The Great Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project Underway

Birthdays are a celebration of life, and to mark the anniversary of their favorite actor’s special day fans of Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural, Watchmen) are showing their “dogged” devotion by donating to a canine cause. In the following interview the founder of the 3rd annual Great Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project invites the actor’s admirers to join the party by making a pledge which will benefit The Brittany Foundation, a no-kill non-profit in Agua Dulce, California which provides a safe sanctuary for dogs as they wait to win a starring role in a forever home.

How did you come up with the idea of a Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project fundraiser to benefit The Brittany Foundation?

DonateJDM.org came from the affection Jeff’s fans have for him as both an actor and a man. Because all those involved behind the scenes are active members of Jeff’s fan community, it was an ideal first-hand perspective to see how many JDM fans struggle year after year to come up with just the right birthday gift for him. That’s where the idea of DonateJDM.org was born. What sort of gift would both express affection for him and might be something he’d genuinely enjoy? The obvious answer was dogs. You can’t know anything about Jeff without knowing how much he loves dogs. All dogs in general, and his dogs in specific.

So that first year, our intention was simply to create a space where any JDM fan looking to wish Jeff a happy birthday could go and save a dog or ten in his name. And on his birthday, he’d get his gift from all those fans in the form of a collective check for the total amount raised by fans coming together to celebrate him in a way we hoped he’d love as much as we love him.

And he did! Loved it so much, in fact, that while the first year was a big surprise, the subsequent years he’s thrown his support behind it by making it clear how much this gift really does mean to him.

Last year Donate JDM raised more than $7,000 for The Brittany Foundation. How will you be raising funds this year to meet your goal, and how long will the fundraiser last?

Regardless of when the drive kicks off, it always end on Jeff’s birthday, April 22nd. The donations page is kept open for about a week after the official end date so any belated well-wishers can still participate. To raise funds, the same thing is done every year: Take the site live, tell Jeff’s fans it’s accepting donations for his birthday gift, and invite them to come on over and show him how much they care. It really is just that simple.

Maybe not quite that simple, but close. There are special promotions each year, depending on what opportunities are available (watch the site to see what’s coming this year!). Jeff is always a superstar about making sure we have one-of-a-kind items to auction off toward end of the drive, several of which he personalizes for the winners after the auction is over. Others chip in with special treats, too. Our first year, the American Library Association donated several of Jeff’s READ Watchmen posters (which Jeff autographed) to auction. And last year, we had an original drawing of Jeff as Colonel Clay from The Losers, drawn and donated by Jock, the artist and co-creator of the original graphic novel on which the movie was based.

We give fans a place to come and see exclusive photos of Jeff and his dogs, leave him a personal birthday message they know he actually gets, and donate toward his birthday gift. There are auctions of Jeff-related items fans can’t get anywhere else, most of them autographed and a select few personalized to the winner by name. And most importantly, we post exclusive pictures of Jeff receiving his gift once the drive is over, and Jeff, himself, writes a special thank you message to everyone who participates.

How is social media helping you to meet your goal?

Social media is essential in helping us spread the word when The Great Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project goes live and starts accepting donations each year. Using Twitter, Facebook, Live Journal and MySpace, we update Jeff’s fans about news and special events like the auction. More importantly, these outlets allow us to harness the incredible collective power of Jeff’s fan community to spread the word. We provide downloadable avatars, signatures and wallpapers at the website and encourage fans to use them wherever they post. This helps promote the fundraising drive to their friends and fellow fans every time they post to their own social networks, blogs and virtual communities.

What tips can you give fans who would like to follow in your footsteps and raise funds for a charity that is close to the heart of their favorite star?

Make sure you really care about both the celebrity and the cause. It’s very easy to get excited about raising money for a cause that’s important to a celebrity you care about, but that excitement will only carry you so far. Once the newness wears off and the road gets bumpy (and it will!), it’s very important for the cause itself to mean as much to you as it does to the star. That’s been key to our success. We’ve all worked with animal rescue organizations on our own, and all of us have beloved dogs at home.

Also, pick a great group of people to work with — preferably a group with a wide diversity of relevant skills who share a can-do, will-do, must-do attitude when it comes to getting things done — and do your fund-raising for a star who is both passionate about the cause and devoted to his (or her) fans. Jeff is fabulous in this regard. He really is an amazingly generous and down-to-earth guy, and his support of our efforts has made all the difference. Having the support of Jeff’s mom, Sandy, has been incredibly helpful, too. We made our initial inquiries through a friend of the family, and Sandy’s personal passion for dog rescue charities has been an enormous boon to the drive as a whole. She helped us get started in a productive direction, both with her kind and enthusiastic support and with never-before-seen pictures she provided to kick things off. We couldn’t have done it without her.

Is there anything else that you would like to tell our readers about the Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project?

Absolutely! Go to the site and donate, donate, donate! Seriously though, this really is a labor of love for all involved. Every cent DonateJDM.org raises goes straight to the dogs. All of us work for free, and any drive expenses are funded out of our own pockets. Jeff squeezes time out of his impossibly busy schedule to get us what we need to succeed because he believes deeply in the cause. The Great Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Project is a collective fan effort. We’re dedicated to making sure it stays that way, and that the drive itself stays focused on two things only: Giving Jeff a GREAT birthday present and saving dogs.

And it really is as simple as that.

For more information:

• visit www.donatejdm.org

For more information regarding The Brittany Foundation:

• visit http://brittanyfoundationonline.org

Photo courtesy DonateJDM

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