Earlier this year, local TV and radio personality, consumer advocate and professional “cheap guy” Clark Howard issued a surprising challenge to the Atlanta community: He would match every penny donated to Synchronicity Performance Group, up to $12,000. A couple of weeks ago, Synchronicity met that number and received Howard’s match. “It literally made our quarter,” Managing Director Amy Wratchford told me at their Sept. 23 donor appreciation party at the Bill Lowe Gallery.

At the event, I had the chance to speak with Howard and his wife Lane Carlock, a frequent Synchronicity actress, and I thanked him for his generosity. “I was trying to think of what to do to help,” he told me. “Then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the cheapest guy in town gave money?'” Wratchford said that one check came in from a donor with the message, “Tell Clark I watch my pennies, too.”

At the party, Synchronicity actors performed short previews of upcoming shows and projects, such as the musical Bunnicula, which is playing at the Woodruff Arts Center through Oct. 18, the documentary theater show Women + War (Feb. 19-March 2) and Playmaking for Girls, a community outreach program for at-risk girls in detention centers.