September 9, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Year after year, Susan Scribner, a Long Beach, Calif., fund-raising consultant, sits through all 21 hours of actor Jerry Lewis’s annual telethon to raise money to fight muscular dystrophy — even though the aging star annoys her with his tired jokes and other antics.
Ms. Scribner says the Labor Day telethon is can’t-miss television because she gets loads of fund-raising ideas from what she calls “the incredible Jerry Lewis Fundraising Machine.”
In a short essay entitled “Jerry Lewis, You Drive Me Nuts, Thank You,” Ms. Scribner describes some things she took away from this year’s broadcast, which had raised $60.5-million by the time it ended on Monday at 6 p.m.
For example, this year’s show featured information on how muscular dystrophy affects the entire family, not just the person with the disease. That prompted Ms. Scribner to think that a battered women’s shelter might do well to talk in its appeals about the children of women fleeing an abusive partner.
She also noticed that the 2009 broadcast started off with a patriotic theme that emphasized that Americans are working together to combat the illness. “What am I going to do differently? … I will embrace our collective strength more than ever before and remind [donors] of the difference we can make,” she writes.
“By the way, I give to the MDA telethon every year. Not very much but what I can afford,” she concludes. “A small price to pay for the benefit of a year’s worth of fund-raising preparation by a highly successful organization.”
