Performers Use Their Star Power to Help Their Hometown Causes

Visibility is often the most significant gift celebrated musicians can give to a local cause.

The pop singer Ricky Martin says using his fame to raise awareness about a social problem is perhaps more important than raising or donating funds. The

Grammy winner uses the Ricky Martin Foundation, which he created in 2000 in his birthplace of Puerto Rico, to teach people about child exploitation on the island and around the world.

“We commit our voice to provoke changes in human behavior toward the most vulnerable population,” the singer wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle. Mr. Martin says his fame has helped him recruit businesses to the effort.

For example, the charity is working with Microsoft to create and distribute educational videos featuring Mr. Martin discussing the dangers presented by sexual predators and child pornography.

The increased visibility brought by a celebrity musician sometimes translates into new donors to a charitable cause.

The singer Sheryl Crow mentions on her Web site that she supports the Delta Children’s Home, a nonprofit foster-care facility in her native Kennett, Mo., on whose board her mother once served. The performer has helped the charity raise more than $80,000 by donating her clothing, instruments, and other personal items to an annual auction benefiting the home.

Since 2001, some of the singer’s fans have also gotten in on the act. They have used the Internet to promote what they call the annual “Birthday Drive” among fans to raise money for the home as a way to mark Ms. Crow’s birthday. The effort has raised more than $60,000 for the charity from people all across the country who probably would never have heard of it otherwise. “We’d really be having a hard time making our budget without her,” says Jill Mobley, a Delta Children’s Home board member. (Ms. Crow did not respond to requests for an interview with The Chronicle.)

The singer also gave more than $400,000 to the city of Kennett to construct a swimming pool, which opened last year as the Sheryl Crow Aquatic Center. City officials were able to use her donation to persuade the state to grant the project an additional $400,000.

“The city didn’t even have the money to tear the old, closed pool down until Sheryl got involved,” says Jan McElwrath, director of the Kennett Chamber of Commerce.

A Quiet Donor

But unlike Ms. Crow — with a pool bearing her name, a mini-museum dedicated to her in the Kennett library, and her photo on the town Web site — the veteran rocker Bruce Springsteen does not have his name and image displayed in his hometown of Freehold, N.J. And both the town and the singer seem to like it that way.

“It’s a case of don’t ask, don’t tell,” says Kevin Coyne, a former Freehold city councilman and unofficial town historian, of the community’s approach to its most famous son. “He lives in the next town over and comes back often to visit family in town and we’re very protective of him.”

The city has shot down proposals to erect a statue of Mr. Springsteen downtown and name a street after him. Essentially, community leaders don’t want to do anything that might draw a lot of the singer’s fans to town, which could make it uncomfortable for him to visit.

Mr. Coyne says by an informal “mutual understanding,” Mr. Springsteen, in turn, helps the community out now and again. A new firetruck Mr. Springsteen bought for the town’s volunteer fire company — with the name of his signature hit, “Born to Run,” stenciled on its side — is the most obvious example of the artist’s giving.

The singer, who earned $55-million last year, according to Forbes magazine, offers more-visible assistance to Asbury Park, a decaying coastal town about 20 miles east of Freehold whose culture he has long celebrated in his lyrics.

He holds a series of benefit concerts almost annually in Asbury Park that have raised hundreds of thousands to help the town build a playground, buy uniforms for the high-school band, and help convert a shuttered YMCA building into a community center. In 1988, Mr. Springsteen also created the Thrill Hill Foundation, in Los Angeles — which, in addition to supporting national causes, makes grants to New Jersey food banks and social-services programs.

The full extent of the singer’s philanthropy, however, is hard to determine.

“Usually Bruce Springsteen and his management do not publicize their charity,” Mr. Springsteen’s publicist said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle.

Fame and Fund Raising

Not every musical philanthropist is so tight-lipped about his or her local giving — and nonprofit groups say that sharing the spotlight with a famous donor can be problematic.

For instance, the Music Resource Center, which provides musical and recording instruction to teenagers in Charlottesville, Va., has a close relationship with the Dave Matthews Band, whose members live in or near the town.

The musicians have donated more than $450,000 to the center and occasionally stop by to visit with its young students. The connection has been featured in Entertainment Weekly and on television’s Today show.

Sibley W. Johns, the center’s executive director, says the musical group’s support has been invaluable — but that it causes some donors to ignore the center because of its famous benefactors.

“I meet people out in the community who are like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the Dave Matthews Band organization. They totally take care of you guys. That’s so cool,’” she says, “And I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Let me just rectify this and paint a picture of what really happens. We’re just like any other Joe organization in the community and we have to raise our annual budget every year.’”

The center’s fund-raising conundrum isn’t the only challenge that charities can face when they form an alliance with famous performers.

Lisa M. Dietlin, a Chicago consultant to wealthy donors and nonprofit groups who has studied musicians and their giving, advises nonprofit groups to vet artists carefully before asking them for assistance.

“If you’re Mothers Against Drunk Driving and one of the people on your list is somebody sponsored by one of the beer companies or wine companies, that might be a mixed message,” she says.