We will, we will save you!

In fact, the giving-back craze has reached such a fever pitch it has hatched a new subindustry: the philanthropy-celebrity matchmaker. Barry Greenberg's company, Celebrity Connection, is one of several businesses dedicated to helping entertainers and nonprofits get to know one another and arrange mutually beneficial marriages of convenience for a fee. These Hollywood yentas help ensure that no good deed goes unpublicized by introducing nonprofits to stars who support their causes.

Like everything in Hollywood, celebrity-charity matchmaking is "all about relationships," says Rita Tateel of Celebrity Source, another Los Angeles matchmaking agency. "There needed to be a vehicle to act as the liaison between matching what celebrities were into and what the causes needed. This is not the kind of business where somebody could say, 'You know what? I'm going into the celebrity matchmaking business' and, boom, you open up shop," says Tateel. "It took us years to develop the kinds of relationships where we could call a celebrity at home or at their office and say, 'Look, we've got this project, would you be interested in participating?'"

"We all think that our own personal causes and favorite causes are worthy of everybody's attention," Tateel continues. "The reality is there are only so many popular celebrities to go around, and they need to sometimes just select a specific area of interest that they're going to focus on. Otherwise, they could be doing a different charity event every night of the week."

Tateel's and Greenberg's companies, and others like them (there are half a dozen or more), keep databases of thousands of celebrity names, which they draw upon when nonprofits call with requests ranging from procuring an honorary chairperson to finding a pitchman for a public service announcement to arranging for someone famous to attend a special event. Tateel says she is most often approached by corporations and nonprofits looking for stars who might like to get involved in their charities. But occasionally, she is also contacted by celebrities shopping for causes -- preferably popular, well-publicized ones.

In the two decades since Greenberg founded his matchmaking company, more and more up-and-coming and down-and-going entertainers have hitched their stars to the social-consciousness bandwagon; more performers than ever are lending their fame to help "brand" health, environmental and social causes. Their managers encourage the extra visibility philanthropy provides, and charities continue to believe they benefit from the exposure. And more companies are waking up to the P.R. panacea of "cause-related marketing," in which celebrities, causes and products are "bundled" to show off all three in the best light possible. Think "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF," teen pop singer Brandy and Turner Network Television or breast-cancer research, Cindy Crawford and Revlon, and you get the idea.

"Publicists and managers have gotten a lot smarter about what charity means for rounding out the careers of the celebrities they work with," says Greenberg. "It just gives [their clients] that extra thing they can talk about in the pre-interview when they're going on the 'Tonight Show,' to keep it from being only about their next movie or television series."

While some performers stump for causes they genuinely believe in, putting large sums of money where their mouths are, others see philanthropic work as an opportunity to revive, reform or spruce up their image. Sometimes, the perks can be the most motivating aspect of doing charity work -- everybody loves a junket.

"We'd like to think that celebrities say yes to requests from causes because they're simply altruistic and they are the kinds of celebrities that are very philanthropic by nature," says Tateel. "The reality is there are not that many celebrities who are so committed that they will do anything for that cause. There are very, very few. It's usually just the ones that either founded the cause, or they have their own foundation and such. But most celebrities, when they're doing something for a cause, they're doing it for other reasons than just the cause. They're doing it because of who else is involved, [and that person may have] asked them to do it as a personal favor, or maybe because it involves travel or perks."

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