For the Roaring 20's Masquerade Ball, Libertiny has partnered with Josefine, owner of Detroit's CatharticMedia who is managing the fashion show. The event will be held at Severance Gallery which has the look and feel of a 1920's Speakeasy. Brian Heath, a recognized video producer and owner of Splash Media Group, will be shooting a multi-camera video of the entire event for future release on DVD. Rounding out the team is Elaine Greene, Executive Director of Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter, this event's charity.

"All of us on this team have volunteered for a variety of local and national not-for-profits over the years," Libertiny says. "The artist community has done a good job of raising funds for the primary goal of charities, but we struggle to raise a smaller amount of money to keep their full-time operations running. The monthly fluctuation in available funds is very stressful for the hardworking staff and also takes time away from their primary goal."

Because we historically ask venues and artists to not only give of their time, but to do so without any monetary compensation, while most venues and artists agree to help, it's not their number one priority since they like to be able to "eat." Therefore they choose to participate in events that pay them first and we end up with only a few fund raising events per year.

In 2004, the Halloween Masquerade Ball changed all of that by paying both the venue and artists a fair amount of money while raising funds for Habitat for Humanity-Detroit: The combined artistic, community, and business model was proven successful. We're now focused on doing regular fund raising events throughout North America for worthwhile charities. This will go a long way to giving charities a regular source of money for their ongoing operations.