Tuxedo Tops and Pajama Bottoms: Galas Go Virtual for Homebound

(Bloomberg) -- The founder of Zoom Video Communications, accepting the Asia Society’s “Game Changer West” award in a Zoom webinar, acknowledged the platform’s shortcomings, from security issues to what guests had been expecting to do in a San Francisco ballroom.

“I cannot shake your hand,” Eric Yuan told hundreds of people located in Paris, Hong Kong and Malaysia. “You’re drinking the coffee, I cannot enjoy the smell.”

Someday, Yuan said, these things will be possible. For now, gala-goers are going to have to make do with on-screen air kisses, small talk and not-so-rubbery chicken they prepare themselves.

Coronavirus has wreaked havoc on just about everything, including nonprofits, during the busiest season for fundraising galas. Some big ones have been canceled, but dozens of organizations are moving their annual benefits online, while new virus-related events are also filling up the calendar.

Of course, there’s a delicate line to walk when it comes to fundraising and celebrating during a pandemic. Parents, friends and co-workers have died. The economic, physical and mental fallout is sobering.

Organizers say they’re sensitive to the moment, and donors are telling them they want to gather, to feel productive and help out financially.

“Our honoree, Clarence Otis, told me, ‘I support the organization, not a party,’” Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center said of the former chief executive of Darden Restaurants.

Marsalis, who’s navigating the harsh consequences of a canceled season and his father dying of complications from Covid-19, scrapped a Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck program for the April 15 gala and got musicians from Pakistan to Brazil to Japan to record thoughts and music.

“When we realized how this affected the whole world, we called it ‘Worldwide Concert for Our Culture,’” Marsalis said. The concert remains online.

Besides allowing black-tie on top and pajamas on the bottom, stay-at-home galas have some advantages. They may create a way to diversify and expand the patron base, while helping address criticism of some fundraisers as exercises in self-congratulation for homogeneous elites.

“People who don’t think of themselves as gala types, who think they don’t belong, may feel more welcome,” said brand consultant Larry Milstein, who hosted a Covid-19 relief fundraiser where one guest danced with her dog.

Washington’s Woolly Mammoth Theater Co. is aiming for “a higher volume of lower dollar gifts,” Managing Director Emika Abe said of its April 20 event previewing the 41st season. “It’s the closest to creating a production that we’re going to get to in the next several months,” she said.

It’s also a time to rethink a format that hasn’t changed much for decades.

“We have a responsibility to come up with new ways to donate, to make it more joyful and different,” said Tamar Podell, chief development officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which is planning a late May event.

Oregon Symphony is getting less classical than customary for its gala, with Storm Large crooning and guests asked to post their red-carpet looks on Instagram. Some events will be intimate, others will play big. Paul Tudor Jones told CNBC he hopes Robin Hood Foundation’s televised benefit May 11 will draw 4 million people instead of its usual 4,000 at New York’s Javits Center, which has been turned into a field hospital. An online art auction is also being added.

Because it’s unclear when people will feel comfortable congregating in crowds, virtual galas are being planned into the fall, at least as a Plan B. Auctioneer Greg Quiroga foresees a gradual return, with smaller groups clustering in different rooms, linked by satellite. Until late February, he’d rejected working virtually. Now he’s done it several times and has two events lined up on one night for California nonprofits in Marin County and Sonoma.

‘Biggest Year’

The Fiver Children’s Foundation gala will unfold April 28 on the New York nonprofit’s website, where participants can visit camp, a photo booth or the main ballroom to hear from people including founder and former Lehman Brothers partner Tom Tucker.

“This year was going to be our biggest year yet,” said John Cokinos, co-head of leveraged finance and capital markets at RBC Capital Markets and a Fiver board member who has helped the gala’s haul grow from $250,000 seven years ago. “We were targeting $1 million, to broaden our camp and after-school programs.”

Now the goal is $650,000, and a 30-minute call with Marianne Williamson has been added to the auction, along with travel packages that may have less appeal at the moment.

At the annual gala for the Merit School of Music in Chicago, 200 or so supporters will rendezvous at their virtual tables before a 30-minute program featuring recordings of students playing music at home.

It’s not the same as brass and strings playing for 450 guests at the Four Seasons. But sponsors and ticket-holders have maintained or upped their commitments, putting the gala 75% toward its $1 million goal a month before the May 5 event, said Meredith Barber, Merit’s vice president of development.

Celebrity Chefs

For its May 14 gathering, Girls Inc. of New York City increased the budget for a filmmaker to oversee students taping their own testimonials on the Mind Body Matters class the nonprofit developed.

Because costs of a meal and venue rental aren’t part of a virtual ticket price, donations are 100% deductible. The CARES Act expanding the charitable tax deduction also “helps a little bit, makes it easier to write a check when retirement accounts are down,” said Andrea Brown, director of philanthropy.

Who’s making dinner? At Helen Keller International’s gala, former “Top Chef” contestant Carla Hall will prepare a dish in her kitchen inspired by a trip to Vietnam, and Jose Andres of World Central Kitchen will be honored.

On the night of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’s fete, Butler’s Pantry, a local catering company, will deliver meals to sponsor-level patrons and every guest gets a “gala in a box” containing ingredients for a cocktail, quarantine comfort food recipes (Noodles Anon!), a sweet treat labeled “Much to Chew About Nothing” -- and log-in instructions.

On the bill: the Q Brothers with a hip-hop riff on Shakespeare and a scene from Romeo and Juliet performed by actors in their New York apartments. Tickets start at $300.

“The goal will be to try to deliver something more than talking heads on a screen,” said Tom Ridgely, the festival’s producing artistic director.

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