A fundraising guru who’s raised nearly seven figures giving helping hands to Middle Keys locals got his flowers at the Marathon City Council’s April 14 meeting.
A special National Volunteer Week recognition presented by Mayor Lynny Del Gaizo was met with a standing ovation in the council chambers for Marathon Grill and Ale House bar manager Andy Sharf, his wife Betsy and daughter Peyton, the driving forces behind numerous six-figure fundraisers since 2017.
“The reason why I picked you is because you give, and you don’t talk about it, you don’t brag about it, and you don’t take any credit,” said Del Gaizo. “You do it so locally, and you bring in more money than anyone I know.”
Famous for his Facebook posts announcing his next charity undertaking – “Marathon, it’s that time again!” – Sharf’s fundraising quest began in 2017. He decided to stack cash for Monroe County Sheriff’s Office crime scene investigator John Underwood, who lost his home in a house fire in August of that year.
Working in tandem with a local restaurant, his first-ever event raised $33,000.
Since then, his total has ballooned to $850,000 across eight main fundraisers, most recently netting $138,000 in tandem with the Island Fish Company for bartender Rachele “Roach” Kruse in her battle against cancer.
“When I do one of these, I tell the person, ‘You give back to me what I’ve given to you,’” Sharf told the Weekly. “It helps me be a better father, be a better husband. … I feel like I’m giving myself grace by doing these events.”
His own role model? One of his best friends and fraternity brothers from Penn State, Jeremy Crouse. Living in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, Crouse created the nonprofit Creating Hope and Making Progress (CHAMP), a student-led and community-powered philanthropy movement to raise direct support for local children fighting cancer and their families. This year alone, the group raised $268,000.
If you ask Sharf, his friend is still the standard he’s chasing – so much so that they “raced” to reach seven figures raised for their respective locals.
“He started in 2013, and he just surpassed $1.2 million (raised) on his end,” Sharf said. “I was always watching him, so I started in 2017 and based my stuff off what he was doing. It took off from there.”
“It makes me so proud just to see the man that he has become, and him making the impact in so many lives,” Crouse told the Weekly. “Seeing it from Pennsylvania, I’m like, ‘That’s my dude.’”
And while Sharf might be the figurehead of all his past fundraising efforts, he’s overly quick to credit anyone other than himself – particularly his family.
“Betsy does more than I do, and she’s definitely the unsung hero,” he said. “She’s the one that keeps it organized, she’s the one printing out papers at two o’clock in the morning. And my daughter saw what we were doing, and she always wants to be the first person to volunteer for everything.”
As for those who’ve watched him in action, and the dozens he’s helped, they’re more than happy to throw credit his way.
“Mister Rogers said, ‘Always look for the helpers,’ and I never had to look far, because Andy has been helping people ever since I met him in high school,” said Crouse. “If the greatest thing we can do as humans is help someone who can never repay us, and true success is measured by the impact we make on the world around us, then Andy Sharf is the standard we should all strive to reach.”
