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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rockthevote7feb07,1,3370120.story?coll=la-headlines-business
THE NATION
Rock the Vote Is Stuck in a Hard Place
By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer
For more than a decade, the youth-and-civics group Rock the Vote has been the coolest kid on the political playground.
Founded in Los Angeles in 1990 with the goal of politically empowering the MTV generation, Rock the Vote quickly became a cause celebre among Democratic and entertainment power brokers. At rock concerts, on college campuses and with ads featuring a near-naked Madonna, the group helped register millions of young voters.
But as it moves into its 16th year, Rock the Vote itself is being rocked by crisis.
Saddled with about $700,000 in debt, the group has cut its staff from more than 20 people in 2004 to just two today. Its president, who left last summer amid disagreement about the organization's direction, has yet to be replaced. And last month, Rock the Vote was sued for the second time in just eight months.
Fred Goldring, a music attorney and chairman of Rock the Vote's board, says dwindling donations are to blame.
"We're like the popular kid who never gets asked out because everyone thinks he already has a date," said Goldring, who presides over a board of more than 20 people, including MTV President Judy McGrath, Recording Industry Assn. of America general manager Joel Flatow and, until recently, Viacom Chief Executive Tom Freston. "Everyone thinks this group is rich because of our enormous visibility."
But lackluster fundraising is just one of Rock the Vote's problems. The organization has typically recruited young executives who embodied its mission. But according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the situation, Rock the Vote's staff did not have the business acumen to manage a large nonprofit.
Rock the Vote's former president says the group's priorities are too often buffeted by board members many of them top music industry executives who appear to care more about promoting artists than registering voters.
"Board members wanted to use Rock the Vote events to give their artists visibility," said Jehmu Greene, who left the organization after leading it for three years. "But sometimes it was way too expensive, or would send the wrong message, like having a rock band play when we're trying to register kids into hip-hop."
Rock the Vote was formed when Jeff Ayeroff, then co-chief of Virgin Records, hit upon the idea of using the marketing power of the music industry to register 18- to 25-year-old voters.
Music's biggest stars embraced the group, volunteering to film public service announcements that aired on MTV. Companies such as Motorola and DKNY became sponsors. Rock the Vote buses crossed the nation, signing up voters.
It's unclear what effect Rock the Vote had. In 2000, a decade after the group's founding, 9% fewer young people voted in the presidential election than had eight years before, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement.
However, in 2004 when U.S. Sen. John Kerry challenged President Bush youth voting surged by 11% to more than 20 million ballots. Rock the Vote registered 1.4 million voters that election cycle.
That recruiting cost a lot of money, and according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Rock the Vote often spent more than it had raised.
From 2000 to 2004, Rock the Vote's annual fundraising grew 69%. The group raised a total of $10.4 million in that period, IRS documents show. But in the same period, the organization spent more than $11.1 million and ended two of those years owing more than it had in the bank.
"They basically ran out of money," said Mark Weiner, president of Financial Innovations, a Rhode Island-based merchandising firm. Weiner says he does not expect that the group will pay the $50,000 it owes him.
Given the cyclical nature of campaigning, political organizations often overspend during presidential election years. Still, it is unusual for a group as established as Rock the Vote to live so close to the edge.
For instance, fundraising at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, fell 60% in 2003 to $1.4 million, but the group significantly scaled back spending and ended the year with $575,000.
By comparison, Rock the Vote's fundraising fell by a comparatively modest 22% in 2003, to $1.3 million, but the group spent $1.66 million, ending the year $241,000 in debt.
According to Ayeroff and other board members, the group's financial problems worsened last year, when it relocated its annual fundraising gala typically held during Grammy week in Los Angeles to Washington. The event drew lawmakers from both parties, but spiraling costs consumed most of the donated funds, Ayeroff said.
Just days after the gala, Rock the Vote was sued by fundraising firm ConklinScott, which the group owed $25,000. Both parties declined to discuss the pending suit.
Then last month, Los Angeles County sued Rock the Vote over a 2002 contract. The county had paid Rock the Vote $320,000 to develop an anti-discrimination public education campaign. But the organization mishandled the campaign and impeded its success, the county alleges. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, is pending.
Aside from Goldring and Ayeroff, Rock the Vote's board members the ultimate overseers of the group were loath to speak on the record, if at all. Because the board includes executives from Warner Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other music companies, those who agreed to speak requested anonymity, fearing they would damage business relationships. Several did not return repeated phone calls.
Some of those who spoke, however, attributed Rock the Vote's missteps to its staff, particularly its former president, the 33-year-old Greene.
Two current board members, one former board member and a vendor who worked closely with Greene at Rock the Vote said that she was a tireless booster whose personal story exemplified many of the group's values. Greene voted for the first time after Rock the Vote registered her at a concert.
But, those same people said, Greene failed to keep spending in check and is partially responsible for mishandling relationships with ConklinScott and Los Angeles County.
Goldring, the board chairman, generally described Rock the Vote's staff as "a bunch of really enthusiastic and passionate young people who have experience in the political world but don't have a super amount of business experience." Greene, he added, "did the best she could with the resources she had."
But after the 2004 election, the board and Greene mutually agreed to part ways.
Greene says she is proud of her tenure, during which the group enjoyed heightened visibility, fundraising growth and increased voter turnout.
Greene also said that Rock the Vote's identity and its funding were drawn largely from an entertainment industry in which the need to maintain business relationships can impede political organizing.
One source who requested anonymity because of an ongoing relationship with the board said Rock the Vote's board members sometimes asked that it participate in time-consuming corporate partnerships that registered few voters.
In one instance, this source said, Ayeroff, then a top executive at Warner Bros. Records, asked Rock the Vote to split the $120,000 cost of flying the Warner Music band Green Day home from an Asian tour. In return, the group would headline a Rock the Vote concert. The organization declined to pay.
Record executives say such arrangements are commonplace. But Ayeroff acknowledged that commercial motives sometimes compromised Rock the Vote's loftier goals.
"It's normal to have tensions between entertainment goals and political effectiveness," he said. "So, yeah, bad decisions were made. But we also bring relationships to the table that can make political involvement glamorous. Show me a policy wonk who can do that."
Will Rock the Vote survive?
Ayeroff, Goldring and others say yes, as long as they can jump-start fundraising. Board members are meeting with donors, and the group has brought in a successful television executive, Lawrence Lyttle, to fix what's broken for a salary of $1 a year.
But Lyttle says he has no fundraising experience. And the group's political director has announced he may take time off in the coming year. Unless more staff members are hired, Rock the Vote will be left with only one full-time employee: its webmaster.
