Celebrity Services/Endorsements

Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash has launched a mobile giving campaign to benefit Educare Arizona, a platform of the Steve Nash Foundation. The Phoenix Suns designated Friday, Feb. 4 “Educare – Early Learning Night at the Phoenix Suns,” while Nash and the home team match up against Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

U.S. cell phone users can make a $10 donation to the Steve Nash Foundation in its support of Educare Arizona by texting NASH to 20-222.*

The game show "Jeopardy!" may be focused on trivia, but winnings of an upcoming competition will benefit humanitarian work.

"Jeopardy!" champion Ken Jennings will compete against fellow champion Brad Rutter and IBM's Watson computing system next month, with the windfalls going to charity.

The grand prize is $1 million, second place earns $300,000 and third place earns $200,000. Jennings and Rutter will donate half of their winnings to charity, and IBM will donate 100 percent of its winnings to charity.

America SCORES Seattle, a nonprofit after-school soccer and literacy program, will be the beneficiary of the Sounders FC Guest Bartender Night at The Great Nabob on Tuesday January 18th at 6pm. This fun event will feature Sounders FC players off the pitch and behind the bar, all to support SCORES.

After the dot-com bubble burst and took down his online grocery store, Webvan Group Inc., Coppy Holzman got back in the game by auctioning unique experiences for charities, like a backstage meeting with Paul McCartney. Then he took it global on the Web.

With his Charitybuzz.com, Holzman serves as a broker who finds the celebrity and runs the online auction. Instead of an upfront fee, he gets 20 percent of the sale proceeds. He doubled Charitybuzz’s business to $25 million this year over 2009.

For 99.9 percent of the players in the NBA, July 1, 2011 is circled on their calendars as the start of a potential lockout if the player's union and the league's owners can't come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement before the current one expires on June 30. For Los Angeles Lakers forward Ron Artest, July 1 marks the day he will announce just how much of his 2011-12 salary he will donate to charities to benefit mental health awareness.

In unique partnership with the website JustGive, Matthews is letting fans direct the proceeds of two upcoming Seattle shows to the charities of their choice. Every ticket is matched with an equal donation to philanthropy.

"The point is the act of giving and making the process available," he said in an interview. "I think it may make people feel a certain amount of power to see the ease of how you can give."

Wednesday is World AIDS Day, and many celebrities will stop communicating via Twitter and Facebook. They will not be resuscitated, they say, until their fans donate $1 million.

It’s all part of the latest gambit by the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys to raise money for her charity, Keep a Child Alive, which finances medical care and support services for children and families affected by H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa and India.

When Tim McGraw was a kid, he didn't always know where he'd get his next meal. Those memories are part of the reason he taped public service announcements that begin airing this month to raise awareness of hunger in America.

The charity Feeding America says one in six Americans struggle to find enough food to eat, and approximately 5.7 million people receive emergency food assistance from them on any given week.

The Brady-Audi-Best Buddies connection is part of a world known as cause marketing, an arrangement that allows a corporation to affiliate with a charity and celebrities to burnish its public image and — potentially — boost sales. The charity, in turn, benefits from the exposure and increased marketing power that come from a corporate ally.

The arrangements are especially valuable to companies because research has shown that consumers tend to prefer products with a charity connection.

Two designated charities are already benefiting from the publicity generated by the mock rallies announced by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their shows in recent weeks. The comedians have told supporters to donate money to help restore the park where the rallies will be held and to buy school supplies for classrooms in their community. So far, they’ve raised a total of $364,000.