Calendar Girl by Tricia Stewart

A couple of years ago I watched the movie, Calendar Girls, and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, a group of fellow teachers and I could have been them. So, when I saw the pink and yellow paper back at the library last week I picked it up. Here is the fundraising case study to beat all. A bunch of friends suffered the death of one of their own from leukemia but not before they had invented a fun gimmick - sell a calendar of older women doing traditional women's crafts etc. but in the nude and give the proceeds to the leukemia society in England. The joke became a project. The project grew beyond anyone's wildest imagination and they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and gained media attention all over the world in the process. But, the project involved much more than any of the participants originally expected or intended. It cost relationships and produced new ones. Everyone was changed by the experience and the donors were more than delighted to get something of value - entertainment and emotional do-gooder-ness combined! The book reads like a very long personal letter from one of the calendar girls chronicling the experience like in a diary. If professional fund raisers like me could only activate this caliber of volunteers as the steering committee for the next events, the world would not lack funding for any humanitarian effort. This is a delightful read and honest about the work involved.

Stewart, Tricia, Calendar Girl, c. 2002, 2003. The Overlook Press.