Hi Bill,

With all due respect, please allow me to correct your statement that Mystic is equal to Falcon Ridge and therefore our event is not a legitimate fundraiser. To the best of my knowledge, the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival is a "for profit" business venture. Therefore a Falcon Ridge preview, many of which were held last year, could not be considered a benefit.

Mystic, on the other hand, is NOT a private venture as you state in your post. Mystic Seaport Museum is a non-profit organization and is so recognized by the IRS as it holds a 501-C-3 certificate issued by the government to prove it. You can check it out yourself on the IRS website. The "Friends Of The Festival" is a division of Mystic Seaport just like your radio station WFDU is a division of Farliegh Dickinson University.

This year, due to the economy, Mystic Seaport would not have been able to put on the 30th annual festival unless $10,000 was raised by the Friends Of The Festival. Therefore, folks like Charlie Baum in Washington DC, myself in Rockland County, and Marc Bernier up in Connecticut, undertook to raise this money to keep the Sea Music Festival alive. It is almost exactly the same situation as you have with WFDU. Your fundraising appeals over the air constantly reminded us listeners that with out our support, the radio station might decide to replace "Traditions" with a more popular genre such as your rivals in the Bronx (I will not mention the station), have done.

Therefore, what you and Ron have done this past weekend at the Hurdy Gurdy, and what we are doing April 19th at The Borderline are BOTH considered legitimate benefits. In both cases the musicians are donating their services and Mystic Seaport (in your case Farliegh Dickinson U.), are reaping the full benefit of the suggested donations. If you read my flyer carefully (it was e-mailed to you and Ron) you will see that it says suggested donation and not admission fee just like my regular house concerts do. The truth of the matter is that if someone can not afford the suggested donation they are never turned away and are let in for whatever they are willing to donate, no matter how small.

Even the regular (non-benefit) Borderline concerts that we run are never money makers because unlike other house concerts, we post guarantees to our performers. In fact I can truly say that I personally loose between $100 and $300 on each concert that we run.
This I because I feel that it is important to keep this kind of music alive and support the artists that perform it. You know Bill that I live in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood where my bell is rung at least 5 times a week by people with their hands out for worthy charities as well as my mail box being full of like minded solicitations. I try to give everybody what I could and if some of these local folks knew what I was expending on Folk Music they would literally run me out of the neighborhood.

To try to characterize me as a "schnorer", however indirectly, because I do not publicly contribute to WFDU is I believe going a little too far and is not in keeping with the spirit of this thread.