Wow! Big Sunday’s first-ever gala honoring Big Sunday champs Paulette Light, Melanie Staggs, Antonio Molina and Parsons Corporation was a huge success – we raised more than twice what we’d hoped! Plus, it was a blast, too.

On Wednesday, more than 300 guests converged at République in Los Angeles to celebrate the community activism and impressive achievements of our honorees and, of course, to have an amazing time.  In the spirit of a typical Big Sunday event, we socialized, laughed, and enjoyed République’s incredible food and drink (if you sampled the Beef Tartare or Big Sunday Bomb – for starters – you know exactly what we mean), jammed along with members of the awesome Calé Latin Band, and, once again, took part in our Something in Common photo area.

We want to extend a special thank you to everyone who supported this incredible effort. That includes our very generous sponsors: Disney, HBO, Susan & Eric Smidt, and Parsons Corp., as well as Aliza & Michael Lesser, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, The Moskowitz Family, Michael Skloff, Sony Pictures, Melanie & Tom Staggs, Sarah Timberman & Ed Redlich. Plus Caldwell Leslie & Proctor, The Capital Group, The Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, Susan & Howard Mandel, Nicole and Alan Mutchnik, NBC-Universal, The Original Farmers Market, and Linda Perlman. Whew!

Thanks also the wonderful event planning committee, starting with Mikki Kane and Becky Levan. Thanks also to Joel Lipton; all the folks who put the ad book together; as well as the entire fantastic and accommodating staff in every corner of République who went above and beyond.

We are extremely grateful to the hundreds of people who supported this effort by buying tickets, ads and sponsorships, not to mention the fact that we all greatly enjoyed your extremely fun company on Wednesday night.

Lastly, many, many thanks to Paulette, Melanie, Tony, and all our friends at Parsons Corporation for giving us this opportunity to tell the world about all your impressive and inspiring work, and for how much you’ve brought to the Big Sunday party for so long!

Perhaps best of all, now that the fundraiser was such a success, we can turn 110% of our attention to the work we love at Big Sunday: connecting people through helping!

Hope to see you soon,

David L., Berenice, Ashanntí, Rob, David M. and Beenish