Professional Emcee for SafeNest Nonprofit Fundraiser
What a delight to host SafeNest’s Brew Anew: A Summer Soiree at the Four Seasons Mandalay Bay over the weekend! We raised over $125,000 for SafeNest’s prevention programs, which are designed to stop domestic violence before it starts by working with at-risk youth in our community. Incredible! I was honored to play a small role in this local nonprofit event.
As a professional event emcee, nothing makes me happier than using my talents to give back to a great cause. When that cause is centered in my very own city, it makes the event even more special to me. I couldn’t wait to share the details of this event with my audience and explain how this professional event emcee was able to help build hope and foster positivity for the evening.
A Bit of Background on SafeNest
SafeNest is the state of Nevada’s largest and most comprehensive nonprofit dedicated to putting an end to domestic violence. Established in 1977, the folks over at SafeNest have spent more than 40 years focusing on confidential, trauma-informed services, including counseling, round-the-clock crisis hotlines, advocacy, prevention education, and emergency shelter.
What I find the most commendable about SafeNest is that they maintain the only confidential domestic violence shelter in Las Vegas — they even operate a 24-hour crisis hotline, which is the sole access point of emergency protection orders in Clark County. Overall, SafeNest provides direct services to more than 20,000 clients annually, serving my home of Las Vegas, as well as North Las Vegas, Mesquite, Henderson, Boulder City, and surrounding rural areas.
When the fantastic team at SafeNest reached out to ask if I would be the professional emcee for their fundraiser, I could not wait to say yes! I was beyond excited to help their team raise money for what I already knew was a tremendous cause. Once I attended the event as their professional emcee, I was even more blown away by the sheer amount of hope and positivity you could feel in the room. Let me tell you how we kept that good energy flowing all night long.
The Joy of Building Hope and Fostering Positivity
Of course, it was a no-brainer to say yes to the professional emcee role at the “Brew Anew: A Summer Soiree.” It was a wonderful cause headquartered in my home city. But beyond these obvious emotional ties, being the professional emcee for this nonprofit event simply felt right to me. That’s because when I’m not on stage, I serve as Chairman and Founder of Win-Win Entertainment, a Las Vegas-based national nonprofit that brings smiles to children in hospitals.
Since our inception in 2011, Win-Win Entertainment has arranged 862 shows and impacted 114,195 lives. Combined, we’ve donated more than 5,500 performer hours to children’s hospitals across the nation. It’s our mission to bring joy to these kids and always help them find the positive, even when times get unimaginably tough. When I received the phone call about the SafeNest fundraiser, it just felt like the most perfect fit.
As a professional emcee and nonprofit chairman myself, I understand the goals of these events. I know what’s on the line when you’re trying to raise funds, and how important your interactions with potential donors are. More importantly, I know how to ride the line of a gravely serious topic — domestic abuse in the case of SafeNest and adolescent illness in the case of Win-Win — to still instill joy into a fundraising event.
Even when there’s such a momentous cause to raise funds for, we still need to remember to put the “fun” in the fundraiser. It’s crucial to bring people together to acknowledge these ever-present, heavy situations, while still promoting positivity. With tasteful humor and magnetic energy, we were able to keep spirits high, and as a result, keep donations coming for a truly amazing cause all night long.
A Wonderful Night with Wonderful People
Overall, “Brew Anew: A Summer Soiree” was a wonderful night with even more wonderful people. To Liz Ortenburger and Laurie Cody, congratulations on a truly fabulous event! This fundraiser was so well organized, produced, and executed. And thank you to Gwyn Lloyd-Hughes, Annie Nami Kim, Alexis Shebay, and the whole Team at BESTAgency for making my job SO easy.
To cap off the evening, I was able to see my worlds collide right before my eyes as I brought up my friend Marilyn Sherman, CSP, CPAE to present SafeNest with a $10,000 check from the National Speakers Association Foundation. I’ve attended countless events with the National Speakers Association — and most recently served as their “WOW Emcee” — so it was beyond cool to have these two meaningful areas of my career intersect at this event.
Where You Can Catch Me and SafeNest Next
Did you know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month? According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an estimated 10 million people experience domestic violence every year in the United States. In the one minute it’s taken you to read these few sentences, an astounding 20 people have been physically abused by a partner.
Together, we can help make a change to protect women, men, and children from domestic abuse. I invite you to join me at SafeNest’s “Run for Hope” 5K on October 16 at Wayne Bunker Family Park. Whether you walk or run, the event is in honor of victims, survivors, and those we’ve lost to domestic abuse. And though we’ll be honoring a very somber cause, you can bet that we will still find a way to smile and spread joy, side by side.
