Comedy for a Cause, a monthly comedy fundraiser at Georgetown, hosted their second free standup comedy show Nov. 4 to raise money for Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit that aims to end world hunger.

The standup show included local D.C. as well as Georgetown University student comedians from groups such as the Georgetown Heckler and Georgetown Sketch Comedy. About 60 people attended the event, which raised $61 for Action Against Hunger.

Comedy for a Cause was created at the beginning of this semester by two Georgetown students, David Edwards (CAS ’24) and Zan Haq (SFS ‘24), who realized there were no regular stand-up comedy events on campus.

“I think one of the things that me and Zan initially thought about when we were coming up with the idea for the show was that there’s a lot of comedy on campus. I mean, Georgetown has two improv clubs, a sketch group, satire papers and there’s all the alumni that people think about for comedy, but there’s not a regular stand-up event,” Edwards told The Hoya.

“There are lots of sketch and improv shows every semester, and there’s Funniest Human once a year, and that’s pretty much it,” Edwards added.

The Nov. 4 event was Comedy for a Cause’s second show — its first, Oct. 7, had about 95 attendees and raised $153 for Rangila’s fundraiser. In total, the two events raised $214.

Edwards and Haq said they wanted the show to incorporate both Georgetown students, including Edwards and Haq themselves, and comics from outside of the community, including Jack Schwartz and Matilda Epstein, to give the audience a taste of standup on- and off-campus.

“There’s some really awesome comedians and sometimes in the Georgetown bubble, people don’t quite get out and see that kind of stuff,” Edwards said. “So we wanted to create an opportunity for students to participate in stand-up if they wanted to, but also to just kind of see what was going on.”

Edwards and Haq said finding and recruiting D.C. comedians was not difficult for Edwards and Haq, since they are both involved in D.C.’s comedy scene.

“Me and Zan both do comedy around D.C.,” Edwards said. “So we just know a lot of them from hanging out at shows, before and after. And then if you know some of them, you can always ask people who else they recommend.”

Comedy for a Cause partnered with Rangila, Georgetown’s South Asian philanthropic performing arts showcase, to help raise money for their campaign for Action Against Hunger.

“Zan knew somebody in Rangila who suggested talking to them about it,” Edwards said. “We set up a partnership with them — it was great. It helped us promote our stuff. We were able to raise a bunch of money for that and shout them out at the show, so it was mutually beneficial.”

Edwards said that he is pleased with the success of the Comedy for a Cause shows and hopes to continue them in the future.

“Our goal was for it to be monthly, but we were like, ‘Let’s see how the first one goes.’ The first one went really well, so we were like, ‘Let’s just keep doing it,’” Edwards said.

Eli Blumenfeld (CAS ’25), who is part of Georgetown’s sketch comedy group and has been part of the comedy scene at Georgetown since his sophomore year, performed at the show. Blumenfeld said he wanted to perform in the first Comedy for a Cause show this year but was not able to and said he jumped at the opportunity to perform at the November show.

Full disclosure: Eli Blumenfeld serves as a columnist in The Hoya’s Sports section.

Blumenfeld said the crowd’s enthusiasm made participating in Comedy for a Cause a fun experience.

“I always feel like I’m at home when I’m performing at Georgetown. It’s a really supportive and great crowd; they’re always rooting for you,” Blumenfeld told The Hoya.