“Family Guy” and “The Orville” creator Seth MacFarlane is among the many SAG-AFTRA and WGA members striking for better pay in the film and TV industry, and he’s putting even more of his money towards that cause with a tidy $1 million donation to the Entertainment Community Fund, according to a recent report from Variety.
The ECF, formerly known as The Actors Fund, is set up to give financial assistance to those striking workers who don’t have the resources of their famous counterparts like MacFarlane, as well as other famous donors to the fund including, per the Variety piece:
“The Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, Stacey Abrams, Annette Bening, Tom Bergeron, Greg Berlanti, Rachel Bloom, Rosanne Cash in memory of Johnny Cash, Suzanne Collins and Cap Pryor, Vince Gilligan, Lynn Nottage, Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley, Shonda Rhimes, and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.”
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Altogether the fund has raised $6.3 million since the WGA strike began in May, not just from high-profile donors like MacFarlane and the ones listed above but from a total of more than 7,500 donors.
Annette Bening, chair of the Entertainment Community Fund, issued a press release on the fundraising efforts:
“The Entertainment Community Fund is overcome with gratitude to the prominent leaders in our community who have donated in support of film and television workers in need…Each day, the calls for help increase; these gifts will immediately assist so many in our industry who are still struggling to recover after the pandemic. We also hope that these impactful gifts will inspire others, if they can, to donate to support our crucial work.”
Guild members are able to request emergency funds from the ECF, and those requests have understandably skyrocketed since the strikes began, going from about $75,000 per week in distributed funds to between $400,000 and $500,000.
And there are other funds in place for the same cause. Dwayne Johnson recently made headlines with a donation of an undisclosed amount to the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Emergency Financial Assistance Program that according to the foundation was the largest donation they’ve ever received from an individual.