Neil Young Has a Cow
Moreover, he wrote, “The 2003 concert earned $1,013,087 through sale of items like tickets, T-shirts and programs,” yet after expenses “generated only $159,254 of net income.” Imagine reading that as you set off to Tinley Park to spend a fortune you’ve justified on the grounds that every dime will land in the pocket of a needy corn grower or dairyman. Wouldn’t you be honked?
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Young couldn’t say the Tribune had its numbers wrong, which is why Kirk is sticking by the story. “Our story on Farm Aid focused specifically on the amount of grant money allocated to organizations that help farmers,” he e-mailed me, “and how much income, directly, the concert creates. Because the information is public, grant allocation is one concrete way to measure an organization’s effectiveness.”
Melissa Morriss-Olson, director of the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management at North Park University, was quoted by George, and she thinks he’s onto something. “Farm Aid could have done a better job of communicating what they’re all about,” she says, and she’s pleased to see that it responded to the story by posting a lot more facts and figures on its website. Its entire 2004 tax return can now be found there, complete with attachments that list every organization to which it gave a penny.
As for the $747,880, he said, “There is no difference between these funds and those raised at other parts of the year.” The Tribune barely acknowledged the connection with the concert. It simply wrote that “last year, Farm Aid’s revenue of approximately $1.4 million came from three basic categories: the concert, financial gifts or donations, and savings and investments. Most of the revenue associated with the concert came from direct donations rather than ticket sales.”
I also called NYU’s Naomi Levine. She told me she didn’t remember talking to the Tribune and knew nothing about Farm Aid, wasn’t sure she’d ever heard of it. You did speak to the Tribune, I told her, and they reported you said 28 percent was too small a cut of a nonprofit’s revenues for donations. What about 75 percent of its expenses going to grants and programs?
The only question—and it wasn’t much of one—was how the papers would inflect these sentiments. Would they write that it hurts like hell? That sometimes things change for the worse? That obtuse out-of-town owners have been known to make changes for reasons that are really stupid?
