With less than three months left in its 2010 fund-raising campaign, PPA members need to contribute approximately $78,311 if PPA Charities is to reach its $120,000 goal in support of its charitable partner Operation Smile. During 2009, PPA members contributed a record $100,000 to Operation Smile, and if this year’s goal is met, then PPA members will have made it possible for as many as 500 children to receive the gift of life-changing surgery provided by the volunteer medical staff of Operation Smile.

Fortunately, PPA members will have plenty of opportunities to help: Funds can be raised through Family Portrait Month activities during October and November, and on November 1, the 2011 PPA Charities Operation Smile Studio campaign will begin; 7 studios have already registered to be PPACH Operation Smile Studios for 2011, so we hope you will be among the first to join them by donating at least $240 to PPA Charities!

Several individuals and companies have just announced plans to support Operation Smile through their special fund raising activities. For example, well-known Orlando, Florida, portrait photographer and teacher Tim Kelly is preparing to launch a Facebook event that will allow donors to encourage Tim to cut his currently long “artistic” hair to more of a “corporate” look. Tim hopes to raise $10,000 through this good-grooming effort.

Springfield, Illinois, photographer and marketing guru Sarah Petty is “cooking up” some fund-raising recipes that she will announce soon through her Joy of Marketing organization. Last year, Sarah raised a remarkable $24,000 for Operation Smile through her Joy to the World websummit.

So please join with us in showing the world what committed professional photographers can achieve when they stand together to make a difference in the lives of precious children whose lives can be changed forever through the gift of surgery.

Delaware photographer Laura Novak used her considerable media savvy to market Family Portrait

Month. Laura used a studio newsletter and emails to get the word out. She also sent a press release to which a network person responded by suggesting that she try for a listing in USA Today’s weekend edition website. By following up on this lead, Laura secured a listing under “Make A Difference Day.”

In addition to raising funds for Operation Smile, Laura used the promotion to introduce her upscale studio to consumers she might not see during the regular course of business. She added an intriguing twist to the month-long promotion by offering an October 31 Halloween shoot for only $75, which included 5-8 online proofs of each child in costume, from which parents could purchased finished prints. The fee went to Operation Smile and represented one-third of the studio’s eventual donation.

To publicize this special event, Laura posted a flyer at a luncheonette and also added it to her Internet blog. To facilitate fulfillment of this special session, clients ordered their images online. Later her blog featured some of the charming images the promotion produced.

Thanks to the ingenuity, support and generosity of the directors, instructors and students of the 2010 Texas School, PPA Charities succeeded in raising $24,000 for our charitable partner, Operation Smile, far surpassing last year’s outstanding Texas School donation of $17,000.

How It All Got Started . . .

Texas School is the largest of all PPA Affiliate Schools in the country, and this year the week-long event drew over 1,000 students from throughout the U.S. and abroad. The tradition of PPA Charities fundraising at Texas School began spontaneously in 2008, when a few instructors, who were familiar with PPACH’s support Operation Smile, encouraged their class members to donate. This effort culminated at the Thursday evening all-school party when school director Don Dixon offered to shave his head if the donation could grow to $5000. It did, and Don lost his hair!

In 2009, Texas School instructors encouraged their classes to buy as many smiles as they could by playing an Operation Smile video so that students could learn how this organization’s incredible volunteers can perform life-changing surgery for a desperately needy child for only $240. Jed and Vicki Taufer’s class alone donated an amazing $7,300 for individual contributions and auctions of merchandise and private classes by Jed and Vicki. Their donation, along with those from other classes, along with an impromptu auction of donated vendor items, resulted in a $17,000 contribution to Operation Smile!

A Texas School Tradition

With the 2009 donation, which represents 70 smiles, two years of impromptu acts of generosity at Texas School toward PPA Charities have created what is now a Texas School tradition! So for 2010, each class was challenged to help PPA Charities by raising enough so that we could donate at least two smiles ($480) to Operation Smile. With 33 classes at the school, we hoped to come close to the 2009 donation of $17,000. To generate additional excitement, PPACH offered a full Texas School scholarship to be given out to a member of the class that raised the most, as well as a scholarship to “Chicks Who Click” for every $1000 raised by each class.

