The Hollywood Support Staff COVID-19 Relief Fund has raised more than $500,000 to help assistants, coordinators, PAs and other industry support staffers who have been laid off or whose hours have been cut due to the coronavirus shutdown. The fund was created by the #PayUpHollywood organization, the ScriptNotes podcast and the nonprofit YEA!
The first issue of Connect, a new WGA West digital publication, notes that the relief fund’s co-founder, Liz Alper, originally projected on March 20 that $100,000 “could provide relief from between 111-222 LA-based support staffers. Now, we project we can help between 500-800 qualified applicants while still increasing the stipend amounts for everyone.” Alper, a member of the guild’s board of directors, was the co-founder of #PayUpHollywood and coiner of the hashtag.
“Throughout it all, our greatest allies have always been writers,” Alper told the guild. “When we launched our #SupportOurSupportStaffs GoFundMe campaign to raise relief funds for Hollywood support staff, writers once again led the charge; the outpouring of generosity, from prominent showrunners to newly minted screenwriters, inspired the rest of the industry to reach out to Hollywood’s most vulnerable. To be a writer in Hollywood is to be a leader; I’m grateful to all of you and proud to be one of you.”