Responding to the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s’ urgent call for help to stay in business, several industry leaders and organizations have stepped up — but not nearly as many as are needed to keep Hollywood’s 101-year-old charity afloat.
MPTF hopes to raise at least $300,000 in its star-studded first telethon, which will air December 10 on KTLA in Los Angeles.
Hit by a “perfect storm” of rising expenses and declining revenue during the Covid pandemic, the MPTF said in October that it was facing its “imminent demise” and the very real prospect of closing its doors and going out of business by the end of 2022 unless it received $10 million-$12 million in cash donations by the end of the year to meet its bank line compliance and continue ongoing operations.
In an update on the progress, or the lack thereof, in raising those funds, MPTF president and CEO Bob Beitcher tells Deadline that only a handful of top donors – Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, Rian Johnson and the Semel Charitable Foundation – have answered the alarm with $1 million gifts. “Fundraising is going OK,” he said. “For the most part, people who have given in the past have stepped up to give more, and we have been really happy with the lower-level gifts of under $1,000 or so, but the midrange of giving has been relatively disappointing and frustrating.
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