Le Bernardin’s Ripert Raises $100,000 for Madoff-Stung Charity

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- As Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert last month pondered ways to aid City Harvest, the New York-based food charity received bad news: One of its loyal donors had entrusted its investments to Bernard Madoff, who is charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

That meant City Harvest would lose future donations from the Palm Beach, Florida-based Picower Foundation, which closed its doors last month. City Harvest received annual grants ranging from $135,000 to $190,000 for the past 9 years.

Although Ripert, a City Harvest board member, said he was already looking for ways to boost the finances of the nonprofit, which distributes food to the hungry, the timing was right to hatch his plan. He will donate $1 from all lunches and dinners at his three-star Michelin restaurant in New York and the same amount from each copy sold of his latest cookbook, “On the Line.”

He said he hopes to raise $100,000 by the end of the year. Ripert, who gets more than 300 customers a day, will make monthly payments to City Harvest.

“Difficult times are when you have to be really even more committed,” the green-eyed, silver-haired Ripert, 43, said in an interview yesterday at Le Bernardin’s main dining room. “Le Bernardin has done well, and we’re still doing well, and we want to make sure we can support the community around us in a meaningful way.”

City Harvest, founded in 1982, is among dozens of charities affected by Madoff. The organization this year will collect about 23 million pounds of food from restaurants, grocers, farms and corporate cafeterias for weekly deliveries to more than 260,000 hungry persons.

Replacing Donations

Losing a donation as big as Picower’s, “I may have to get four or five gifts to replace that one,” said Patricia Barrick, City Harvest’s vice president in charge of fundraising.

With a budget of about $16 million, City Harvest faced a 6 percent budget deficit in December, said Jilly Stephens, its executive director. Strong donations helped erase the shortfall by month’s end, Barrick said.

Still, with financial uncertainty looming in 2009, the organization is searching for donors to pick up the slack from Picower’s demise.

“That seems to be the name of the game,” Barrick said. “That’s where a gift like Eric’s comes in.”


Source: bloomberg.com