For DAP Health Director of Development: Individual Giving and Donor Relations Matt Swearman, music is the throughline in a life spent helping nonprofits fulfill their mission.
Words by Daniel Vaillancourt
“I was that kid who was always singing,” says DAP Health Director of Development: Individual Giving and Donor Relations Matt Swearman, 52. “Growing up, I would dance around the living room playing my mom’s Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, and Tammy Wynette country music albums on her Zenith console record player.”
This musical affinity would be a lasting throughline in Swearman’s life. Born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearby rural East Berlin, his family consisted of a homemaker mom, blue-collar laborer dad, younger sister, and maternal grandparents who ran a dairy farm “next door” (actually a quarter-mile down the dirt road). By fourth grade, he was learning the recorder, and played trombone throughout middle and high school. “As a kid, I wanted to be a teacher or a band director.”
A professional music career wasn’t quite in the cards, but teaching was. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Penn State University, Swearman was recruited as a substitute teacher for the Gettysburg School District while working as a server at an upscale restaurant in Hanover. After a few years of moonlighting, he abandoned the classroom to scale the ladder up into restaurant management, eventually testing hospitality software for a firm in Baltimore, Maryland.
Life in the Nation’s Capital
It was after moving to Washington, D.C., in 2001 to live the next chapter of his life that Swearman not only began working in public affairs and advocacy for a boutique firm, but was introduced via that position to fundraising (for clients like the National Park Foundation), and to the medical arena (thanks to his work with global pharmaceutical companies). These experiences hold Swearman in good stead at DAP Health. But there’s much more to his story before we get to that most recent chapter.
In Washington, Swearman also immersed himself back into music. One of his business mentors — who happened to be gay, partnered, and the artistic director of all-volunteer, 60-member, LGBTQ band D.C.’s Different Drummers — asked if he played an instrument. So Swearman picked his trombone back up for the first time in almost a decade.
“I was struggling to find community in D.C.,” he says, adding that the band was instantly welcoming. He’d found his chosen family. “I eventually joined the board and became board president because I felt this organization had so much more to give and so much more it could accomplish. I brought to the table my public affairs, PR, and fundraising background. It was an opportunity to give back to a community that gave me so much. It built my confidence. I felt I’d found where I belonged. We loved making music together.”
One of Swearman’s first experiences making music with the band was learning and performing an original orchestral piece titled “Quilt Panels (for my love, for my grief, for my letting go)” by composer Robert Maggio. The troupe had raised the necessary funds to pay for the commission as an homage to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and unveiled it alongside the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington at the University of Maryland in 2003. “It was an immense auditorium, a spectacular venue,” recalls Swearman, tearing up at the distant memory. “We got this wonderful write-up in the Washington Post, which just gushed about how amazing it was. It was truly a gut-wrenching experience. It’s hard to play your instrument when you’re crying.”
By the time of President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, Swearman was there marching with D.C.’s Different Drummers as part of the Lesbian and Gay Bands of America (now known as the Pride Bands Alliance), the first openly queer band to ever perform at such a presidential event.
Love and Los Angeles
In 2012, Swearman met the man who would become his life partner. Fourteen years his senior, Bill lived in Los Angeles, where he worked as an insurance broker. “I actually had my eye on Northern California,” says Swearman with half a smile, adding that after a year of long-distance romance, he packed up for L.A. Since his boss wouldn’t accept his resignation, Swearman was able to keep his D.C. job. Like Bill, he worked from home, enjoying regular trips to their second residence in Palm Springs.
The remote D.C. job simply couldn’t last. “I enjoyed it, but I longed for a more mission-driven environment,” says Swearman. “I wanted the work I do to feel critical, with lives sometimes literally on the line. I wanted to use my skills and talent in a way that was more meaningful for me. I had opportunities that not everyone has, and if I could help others access those opportunities, it could help them achieve their dreams and success on their terms.”
And so, he made the switch to L.A.’s Valley Village, a nonprofit that protects and advances the rights and interests of adults with developmental disabilities. “I did fundraising, marketing, event production, and internal and external communications,” Swearman says of the Renaissance Man aspect of the post, in which he felt entirely fulfilled until the death of his father earlier this year. “That was the linchpin for me to get out of L.A. I wanted to be closer to my mom, who lives in Beaumont.”
Palm Springs and DAP Health
With his heart set on working for an organization devoted to the arts, animals, or the LGBTQ+ community, Swearman was more than intrigued to find a position he felt he could be right for at DAP Health last July. Spoiler alert: He got the job.
“From the moment I walked in, I’ve felt like I belong here. That this is where I need to be,” he says. “In some ways it really reminds me of the band — that community that took care of one another. From the moment I stepped through DAP Health’s doors, I’ve felt so accepted here. Just like the first day I stepped into rehearsal in D.C. all those years ago. When you walk into a situation like that — after you’ve had other experiences not quite that good, that positive — sometimes you have to stop yourself from thinking, ‘Is this real?’ Here, it’s very real.”
As for his fundraising duties, it’s again D.C.’s Different Drummers that pivotally taught Swearman the ropes. “It started with me having a keen interest in the band’s sustainability,” he says. “Some people hate asking for money. I have no qualms about it. I enjoy it and I’m good at it. It brings me joy to understand what motivates people to support, and to help them achieve their philanthropic goals. I’m very social. I’ve always been just Matt. It’s something Bill has said about me from the get-go: ‘One of the most refreshing things about you is you’re just unabashedly you!’”
Brushing up against his three-month mark, Swearman understands there are still hurdles to vault over and challenges to meet at DAP Health. “I’m so excited by what it means for me to bring my skills and experience to elevate what we’re doing,” he says, looking toward major benefit gala The 31st Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards in March 2025, and Dining Out For Life this coming April, not to mention all of the other events that are planned for this season. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s really great work.”
To learn more about how you can help support DAP Health’s mission, please click here.
