On Tuesday, January 27, 2009, Puget Sound Community School, known to its
community as "PSCS," raised over $8000 to set a fund-raising record for the
Comedy Underground Non-Profit Comedy series.

The event, attended by over 100 people, included a silent auction, live auction, and live comedy show.

The show itself included PSCS students plus professionals like 2008 Seattle Comedy Competition winner Tommy Savitt, Seattle area veteran comics Kermet Apio, Elliot Maxx, and Peter Greyy, and, for dessert, Last Comic Standing Runner-Up Ty Barnett, who appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno just this past Friday.

For about 3 years Seattle's Comedy Underground has staged a series of benefit shows on Tuesday nights, each benefiting a different non-profit organization. Beneficiaries have ranged from NARAL and Washington ACLU to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and Citizens for Off-Leash Areas.

All have gotten to take home a check, but none can top the success of this show. "We have a mechanism in place that allows the organization to really succeed in fund-raising," said Comedy Underground Manager Ron Reid. "The better they are in mobilizing their membership and being creative, the more they get out of it. PSCS worked long and hard to make this a major fundraiser for the school."

The Non-Profit Comedy Series is produced by Yoram Bauman, a UW professor who bills himself as the World's Only Stand-Up Economist. In fact, Mr. Bauman was himself featured in the January 15 issue of Time Magazine, and appeared last week on the PBS Newshour with Jim MacNeill.

Puget Sound Community School is a small progressive private school serving grades 6-12. All learning is student-directed. The school, which has about 30 students and has a child-to-adult ration of about 4-1, is located in Seattle's International District.

The Comedy Underground is located at 109 S. Washington St. in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square. It is Seattle's original comedy club having opened in 1981 at its previous location of 222 S. Main St., just 2 blocks away. The Comedy Underground re-opened in October 2008, after a hiatus of 5 months.