The New Year means it’s time for naked charity
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Miss December is wearing nothing but a Santa hat and a smile. Oh, and holding one strategically placed cat.
Chandra Gates decided the Humane Society of Jefferson County, Wisconsin was a worthy enough cause for her to bare it all - well, some of it - for a nude-calendar fundraiser.
“I’m shy about the picture but definitely proud of the cause,” said 39-year-old Gates, an animal caregiver there. “I was big on the fact that the cat was tame and wouldn’t be running off.”
The Humane Society in Jefferson, about 50 miles west of Milwaukee, is one of many nonprofit organizations from Australia to Wisconsin selling tastefully nude 2007 calendars, although one philanthropy expert says the practice is, er, overexposed.
A group of women ranging from their mid 50s to early 70s in Yorkshire, England, pioneered the idea in 2000 when they sold a calendar of discreet nudes of themselves to raise money for cancer research.
The women, whose story inspired the 2003 movie Calendar Girls, raised $2.55-million through sales of 800,000 calendars as well as book and film royalties.
The women have released a 2007 calendar, the group’s third, that has a photo of the women - clothed - with Prince Charles.
In Gates’ black-and-white photo in the Humane Society calendar, she is pictured from the waist up, holding a cat against her bare chest as she stands in a snowy yard.
Humane Society executive director Lisa Patefield said the calendar’s other pictures are equally artistic. Her group expects to raise $30,000 selling 1,500 calendars.
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More About Calendar Fundraising