,500-12,500 calendars sold for charity each year. Just for the FDNY.

And it’s not only men—firefighter calendars now feature women, dogs & cats, and funny appropriations of the genre. Beefcake calendars, it would appear, are also wildly popular in Taiwan. Who knew?

You can do your own image search to find whatever steamy photo you think I should have included here. My mother is reading this and I’m expecting a phone call any moment now.

S I D E B A R

I recently watched Calendar Girls (from 2004) on a reader’s recommendation after I wrote about fundraising movies a few posts ago. Quick summary: After a friend’s husband dies of leukemia, Helen Mirren proposes that she and her middle-aged friends pose semi-nude for a charity calendar to pay for new furniture for a hospital’s waiting room. The idea is initially met with blushing British skepticism, but people eventually see it for what it is: an expression of caring and empowerment. Julie Walters delivers the most British line of the movie: “Course we’re not gonna go round parading ourselves in a room full of men. This isn’t France, for God’s sake!”

It’s a movie about friendship, compassion, and doing uncomfortable things for good causes. It’s delightful. I give it 4 out of 5 Helen Mirrens.

I’ve become fascinated by the charitable instincts of firefighters over the past week. During all of this Googling about beefcake calendars, I learned that the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) have a long relationship with the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).

Since 1954, firefighters have raised over $558 million in “Fill the Boot” campaigns. Firefighters stand in traffic intersections with a boot and ask motorists for donations. I’ve seen firefighters do this and never really thought about why they were doing it. Like, you want me to stick my hand in that gross boot your foot has been in? Plus, I thought it was for their own firehouses. I get it now.

Whether it’s their shirts or their boots coming off, firefighters are very committed fundraisers. Respect.

Here are three hot-takes on how I think beefcake calendars actually work for charity:

1. Firefighter calendars are silly things put out to support serious causes. They pay for equipment, training, and support services for firefighters.

2. If you’re shelling out $20 for a firefighter calendar, you have a sense of humor. You’re in on the joke. And I’ll bet you anything that’s exactly how the charity wants you to feel with their cause: as the ultimate insider.

3. Beefcake calendars are funnier than they are sexy. Sorry to burst that bubble. And humor gets people to pay attention to things they would otherwise ignore. Like charitable causes.

Because everybody (nobody) is asking me for it, I will distribute my own beefcake calendar in 2026 called “The Men of Fundraising for Breakfast.” Sign up for a month in the comments and pre-order now! The calendar will feature 12 of the hunkiest, beefiest Fundraising for Breakfast smokeshow subscribers you’ve ever laid eyes on! If I can keep up with my 2025 New Year’s resolutions to exercise more and eat more fois gras, say hello to Mr. January this time next year:

(All proceeds for the 2026 “The Men of Fundraising for Breakfast” calendar will support the eventual psychotherapy Child #2 will require after teaching me how to photoshop my 18-year-old face on a beefcake body holding a couple pounds of goose liver pâté).