‘This is not your grandmother’s Easter Egg Roll’: White House seeks corporate sponsorships for Easter event
CNN
The White House, through an outside event production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsors for this year’s annual Easter Egg Roll, which is prompting major concerns from ethics experts and shock from former White House officials from both parties.
The White House, through an outside event production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsors for this year’s annual Easter Egg Roll, which is prompting major concerns from ethics experts and shock from former White House officials from both parties. The sponsorship offers range from $75,000 to $200,000, with the promise of logo and branding opportunities, according to a nine-page document sent to potential sponsors and obtained by CNN. The Egg Roll, which began during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration in 1878, has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion. And all money raised by Harbinger will go to the White House Historical Association. But the solicitation for sponsorships marks an unprecedented offering of corporate branding opportunities on White House grounds running counter to long-established regulations prohibiting the use of public office for private gain. “This is an enterprise. This is not your grandmother’s Easter Egg Roll where people lined up outside the gate and go and roll an egg and get a little gift bag and walk out,” said a former official involved in planning the event, which has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years. The pitch document laying out sponsorship opportunities includes logos for both the White House and Harbinger, which previously produced the event during President Donald Trump’s first term and is offering “initial planning” and “event day execution” for sponsors that sign on. It features imagery of Trump, first lady Melania Trump, members of the Trump family, the Easter Bunny, and the White House press corps, including CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins.
