Clean Stand-up Comedians for Your Charity Comedy Night Fundraiser

A clean stand-up comedy show, like from The Ivy League of Comedy, is an excellent idea for a charity gala and can help you raise funds.

The cost of booking The Ivy League of Comedy for a charity event depends on where, when and how many comedians (typically 3 professional comedians for a 90 minute show). We understand nonprofit budgets and we'll work with you to put together a great show you can afford. Call, text or email, we may ask a couple of questions (basically, where, when and for whom) and we'll get right back to you with our cost. We're very responsive, and advice is free. We're happy to answer your questions.

The Ivy League of Comedy offers significant discounts for non-profit organizations versus our usual rate for other organizations and corporations.

You might find amateur comedians to perform for free at a charity event, but we strongly, strongly recommend that you don’t. We make our living from performing. And it’s a little insulting when you’re paying the people who prepare the food you’re serving, the people who clean up afterwards... the farmer who grew the food got paid, the electric company’s getting paid, but the people who are actually providing the service that you’re selling, you don’t want to pay them? We offer significant discounts to non-profits (something that the farmers, staff and electric company aren’t doing).

To host a comedy fundraiser for a non-profit, if you work with an experienced group like The Ivy League of Comedy, we provide a turn-key approach that includes booking the comedians, helping you market and promote your event, and we’ll even give advice on setting up the room for the best comedy show you could possibly have. Founder and CEO Shaun Eli majored in marketing at Wharton. And if you're selling drinks, we have a technique to increase beverage sales at comedy shows.

Absolutely. You can have a comedy night fundraiser even if you’re expecting fewer than 100 people (and with the right push- and we’re experts at marketing- you’ll get more than you expect). You probably can’t afford 3 professional comedians but you can certainly afford one. Having a comedian will get people in the door, and then you’ve got raffles, live and/or silent auctions and other activities that can also help raise funds.

Yes, The Ivy League of Comedy is happy to put together everything comedy for your school, PTA, youth sports league, or for your service or social club like Knights of Columbus, Lions Club, Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, Moose, Masonic lodges, Junior League, YMCA, Optimist Club (The Ivy League of Comedy’s founder Shaun Eli has a master’s degree in positive psychology from Penn), and others.

The Ivy League of Comedy suggests charging as much as you think you can charge for tickets to a comedy fundraiser. We believe that attendees are less price-sensitive than most organizers think, when you consider what live entertainment costs (concerts, theatre tickets, etc.), and that the cost of tickets is often less than a meal out. If you double the price do you think you’d lose half the audience? If you’re thinking $35, why not $50? People will know that the money’s going to a good cause. And of course you could also offer discounts for seniors or those less fortunate, and have premium-priced tickets, maybe with an extra meet-and-greet after the show.

Additional sources of revenue at a comedy night fundraising event include raffles, live or silent auctions (or both, especially for what didn’t sell during the silent auction), selling sponsorships, selling tables at a discount, and selling ads in a printed program.

For stand-up comedy, if you can afford more than one professional comedian, have at it. If you work with The Ivy League of Comedy we’ll make sure that the line-up is balanced— a good mix of style, energy, topics and background of the comedians.

The Ivy League of Comedy recommends booking a comedy show at least three months in advance, to give you sufficient time to market your event. But we’ve booked comedians the day before an event, so don’t hesitate to ask.

If you are booking last-minute, call us at (914) 487-3866, don’t email or text.

If you're looking for comedians who appeal to both older and younger people, the comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy pride themselves on having great material that appeals to everyone. We won’t have cultural references that only some demographics or ages will understand. We’ve done shows for everyone from 14 to 102 (or maybe older— most people at our shows don’t brag about their age). But leave the little kids at home.

Yes, we will avoid topics you tell us to avoid. Long before the show, talk to us about this.

Most, but not all, comedians are good emcees. The comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy, with an average of well more than two decades of pro comedy experience, are all experienced masters of ceremony. We can emcee your charity event and make it lots of fun! We can help auction off items for sale and can push to drive people to your fundraiser’s silent auction. But most of all we’re great entertainers. From four Tonight Show hosts to charities to corporate and industry conference event participants, to theatre and comedy club audiences to military audiences from our Armed Forces Entertainment tours— they all love us. So will the guests at your fundraiser.

Yes, our comedians would be happy to perform at your charity gala dinner, though we strongly prefer performing after, not during, the actual meal. We also perform at corporate functions, where the emphasis is on business, but they still slot in a comedian to make it a much more fun event. Your gala is about your cause, and a comedian can do the same thing for it.

Probably not as much as you think. Shaun Eli, the founder and CEO of The Ivy League of Comedy, says that the secret to comedy is 100 people in a room that holds 70. You want people crowded together, in a room with a low ceiling, so that the laughter echoes as much as possible.