100 Smiles for 2010!

We were amazed and astounded at the effort some of the classes made; only a few raised less than $100, and, remarkably, Helen Yancy’s class raised $4,000 by holding a raffle for a fine art print created by Richard Sturdevant, shown at left (see Richard’s fabulous print up close on the homepage of his website). Most attendees were involved at some point, which made it fun for Texas School and very rewarding for PPACH. In the end, we raised over $24,000 . . . 100 smiles!

PPACH Executive Director Bert Behnke was on hand at the school’s trade show so that he could provide information on PPACH and PPA to attendees.

Thanks to Texas School for their incredible leadership on behalf of PPA Charities; we can’t wait for the 2011 edition of Texas School, which will be held in Dallas on May 1-6, 2011! For information on Texas School, click here.

When Laurie Weaver packs her cameras to leave on an Operation Smile mission later this year, it won’t be the first time that she has used photography to spread the word about important charitable causes. In fact it wasn’t until 2007, when Laurie was asked by a friend to photograph the local Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, that she was forced to acknowledge her secret desire to become a professional photographer. “I nervously showed up at the media tent with three times as much gear as I needed hanging from my body, wearing some really cute sneakers,” she explains. “Twenty thousand runners and walkers later my photographs were moving across the Jumbotron screen, and I was hooked.”

Her new photography career was quite a change from her former life, which had been spent as an architecture student and then an architectural design engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I always had a camera nearby and stuck my nose in the activity of any photographer I saw,” she recalls. “I was especially impressed by the photographers on NASA’s zero-gravity plane who could shoot and film while floating inside the cabin of a KC-135 aircraft.”

Today, Laurie’s feet are planted firmly on the ground in her Austin studio. Her photography style aptly represents the sentiment she expressed on the home page of her website: “A memory is a painting dabbed with streaks of intense light and color; yet empty without the softer, muted tones of everyday life.” Little did PPACH know how lucky Operation Smile would be when Laurie’s name was drawn from the hundreds of photographers who qualified for the mission opportunity by donating to Operation Smile in 2009; in only a few words, she tells visitors to her website all they need to know about her motivation as a photographer and why she is so well-suited to document an Operation Smile mission:

I love imagery and movement,
the complexity of light,
and the
brief sparkle of a connection.
People are intriguing,
their potential energy, amazing.

I have degrees in Architecture &
Extreme Environmental Design.
I love my 3 kids,
and they make me crazy.
I played at being a writer,
tumbled down ski slopes
& ran marathons.
I am in love with my
high school sweetheart.
I designed space habitats at
NASA and believed in dreams.

You can visit Laurie’s website by clicking here.

In each of the five years since PPA Charities named Operation Smile to be it’s charitable partner, PPA members have increased their donations. For 2010 the PPACH Trustees have established a record-setting goal of $120,000 to be raised through activities in direct support of Operation Smile. This goal represents a $50,000 increase over the 2009 goal of $70,000! PPA Charities President Mary Fisk-Taylor explains:

“Last year represented an amazing turning point in our fundraising activities for PPA Charities. Because so many caring photographers and industry vendors recognized what could be accomplished for Operation Smile when we all stand together, we topped our $70,000 goal by $30,000! This allowed us to present Operation Smile with a check for $100,000 at our PPACH Celebration at ImagingUSA in January. This means that the smiles of more than 400 children will be saved through of the generosity of our industry.

“Because of this outstanding performance in 2009, the PPACH Trustees feel confident that our goal of $120,000 can be reached in 2010. Just imagine how we will feel about our great industry if this time next year we know that the lives of 500 children will be changed forever because more and more photographers participated in this great effort! It is within our reach if we start our fundraising efforts now, and if we spread the word about what we are doing to our industry colleagues!

“Thank you again for opening your hearts to children around the world and to the fabulous volunteer professionals at Operation Smile. Take a moment now to mark your 2011 calendar so that you can take part in the PPA Charities Celebration on the evening of Saturday, January 15, at Imaging USA in San Antonio!”

To learn how you can support Operation Smile, click here.