BROWN COUNTY, Wis. (WFRV) – What began as a creative and eye-catching way to fundraise for breast cancer patients has ended in fury for both the organizers and participants in the “Dad Bod Calendar” fundraiser.
“We didn’t do it so somebody else could fill their pockets,” participant Nick Enderby said.
The participants in the fundraiser featuring photos of men in a variety of Wisconsin-esque settings and little clothing feel taken advantage of, after far less money was donated to the nonprofit Ribbon of Hope than they expected by Art-C Productions LLC.
“My face and a lot of other faces were used to raise this money, and it’s not going where it should be,” participant Daniel Rentmeester said.
Much of the frustration stems from the lack of clarity about how much money was going to be donated before the initiative kicked off its second season, but organizers say that it was made clear that they would not be deciding on a certain percentage until after the proceeds were collected due to their inexperience in holding a fundraiser like this.
“We had told everybody from the beginning that we are donating a portion of the net proceeds,” the co-owner of Art-C Productions LLC, Kayla, said. She and her husband Tom did not want their last name to be used in this story. “I understand they wanted a number on how much it was going to be, but again, we were a brand new company, we didn’t know how it was going to take off, what expenses would incur.”
Kayla and Tom created Art-C Productions in 2022, and said that the uncharted territory of fundraising prevented them from deciding on how much would be donated prior to the fundraiser kicking off. They have created a calendar for the last two years.
“We didn’t know how much we would be able to donate, because we didn’t know how well it would take off, we didn’t know the expenses that would go into it because we were starting out and still a brand new company,” Kayla said. “Putting an exact number, like ‘we’re going to donate this much,’ we can’t do that because we don’t know how much we’re going to raise, we don’t know how much the expenses are going to be.”
Rentmeester says that while Kayla and Tom were adamant that a portion would be donated, that became a red flag, and had he known that such a small percentage would be donated, he would not have taken part in the calendar.
“A portion, a portion. She kept saying that over and over to us again and again, and to meet that started raising even more of a red flag,” Rentmeester said. “I would’ve said no right away, to be honest. I would’ve said no, I wouldn’t have even had to think about it.”
According to Kayla, the auction for the “dates with the dads” raised $2,000 dollars, which was donated in full to Ribbon of Hope.
She says that $6,020 in calendars were sold, and that there were $2,710 made in revenue. She says that she and Tom donated $1,000 dollars, which is about 37% of the profit.
“That’s not at all what I’m expecting,” Rentmeester said. “I’ll be straightforward, the way I look at it is if you’re doing it for charity or a great cause, those numbers should be straight out there, in the open for anybody to see.”
“[Last year] we told them that the goal was to shoot for $5 a calendar, we stayed very close to that, and when it was all said and done, we donated over 20% of what was left after those net proceeds,” Kayla said. “[Accusers] believe 100% of everything should have been donated, and unfortunately that’s just not how we can do it as a small business.”
“Middle of June last year, we donated 25% after all of our expenses.”
Tom says that there are a lot of aspects that people do not know about that goes into creating the calendars and managing the sales.
“It was a lot to handle, the marketing, the website, I had to build the website, the editing, the photography,” he said. “It’s a business page, it would be common sense, I assume.”
But the participants say that some of the aspects of the project should have been donated, like the time taken for marketing. They said that all of the time they spent working on the project was donated, and expected the same of Kayla and Tom.
“Expenses for marketing? Well, we did a lot of marketing on our own, and if they needed any help with that stuff, all they had to do was ask,” Rentmeester said. “A lot of us took our personal time to do this, we didn’t sign contracts or anything like that because we’re looking to help people. If they’re looking at it directly like a business standpoint, you shouldn’t be advertising a charity.”
Enderby said that he feels let down that more time and resources were not donated by Kayla and Tom. He says multiple eight-hour long photo shoots were held, including ones that required additional time from him setting up at his house, without him being paid, and he did not expect it, either.
“We donated all of our time, locations, everything like that, all for this cause,” Enderby said. “A lot of us put in our own leg work on our own dimes. We didn’t expect anything out of it except for bigger numbers, that’s all we looked for.”
Kayla and Tom say that the calendars require hundreds of hours of effort, and that they lost out on $7,000 in their business’ revenue because of the time they were putting into the calendars.
“We didn’t take on a single new client from the beginning of October all the way through the end of last year because we were working on this project,” Kayla said.
Participants say they have notified Ribbon of Hope that they feel the organization, donors and themselves have been swindled.
“You guys are missing out on money, that’s the point we’re trying to get the point across,” Enderby said he told board members. “That’s cool that yes, you got some money, but you’re not getting what you’re supposed to.”
According to Ribbon of Hope, because the organization was not involved in organizing the fundraiser, there is no binding force that ensures that they receive more of the proceeds from the Dad Bod Calendars.
“We’re grateful for any donations we receive,” Tom Rueckl, Ribbon of Hope board member, said. “We accept donations from friend-sponsored events, which we don’t have any part in organizing.”
An additional point of frustration that the participants are still fuming over is that it took so long for Kayla and Tom to make the donations. Rather than make the donations over the winter, they waited until May to make the donations after their taxes were complete.
“‘We have to get our taxes done before this gets donated,’ that really rubbed a lot of us the wrong way,” Enderby said.
Kayla said that if too much of their revenue is donated, the IRS will question it so they want to make sure that their CPA approves it later in the year when more revenue has been made.
“We want to make sure we file our taxes before we do our final donations so that way our accountant can say, ‘ok, this isn’t going to raise any red flags with the IRS. We waited until our taxes were filed this year and we waited for the green light from our accountant to go,” Kayla said. “Otherwise it can look like you’re trying to get out of paying your taxes, and so our accountant said, ‘that’s a little high.’”
Tension continues to run high, and social media has cut straight through Kayla and Tom’s relationships with those who think they have wronged those connected to the calendars.
“We thought these people were our friends, and I even had family that I had a relationship with and lost them in all of this as well,” Kayla said.
Tom said that after so much hard work and effort after the first year while regular business suffered, there will be no more community fundraisers for he and Kayla.
“We’re definitely not doing it again,” he said.
Something that was meant to bring so much fun and joy to the community has sucked it out of the organizers.
“It was just like a spur of the moment, goofy idea to bring awareness to men getting breast cancer as well and to raise money for breast cancer charity,” Kayla said.
It remains an important cause to Kayla and Tom, and they say they will continue to privately support the efforts to fight the battle against breast cancer, particularly in males.
“My uncle actually passed away in 2014 from breast cancer,” Kayla said. “It will always be something near and dear to my heart.”
Meanwhile, the participants say they want to continue the Dad Bod Calendar tradition with their own organizing, though they will likely take a pause on a 2025 edition. Rentmeester says that more transparency and laughter is called for.
“We’re actually talking about it a little bit now. We’re going to wait a year obviously, but we think it is a fun thing to do, made a lot of people laugh,” he said. “We’ll do it on our own terms, so people can see what the money is used for, where it’s going and hopefully to help a lot of people.”
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