Denise Barto
Creating great parties so good causes can raise needed funds

It came in a dream, like so many of Denise Barto’s ideas. As she slept, Barto envisioned standing atop the new Cooper River Bridge, then under construction. The image sparked the event designer and her friends to create a luxury luncheon on the bridge that fetched a whopping $12,500 at the Spoleto Festival’s annual auction. The concept caused such a sensation that a dozen other charities auctioned similar packages before the span opened to traffic in July 2005, raising more than $200,000. “I’m really proud of that,” says Barto, co-owner of All Occasions event rental, “because, ultimately, so many organizations benefitted.”

For Barto, parties aren’t just business but a way to give back. When she becomes devoted to a cause, she freely offers her expertise and often donates resources as well. Yet she doesn’t work alone. “I believe in coalitions,” Barto says. “Nothing happens in isolation.”

Case in point: Lowcountry AIDS Services’ Dining with Friends. One night a year, people of all backgrounds put on dinner parties as fundraisers, then join together in the city for Champagne and dessert. Since Barto helped launch the event in 1993, it has collected nearly $1.7 million. Or consider Dine for the Charleston Nine, which raised $500,000 for the families of the firefighters who died in the Sofa Super Store blaze. Barto was one of the first people Charleston Grill general manager Mickey Bakst called to help organize the dinner and auction at Charleston Place. “For those she helps, for the causes she gets behind, she has such a big heart,” Bakst says.

Barto’s volunteer work with Spoleto dates to the late ’70s with the festival’s La Dolce Vita auction, and she has lent her talents in many other ways. Spoleto special events manager Scott Sowell talks to Barto at least once or twice a day from April to June. “She really believes in the festival and what we do,” he says. This year, Barto spearheaded the Memminger Auditorium reopening celebration and, the next day, put on the annual Bedon’s Alley party, playing off the Cinderella theme of the festival’s Italian opera, complete with a princess who escaped in a rickshaw at midnight.

Barto admits her Spoleto work has been a guilty pleasure compared to more serious efforts, such as her role as a founder of People Against Rape in 1974. Then she considers how the festival has shaped Charleston and enriched so many lives, hers included: “What it does for the community may seem intangible, but it has such an impact.”

—Susan Hill Smith