Linda Rosanio: raising money for Susan G. Komen with Mama Nancy Catelli meatballs

As filed – without edits – for last Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

IF PHILANTHROPY ALWAYS HAD this much to do with meatballs, everyone would get involved.

Looking for a new way to raise money for Susan G. Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure, Linda Rosanio enlisted her mother “Mama” Nancy Catelli to sell her homemade meatball sandwiches in the cafeteria of the Star Group, a marketing and communications company in Center City.

“I don’t think she realized how many sandwiches she would have to make,” Rosanio, who is CEO of the company, said of her 82-year-old retired mother.

They sold better than 120 sandwiches on April 9. Combine that with some other treats sold by other staff members and the company raised more than $1,000 for the cause.

It should come as no surprise that the event revolved around good eats and became a family affair.

Rosanio, one of seven children, has plenty of both around.

“We grew up on great Italian food,” she said. Rosanio and her husband own the Catelli Restaurant in Voorhees, N.J., and her brothers are behind Catelli Brothers, a Collingswood, N.J. supplier of veal and lamb.

“My mother was the conduit for all of us,” she said.

Rosanio’s sister Lisa Fellman is a breast cancer survivor, so Susan G. Komen is a personal choice, too.

“This was a family thing,” Rosanio said. “At the least we kept my mother busy.”

It went so well, they might make it an annual fundraising, Rosanio said.

“Next year my mother might have to make 200 sandwiches.”

Photo courtesy of the Star Group. From left, Linda Rosanio, Nancy Catelli, Lisa Fellman, Karen Catelli, Maureen Moyer, and Michael Catelli. See other examples of my reporting here. See similar pieces for the Philadelphia Business Journal here.

I am currently traveling. This was forward-posted on May 6.