Good-works guides to the stars

LOS ANGELES - John Legend, Grammy Award-winning musician, was in search of a charitable cause last year. An African village he supported was thriving, but the Ohio-born singer, fresh from volunteering in the Obama campaign, wanted to do something domestically - something, he recalled, "for people who don't have a voice."

Legend hired a consulting firm, and a month and a half later, he had a cause: education reform.

"My time is very hard to come by, and you have to delegate sometimes," Legend said in a phone interview from his European tour. "I felt like hiring them would help me make a bigger impact."

Legend is among an increasing number of celebrities, including Rachael Ray, Yao Ming, Ben Stiller, Demi Moore, and Ashton Kutcher, who have paid experts to direct their goodwill. Such philanthropic advising has existed in Hollywood for decades - Barbra Streisand has had an adviser for 24 years - but the number of consultants working with celebrities is rising as younger and less established figures, such as television personality Nicole Richie and pop singer Avril Lavigne, call upon their services.

"There are certainly more people in this space," said Streisand's adviser, Margery Tabankin, who opened her firm in 1994 and has been credited with launching the profession in Hollywood. "I think there's a sense that you should look at your philanthropic investment the same way you look at a financial investment."

Hiring advisers is a national trend among wealthy donors of all stripes, but in Hollywood, it may also reflect a desire to be associated with the sort of serious activism that transformed Angelina Jolie and Bono from mere entertainers to global power players.

"There's no question they've inspired the next generation of high-profile philanthropists. . . . They're inspirational to philanthropists, period," said Adam Waldman, president of the Endeavor Group, a Washington-based consulting company that advises Jolie and Brad Pitt.

At last month's meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual summit of world leaders to address "some of the world's most pressing challenges," celebrities including NASCAR's Jeff Gordon, actress Geena Davis, and Stiller attended alongside prime ministers and corporate CEOs. Lavigne's charity for sick and disabled youth tweeted a picture of her listening intently to a talk on problems facing small farmers in developing countries.

For A-list altruists, there is no shortage of places to turn for advice these days.

"It's a growth industry. There are a lot of people who are new to philanthropy ... but have wealth and have an interest in making sure they do it in a sophisticated and tactful way," said professor James Ferris, director of the University of Southern California's Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy.

Banks and law firms are competing with boutique firms and nonprofits to counsel millionaires and billionaires, many of them young, self-made, and strapped for time, on how to give their money away effectively. Entertainers can also seek direction from their talent agency.

For-profit philanthropic consultants can be pricey. Rachael Ray's Yum-O organization, founded to encourage healthful eating, paid Endeavor Group $130,936 to help open that charity in 2007, according to tax records. A new foundation set up by fashion designer Tory Burch to provide microloans to American women paid Global Philanthropy Group $170,000 last year for consulting services, according to tax records.

Those who hire consultants fall into various categories - those like Legend, who know they want to do something, but aren't sure what; others who know what they want to do but don't know how; and those who are already doing something but doing it poorly.

"We do a lot of redos," said Marc Pollick, president of the Giving Back Fund, which has advised Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and now works mainly with professional athletes, including Yao. "People put their mothers, fathers, brothers, French poodles in charge of their organizations simply because it is a job for someone in their entourage ... and the foundation is floundering."

That can be a public-relations hazard for celebrities, as Wyclef Jean found out earlier this year when it emerged that his Haitian charity had failed to file tax forms and paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies he and a cousin controlled.

What advisers do for their clients ranges from preparing a charity's tax forms to arranging meetings with members of Congress. They write speeches and suggest which benefit galas to attend.

"Managers [and] publicists don't have the time or experience to evaluate the cause or the marketing program," said Bruce Richman, whose firm, Inspired Philanthropy Group, helped Richie and her fiance Joel Madden set up a children's charity.

Among a philanthropic adviser's most important duties is vetting the recipients of charity money.

"The last thing you need is a story on 60 Minutes that you helped raise $100 million and it didn't get where it was supposed to go," Tabankin said.

In Legend's case, the challenge was to narrow the singer's policy interests to a single issue that wasn't already the philanthropic province of another celebrity. The consultants analyzed his past charity work and writings, including hundreds of his Twitter posts.

Education reform "became really clear once we went through all of his tweets," said Global Philanthropy's Maggie Neilson.

When the Los Angeles Times published a database of teacher evaluations data this summer, advisers sent him a link to the articles and came up with the idea of sending $150 gift certificates to the 100 top-performing teachers.

Leslie Lenkowsky, an Indiana University professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies who has been critical of celebrity involvement with nonprofits, said he was skeptical of the motives of those who hire advisers.

"Ultimately, the real value of philanthropy to a celebrity is maintaining an image," he said.

It's a criticism that several working in the field acknowledged was sometimes true of celebrities in general, although they insisted not of their clients.

Famous faces will show up to events, Tabankin said, but "having a serious private foundation that is part of giving your funds away hasn't in any way become part of doing business in Hollywood."

The Giving Back Fund instituted a policy that clients must make "a meaningful personal gift" to their cause after several frustrating experiences.

"We've had people who have hundred-million-dollar contracts. It's in the paper. And they'll come to us with a $5,000 check and say, 'I want to start a foundation and can we blow up this check so I can stand behind it for a picture,' " Pollick said.