You need to have one, so if you don’t, you’ll need to rent or borrow one (we can sometimes provide one, but we do charge extra for the trouble). If you have musicians in your group, they may already have what you need. The Ivy League of Comedy can provide guidance— just ask!

To promote a charity comedy night, call The Ivy League of Comedy. They are experts at promoting stand-up comedy shows, including a lot of ideas that wouldn’t normally occur to you. Marketing a comedy show is quite different from marketing a music night.

We expect to get paid— this is what we do for a living (please, don’t risk your event on amateur comedians). If it’s around dinner time or you’re serving food, please feed us. Also, a quiet place to rest before the show is very helpful. And you’ll need a sound system with a hand-held microphone. A stage and stage lighting are nice to have, but not necessary for a great show. And the audience needs to be seated.

Yes, absolutely. We regularly do shows for houses of worship including those with very devout congregants. We have specific pages for Synagogue and Church shows.

Please note that the comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy aren’t going to make fun of your group, your charity or your audience. It’s our job to make people laugh, not cry.

According to The Ivy League of Comedy, a typical comedy night includes dinner then a comedy show (dinner’s up to you— we provide the entertainment). Our shows from The Ivy League of Comedy usually include three comedians for an hour and a half show, but we can make the show shorter or longer to meet your needs. We like the idea of having a three comedian show. All of us are national headliners— this isn’t a typical comedy club show with an inexperienced emcee, a barely more experienced middle act and a closer. We’re all headlining comedians. An advantage of a three comic show is diversity in style, energy, topics and viewpoint as well as in the backgrounds of the comedians.

Sure, we customize material all the time for specific groups— usually just a joke or two at the start that's about the entity. That’s enough to get their attention and remind them that the show’s about them. But it’s not really necessary. We’ve all been honing our material for years and we can choose what’s perfect for your audience. Comedians are generally very charitable people and we may already support your cause. The Ivy League of Comedy will choose the right comedians for your event. We work regularly with great comics, we’re friends with a lot of them and we know them well.

Yes, during the pandemic, comedians from The Ivy League of Comedy became experts at virtual comedy, and we continue to do virtual comedy shows.

We’re not a franchise and we’re not a huge company that books musicians and jugglers and actors and fire-eaters.

We’re The Comedy Specialists and we work seven days a week. We’re the leading independent producer of clean stand-up comedy shows for theatres. The Ivy League of Comedy is carefully managed by a working comedian who has headlined shows on six continents and has been profiled in The New York Times. Our shows star only full-time pro comedians. There are no moonlighting dentists or accountants in our group.

The Ivy League of Comedy’s Executive Director majored in marketing at Wharton and he will help you market your event. After more than twenty years in business, after working in corporate America for two decades (with some overlap with being a comedian), he knows how to market events. We’ve been around a long time and we’ve learned a lot along the way. And there’s no middleman taking a big cut for arranging shows. Our owner is almost always one of the comedians in the show.

Comedy is not like music where you can practice at home. Comedians need to get in front of audiences to keep in practice and improve. So you want full-time comedians performing at your event. One more thing about that— it takes years to become a good comedian. Telling jokes on stage is different from making your friends laugh. We’re not saying one is better than the other, just different. Like golf and baseball— both are sports that involve swinging sticks at balls, but they’re vastly different sports. Unlike musicians, who may start when they’re four or eight or ten years old, with very, very few exceptions people don’t start the process of becoming stand-up comedians until they’re adults. That’s why almost all of us at The Ivy League of Comedy are over forty— we’ve been at this for twenty-plus years.

We can but we really don’t want to. Why have 90% of your audience love us but leave the other 10% uncomfortable? That’s not a recipe for success. Our instructions to comedians are clear: Clean shows. We’ve been at other people’s shows (not ours) where a comedian has asked the audience “We’re all adults, okay if I get a little dirty?” Nobody in the audience is going to risk embarrassment by saying no. Some people think dirty jokes are funnier (they’re not, they’re just dirtier). After the show the comedian will say “Well, I felt out the audience by getting edgier and they were fine. I even asked them and they said it was okay.” Our instructions to them are clear— Do Not Do That. Even if the person seemingly in charge says it’s okay. It’s not.

We’ve done shows at places like country clubs and here’s what happens sometimes— someone comes up to us after our clean show and says “You could’ve been edgier. We’re all adults here.” Our response: “Didn’t you have a great time?” “Yes, you were wonderful.” “Well, here’s what would have happened— there are a hundred people here. We tell a dirty joke, 95 people laugh, but then 10 people are still uncomfortable. Yes, they laugh if it’s funny but then some of them are uncomfortable for laughing at a dirty joke in what they see as an extension of their living room, and they feel bad. They complain. We avoid that. We have no reason to be dirty, so we’re not.”

So especially at a fundraising event that represents your organization— if someone suggests adult humor, tell them no. And then call us.