My Mother Thinks You Should Ask Celebrities For Money

A rather vocal subset of Fundraising For Breakfast’s readers didn’t care for the whole “pancakes are shit” comment from last week. Some of my favorite reactions were delivered via DM. Here are a few good bites:

“You’re going to regret crapping on people’s choice of breakfast food.”

“Coming out pretty hot against pancakes, don’t you think?”

“I question whether you’ve ever had a good pancake…they took a little bit of hate from you today, Dan.”

We here at the Home Office want you to know that the Breakfast Wars of 2024 inspired Child #2 to pull together the below picture in her sketchbook:

Child #2: “Pancakes are actually way better than waffles. Sorry, Dad.”

I’ve been fundraising in Baltimore for about five years and have been told—on multiple occasions, by different people—that I should really be asking Cal Ripken for money. I’ve never met Cal Ripken and neither have the people suggesting I need to get off my butt and get a gift from him.

But I get why people think it’s a good idea. He’s a beloved local celebrity, he seems like a good guy, and after 21 seasons of playing Orioles baseball, he’s probably loaded. I’m sure all of these things are true. But just because he’s a celebrity, we think we know him (and his motivations) better than we do. And that can be a dangerous thing.

My mother has never specifically suggested I ask Cal Ripken for money, but she is perpetually disappointed that I’m not asking more celebrities for money.

And she thinks you should, too. Let’s get acquainted with her.

Understand from the outset that my mother—let’s call her Kitty—generally tends to give good advice. But before you take any fundraising pointers from her, know a few things:

• She’s a killer Trivial Pursuit player with hysterical gaps in her knowledge:
  Question: “What did Frodo Baggins lose on his way to Mt. Doom in The Return of the King?”
  Her response: “Never saw it…His virginity?”
  

• Kitty was so scared watching the original Jurassic Park (specifically the scene where the kids are hiding in the kitchen and dinosaurs learn how to open doors) that she cried in the theater. This was 1993. My siblings and I bring it up all the time.

• She blew her knee out in an impromptu 2009 living room ballet performance with her two-year-old granddaughter (the above featured Child #2). It was, as she says, a career-ending injury.
  

• Kitty reads at least three books a week: romance, classics, fiction, history, nonfiction, celebrity memoir, you name it. She’s always good for a book recommendation or two.

• She’s an unrivaled connoisseur of pop culture tidbits and celebrity gossip from years of reading People magazine. Growing up, when summoned to the kitchen to unload groceries on Saturday mornings, my brother, sister, and I would guess which celebrity made the week’s cover of People. If one of us chanced to guess correctly, that person would be just a titch insufferable about it.

In short, she’s a regular person who goes about her life doing regular-person things. She cares about kids (both real and cinematic), she reads, she plays games, she danc(ed), etc. Nothing crazy.

But she keeps insisting that I’m leaving money on the table by not asking celebrities for money for the various fundraising endeavors I take part in. I’m sure celebrities are wonderfully philanthropic, but like with Cal Ripken, I don’t know any of them and I don’t have any of their phone numbers. Neither does she.

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As far as I know, the only celebrity Kitty ever met was Richard Simmons, and that was sometime in the mid-1980s. Their encounter was limited to him asking her what she had for breakfast. She told him she had toast (Not pancakes. Not waffles. Toast, you guys). He told her “You can do better,” turned on his heel, and then walked away. Which is such a amazingly bitchy exit line that I’m going to start using it All. The. Time.

For readers under 30, this is what Richard Simmons looked like in the mid-80s. Now, imagine your mom talking breakfast food with a cartoon character who takes a Glamour Shot sitting like this:

Kitty’s favorite part of the story is telling people he had a “VERY cute tushy.” None of this is made up, you guys. Ask her yourself—see if you can get Kitty to come out and play in the Comments section.

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I like the idea of future posts exploring how you or I could actually raise money for charity from any number of celebrities she’s suggested to me (and that I remembered to write down). Because there are bits and pieces of her advice about why I should be asking them that actually holds up—whether you’re talking to a famous person or not. Below is the running list of who we might explore in more detail in the coming weeks:

• Nicolas Cage (“He’s a national treasure who starred in National Treasure. How do you argue with that?”)

• Joey Chestnut (“He’d be so flattered you’re even asking!”)

• Nora Roberts (“She owns a mountain. How many mountains do you own, Dan?”)

• Hugh Jackman (“He’s just so talented!”)

• Steve Jobs (“Stop it…Steve Jobs has not been dead for fifteen years. Who’s been running the company then? You?”)

Posts will likely delve into how you or we might hypothetically ask the star of the garbage National Treasure franchise or the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest champion for a charitable gift. Indulging my mother in this hysterical fantasy of celebrity and philanthropy can, I think, reveal some easy things we can all be doing—whether we’re talking to a shirtless Hugh Jackman (seriously, click the link above) or a tech icon who’s been dead long enough for her to have heard about it.

It’ll be an experiment. And this is a free Substack so just go with it and stay tuned.

Here’s the thing: Kitty is sorta right. Her point about asking celebrities for charitable gifts is really about being unapologetic and bold. Go take a big swing. Make the bastards say no. I get it, I like it, and it’s worth taking seriously.

But I think she has the “celebrity” part backwards.

Kitty sees the rich and famous with more money than they know what to do with. And she’s ready to spend that money for them by sending me out to get it.

But, I think, it’s more productive to consider the concept of celebrity as intensely local for it to be truly meaningful for philanthropy. Where can we find that same buzzy combination of admiration, trust, visibility, and perceived authority outside of People magazine? And then how do we harness it and then use it? That’s the more elusive question.

And I have a partial answer (by way of an example) that will get us some of the way there, but not all the way.

I have a friend who is a committed supporter of Ronald McDonald House. Each year she launches a fundraiser for RMH’s Red Shoe Shuffle. And I give every year to it because she’s the volunteer doing the asking. She tells me why she supports RMH, I trust her judgement, and when she tells me something is important and worth investing in, I listen. And then I give. Simple as that.

The same happens with the volunteers I work with every day when raising money. None of them are famous (at least that I know of) and yet they wield a tremendous influence and persuasiveness among their network that is constantly opening doors for me. They introduce me to other philanthropists, they help me make asks, and they help me wrangle other volunteers when I can’t do it myself.

So, what’s the word I’m looking for to describe the dynamic volunteers who convince me to give simply because they’re the ones doing the asking?

What’s the term I’m searching for to describe how volunteers grant me access to others I can’t get to on my own? 

How do I describe what’s happening when people who aren’t fundraisers are better at my job than I am just because of who they are?

The word I’m looking for isn’t “celebrity” (too baggy, too easy to misinterpret, and too boring) and it’s not “influencer” (gross). But the word/term/concept I’m looking for lives somewhere between the two and I can’t put my hands on it.

So, puzzle through this fundraising and celebrity issue with me a bit in the coming weeks. Because there’s a lot at stake in better appreciating the forces that come together when we’re raising money for very good causes. It’ll also help me/us not take for granted all the help we have when we’re doing it and not just take the money and run.

As a curly-haired, petite fitness expert once told my mother: We can all do better than that.