Man Bites Dog! A Radical Approach to Raising a Lot of Money for Charity
A guide to the radical approach of raising money for charity—a blueprint for building a fundraiser that doesn't have to strive to stand out from the crowd, because it avoids the crowd altogether.
Over the summers of 2013 and 2014, I raised over $100,000 for charity with two attention-demanding, audacious undertakings. My own fundraisers landed dozens of television interviews, radio segments, and newspaper articles and traversed the internet on blogs and podcasts reaching audiences exponentially larger than we could have ever managed on our own—this guide's goal is to help you do the same.
“Man Bites Dog!” comes from an old news adage loosely attributed to a dozen different people. I like the phrasing attributed to London’s early 20th century newspaperman, Lord Northcliffe, best:
“If a dog bites a man, that's not news. If a man bites a dog, that's news.”
Like the quote, this guide is about flipping the traditional fundraising model on its head. Instead of joining a crowd of people all doing the same thing to raise funds for charity, we avoid the crowd all-together, building our own fundraisers that are so crazy, controversial, or catchy that the crowd can't help but watch.
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© Ethan Maurice 2025