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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Cyber-begging fuels the new philanthropy, in which brand, beauty and instant karma matter most in raising funds.
Oct 2, 2002 | In June of this year, Karyn Bosnak bounced a $59 check at a grocery store. She was officially broke -- unable to scrape up enough cash to get to work. Karyn looked rich: She was a television producer, earned $900 a week and lived in a stylish apartment in Brooklyn with a closetful of Gucci and Louis Vuitton. But she also had a $20,221.40 credit card bill (thanks mainly to the aforementioned Gucci), an empty savings account, and now, the fee for a bounced check.
That night, Karyn decided that it was time for a change. So she did what any 29-year-old, marketing-savvy woman might do if she had $20,221.40 in debt and no easy way to pay it back: She built a Web site, and simply asked people to help her out by sending her a buck or two.
Four months later, Karyn Bosnak is the world's most successful Internet panhandler: At last count, she had paid off nearly $17,000 of her debt, thanks to donations of $1 to $1,000 from the thousands of strangers who have taken pity on her. Her Web site, SaveKaryn.com, has been visited by more than a million people; she's been featured on the "Today" show and in People magazine; she's been offered a book deal and a movie contract. Life is suddenly looking up for a woman who, just months ago, was "depressed and freaked out" by her financial straits.
Sitting at an outdoor cafe in Brooklyn, in a sheer DKNY peasant blouse and jean skirt, Karyn now beams with the beatific smile of the freshly famous. Her blond, highlighted bob glows in the sun; her cheeks are flushed pink with excitement. "I never in my whole life imagined this: ever ever ever," she gushes. "I just so hit rock bottom that I didn't know what to do, and I took a shitty situation and turned it around. I guess the lesson in that is don't let life get you down."
A more complicated lesson in the tale of Karyn Bosnak is that marketing is everything these days. Her radical approach to debt eradication is utterly generational, embodying all that is inspiring and much that is repugnant about the 20- and 30-somethings of the digital age -- Karyn's adventure is rich in self-entitlement, innovation, extravagant living and entrepreneurship. Her donors, most of whom come from the same demographic, practice a peculiar new form of individual philanthropy, in which donating is both a form of entertainment and a selfishly karmic activity. Karyn's imitators, meanwhile, of whom there are many, exhibit a near-religious faith in advertising, believing that a strategy that worked well for one brand (Karyn) is bound to work for another.
"I think Karyn has succeeded in raising money because she captured people's imaginations and is so obviously human -- and because she made them laugh, which is a really powerful thing to be able to do," says Lynette Webb, a 32-year-old media planner in London who donated $10 to Karyn's cause. "As a general rule, I think people are so bombarded with pleas for handouts these days that a lot gets screened out. It's only those campaigns that come along that have a personal resonance that get through -- whether because it's an issue you feel strongly about, or whether you just feel touched by the people involved."
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The SaveKaryn.com Web site yields much information about Karyn the person: She is an open book. She is a woman who is fond of exclamations like "Nummy!" "CooCooCaChoo!" and "Yipee!" who uses "fun and light-hearted" as a mantra when describing herself and her interests. On her Web site, she makes pronouncements like, "A computer is a necessary part of being a human in today's society. I cannot live without one. It's kind of like undereye cream. It's something that everyone needs." In person, she comes off as professionally perky, easygoing, slightly gushy and, in a disarming way, winsome.
"I do not position myself as a victim because I know I got myself into it, but if I am, I think I've been a victim of a good economy," Karyn explains. "I've been a victim of always having a nice paycheck. For me, this kind of slapped me into a reality that it's not always sunshine and roses."
Karyn grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, the younger of two daughters born to upper-middle-class parents who eventually divorced. She lived, she says, "a fun, great childhood," attending a private Catholic school, spending summers on the family's boat in Lake Michigan. Although she refuses to describe her family as affluent, she was certainly schooled in the ways of conspicuous consumption at a very young age. "In my school you just weren't the cool kid if you had a Liz Claiborne clutch, you had to have a Gucci purse, or Louis Vuitton or something like that," she explains. Her mother dutifully did all that she could to help her daughters fit in, buying them the necessary accessories when they were barely out of pubescence.
