The standard charity event formula produces predictable results: tables bought under social pressure, items bid up by competitive obligation, guests who leave having given more than they planned and received less than they hoped.
Vanessa Getty didn’t build that kind of event. She built the opposite.
The PURR Sale, which Getty created in 2008 to fund the Peninsula Humane Society’s mobile spay-neuter program, was designed from the start around one principle: genuine value exchange. Donors contributed items they already owned. Buyers paid prices that were genuinely discounted—30 to 70 percent below retail. One hundred percent of proceeds went to the cause. No overhead. No administrative delays. No pressure.
“My whole theory,” Getty has said in published interviews, “was that everyone should always be able to walk out with something.”
The effect was counterintuitive: by treating the event as a sale rather than a fundraiser, Getty generated more giving than a traditional fundraiser would have produced. The donors didn’t have to write checks—they donated pieces from their closets. The buyers didn’t have to make charitable gestures—they shopped. The generosity happened upstream, in the decisions to donate, and the downstream transaction felt natural rather than obligatory.
The numbers bore out the logic. The first event raised approximately $150,000 in about an hour, drawing donations from Chanel, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, Judith Leiber, and dozens of others, including Nicole Kidman and a wide cross-section of San Francisco’s fashion-engaged community. The second event, in 2015, raised $350,000 in a single afternoon.
What made this model workable was Getty’s specific position at the intersection of San Francisco’s social world, its fashion connections, and its philanthropic community. She had genuine relationships with designers built over decades. She had standing in a community of buyers who trusted her judgment. She had a cause that was both urgent and concrete—a mobile clinic that needed fuel, not symbolism.
The PURR model anticipated something the broader fashion industry would take years to formalize: that pre-owned luxury goods, sourced from credible closets and priced accessibly, could generate genuine excitement and real commercial activity. The resale platforms that now constitute a major segment of the fashion industry operate on a logic that PURR demonstrated in 2008.
But for Getty, the point was always the mobile clinic. More than 9,500 free surgeries performed across Bay Area communities bear that out. Fashion created the mechanism. Animal welfare was the outcome.
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The standard charity event formula produces predictable results: tables bought under social pressure, items bid up by competitive obligation, guests who leave having given more than they planned and received less than they hoped.
Vanessa Getty didn’t build that kind of event. She built the opposite.
The PURR Sale, which Getty created in 2008 to fund the Peninsula Humane Society’s mobile spay-neuter program, was designed from the start around one principle: genuine value exchange. Donors contributed items they already owned. Buyers paid prices that were genuinely discounted—30 to 70 percent below retail. One hundred percent of proceeds went to the cause. No overhead. No administrative delays. No pressure.
“My whole theory,” Getty has said in published interviews, “was that everyone should always be able to walk out with something.”
The effect was counterintuitive: by treating the event as a sale rather than a fundraiser, Getty generated more giving than a traditional fundraiser would have produced. The donors didn’t have to write checks—they donated pieces from their closets. The buyers didn’t have to make charitable gestures—they shopped. The generosity happened upstream, in the decisions to donate, and the downstream transaction felt natural rather than obligatory.
The numbers bore out the logic. The first event raised approximately $150,000 in about an hour, drawing donations from Chanel, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, Judith Leiber, and dozens of others, including Nicole Kidman and a wide cross-section of San Francisco’s fashion-engaged community. The second event, in 2015, raised $350,000 in a single afternoon.
What made this model workable was Getty’s specific position at the intersection of San Francisco’s social world, its fashion connections, and its philanthropic community. She had genuine relationships with designers built over decades. She had standing in a community of buyers who trusted her judgment. She had a cause that was both urgent and concrete—a mobile clinic that needed fuel, not symbolism.
The PURR model anticipated something the broader fashion industry would take years to formalize: that pre-owned luxury goods, sourced from credible closets and priced accessibly, could generate genuine excitement and real commercial activity. The resale platforms that now constitute a major segment of the fashion industry operate on a logic that PURR demonstrated in 2008.
But for Getty, the point was always the mobile clinic. More than 9,500 free surgeries performed across Bay Area communities bear that out. Fashion created the mechanism. Animal welfare was the outcome.