April 6, 2006 | Read Time: 5 minutes
FUND-RAISING IDEAS
Nonprofit trustees and employees are getting naked. A growing number of charities are coaxing their top leaders, volunteers, and others to help them produce calendars with a nude theme to raise money. While the models in the calendars almost always have objects placed strategically over their private parts, the risqué, humorous approach many groups have taken has helped draw attention to the calendars, and made them popular with buyers.
Some of the calendars, and the organizations that produce them, have encountered controversy, but even negative attention can help stir interest among calendar buyers.
The Topeka Civic Theatre, in Kansas, recently produced a calendar called “Much Ado About Nothing,” depicting board members, as well as a donor who had contributed a million dollars to the theater, and other prominent citizens engaging in scenes of everyday theater life — auditions, rehearsals, and board meetings all in the buff, except for some carefully positioned props.
The calendar was well-received when its models kicked off the calendar’s release by signing copies while fully clothed, but the theater caused controversy when it placed life-size, cardboard cutouts of some of the models all over downtown Topeka.
The cutouts were essentially cloaked with sandwich-board advertisements for the theater and the calendar, says Carole Ries, the theater’s chief executive, but they were enough to upset some Topeka residents, and the group received a smattering of complaints. The city, however, let the group keep the cutouts up for one month, and, Ms. Ries says, those who were offended eventually dropped their complaints and more or less forgave the organization.
The Topeka Civic Theatre spent $7,419 to produce, market, and mail the calendar to purchasers, but did not have to pay design costs. The group’s printer donated all the paper and $2,500 worth of printing costs. The group sold 1,130 calendars on its Web site and by phone, 705 of which sold for $19.95 each when the calendars first came out during the holiday season. The group sold the rest from February to April at discounted prices.
All in all, Ms. Ries says, the organization made $16,167 in revenue from the calendars for a profit of $8,748, and that all the attention the group got outweighed the negative attention from the controversy. What’s more, she says, the calendars helped improve the self-image of many of the models. Several of them told Ms. Ries that because the pictures were retouched to make everybody look attractive, some of them felt like they had undergone free, albeit temporary, liposuction.
‘Exposing the Soul’
The San Diego Performing Arts League, which produced a nude-themed calendar for this year, had an altogether different marketing experience.
When the organization’s board was asked whether it would be willing to produce a calendar showing artists and performers from San Diego cultural groups in various forms of undress, it decided it was a perfect fund-raising concept.
“We’re all about exposing the soul on stage, so why not the flesh?,” says Judith Anderson, the league’s interim managing director.
What the group did not know at the time, but would soon find out, was that producing and marketing a calendar for fund-raising purposes is a difficult and time-consuming venture.
The group persuaded photographers, art directors, and a production company to donate their services, so it ended up spending just $4,900 to print 2,500 calendars.
The league sold 1,800 calendars — called “Expose Yourself to San Diego’s Performing Arts” — for $20 apiece at independent, local bookstores and on the group’s Web site. After the marketing and production costs were counted, the group netted nearly $18,000.
The league got plenty of free marketing help because the local news media were intrigued by the idea, and plenty of art lovers in the San Diego area bought the calendars.
But Ms. Anderson thinks her organization could have sold even more calendars if it had been able to persuade large bookstore chains, such as Barnes & Noble or Borders, to sell the calendars.
It wasn’t nudity that prevented the bigger stores from stocking the calendars — it was simply lack of time.
The league started creating its 2006 calendar in late October 2005, and the stores needed a much longer lead time — and the presence of two all-important identifiers that the calendars were missing: an International Standard Book Number and a bar code. Large bookstores won’t stock any calendar that doesn’t possess both.
Ms. Anderson says that she wishes she had sought information from the Calendar Marketing Association, which sells a book called Publishing & Marketing Your Calendar that explains such basics and the nuances of calendar marketing.
She says the group is considering whether to do a calendar again since it took so much work, but requests for next year’s version are already flowing in.
Demand From Supporters
Many groups expected nude calendars to be a one-time fund-raising venture, but the calendars have been such a hit that some charities can’t stop producing them without disappointing their supporters.
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a New York group that raises money for AIDS groups, produced its first nude calendar in 1999. Much to the organization’s surprise, when the group didn’t produce a 2000 calendar, its supporters wanted to know why.
The group has been producing the calendars consecutively since 2001, according to Michael Graziano, who produces and directs the organization’s annual charity event, Broadway Bares, a Broadway-style burlesque show.
The group’s calendars center on the show’s theme with racy yet humorous nude photos of the performers with props hiding their private parts.
This year’s theme was “Rxxx,” and calendar photos depict the latest show’s male and female performers in a variety of skimpy nurse costumes, surgical headgear, gloves, blood-pressure cuffs, and not much else.
Peter Borzotta, the organization’s retail-outreach manager, said the group pays only the printing costs of the calendars. Everything else needed to produce and sell the calendars is donated. The calendars are sold on the group’s Web site, in its catalog, at the Broadway Bares shows, and through some publications that cater to gay readers.
This year the organization printed 2,000 calendars, which sold for $20 each and raised approximately $20,000.
Mr. Borzotta said the calendars have consistently sold. And getting models is never a problem, especially because so many people want to be in the Broadway Bares show. “Everyone is always ready to volunteer in a second,” says Mr. Borzotta.
