SEATTLE (CelebrityAccess) Pearl Jam’s Home Shows, an initiative to bring the Seattle community together to fight homelessness, has reportedly raised $10.8 million to be distributed to about 100 area organizations.
Some the money raised came from ticket and merch sales from the band’s Home Show concerts at Safeco Field in August, according to the Seattle Times. However, most of it was raised through philanthropic donations.
The band wanted to raise the money in ways that were known to be effective and wouldn’t be slowed by bureaucracy, according to guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard. They also wanted to prove that good things can happen when the community comes together.
“Everyone we’ve communicated with and worked with has been dying for support, dying for coalescence around the issue and some attention being paid to it,” Gossard told the paper. “We got a lot of attention, so here’s an opportunity for us to use some of that attention for something that’s ripe and ready for a shift.”
Most donors earmarked where they wanted the money to go, the Times said, and for the remaining $1.3 million Pearl Jam turned to a 19-member advisory board that included the Chief Seattle Club, Accelerator YMCA and the Mockingbird Society, all of which will receive Home Show dollars.
Other members of the advisory board were the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ratkes Foundation, Schultz Family Foundation and Seattle Foundation.
“I just want them to know that they’re people, you know, and they’re no better, no worse than anybody on the planet … And that’s why we’re all here, is to hopefully try to end that,” McCready said.
“We’re Seattleites,” Gossard said. “We’re going to be here, our business is going to be here, and we’re going to remain in this conversation.”
