case study

The shock of the 2016 election created an emotional need to take positive action. Emily Winter, a friend and fellow comedian, suggested we produce a live comedy show to raise funds for the ACLU here in NYC.

This moment felt bigger than one show in one city could handle, though. My Facebook feed was filled with comedians in other cities also grasping for ways to take action.

Instead of putting together a one-off local show, I proposed that we partner with comedians across the country—imagine, a coordinated weekend of comedy, nationwide, to support the ACLU.

We decided on Inauguration Day weekend as our target date for the festival, giving us just two and a half months to pull this off. We reached out to comedians and producers we knew in cities across the country to ask if they’d like to produce a local fundraising show for Inaguration Day weekend under the What a Joke brand name. 

When we announced the fest, we had 21 cities on board.

Word spread quickly on social media and we had comedians we’d never met reaching out to see if they could produce a show in their own city—the fest grew to 88 shows in 34 cities, including Oxford, England, all taking place over Inauguration Day weekend.

The festival gave the comedy community a sense of unity, connection, support, and relief during . 

But most importantly, we raised over 50K for the ACLU.

So apparently when you decide to use a hat as your brand logo, people are gonna want to buy a hat. My co-founder was able to source a vendor who could create merch on a quick turnaround, and I used my WordPress / WooCommerce skills to quickly set up a page on our site for people to place online orders. We also shipped hats to our producers across the country to sell as merch at their shows.

The hats became an additional source of fundraising, and they helped spread awareness in the days leading up to the festival as folks on Instagram began sharing pics of themselves in their “What a Joke” hats.