Maggie’s Farm
I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before that I’d been mixing sound some nights at the venerable folk club Passim (formerly Club 47), here in Cambridge MA where I live. That arrangement came to an end last month, just about 59 years to the day since Dylan went electric.
There was lots to enjoy about my sound gig at Passim, especially the young musicians I met on the staff and the many interesting touring artists I got to work with - those whose music I already knew, like Sam Amidon, Jake Xerxes Fussell, and the venerable Jim Kweskin; and those whose music I discovered through the job, like James Keeleghan, Abigail Lapell, Yann Falquet… the list goes on.
One of the reasons I started working at Passim was to try and understand better how a small live music venue (110 capacity) can survive in the intense real estate market of greater Boston, where we’ve lost so many others. Recently there was an announcement that one of those shuttered clubs, Great Scott (240 capacity), will be making a comeback in 2026 or thereabouts thanks to an ambitious mixed-use real estate development. The Middle East in Cambridge, site of many of my own gigs over the years, is similarly scheduled for demolition and eventual rebirth as part of a large new real estate development. Is that what it takes to have a small venue these days in Boston on commercial terms?
Passim, by contrast, is nonprofit so it can supplement its budget with grants and donations rather than real estate deals. I’ve played many nonprofit venues but primarily in Europe, where government grants are more common for music and the arts. I was curious to learn more about how that functions here.
What I learned is that from the artists’ point of view, a nonprofit venue can function very well indeed. Passim is generous with the percentage of ticket sales it gives to performers because that is central to its mission. As part of my job I settled with artists at the end of the night, and I was often surprised how big a check I was handing over for a show in such a small room. Score one for the grant-supported venue.
But from the workers’ point of view, a nonprofit is not nearly so generous. This isn’t peculiar to Passim - I understand that jobs at nonprofits generally pay less than at their commercial counterparts. Still - and here comes my version of going electric - given the opportunity/invitation, I raised this as a problem with management and the board. Why is staff being paid 57 cents to the dollar for the same work elsewhere in town, I wanted to know.
I got answers, to their credit, and the answers were based on the mission of the organization - the same mission that brings performers more than they might receive elsewhere. Except in the case of staff, it means receiving less than elsewhere because the organization can’t see raising its overhead while still fulfilling its mission of supporting artists.
Nearly the entire staff are also musicians, I pointed out. Shouldn’t it be part of the mission to pay them fairly, too?
Unfortunately, it was explained to me, there aren’t grants for paying staff. In fact there aren’t grants available for hardly any operational expenses. Money can be raised to pay artists; to pay for marketing, development, or for special programs devoted to important issues like diversity. However, none of that supplemental income from the nonprofit status of the club typically goes to staff.
This means staff at a nonprofit is paid from what is, essentially, a profit-and-loss calculation same as at any commercial enterprise. Which might be ok, except commercial venues pay their staff more. That is regrettable, it was agreed by all. But the fact is, a nonprofit will always draw people willing to take the same job for less, because they want to be part of the mission.
Does that mean – and here I knew I was not only plugged in but cranking the volume – that to balance its budget a nonprofit depends on discounted labor? That the organization is essentially underwritten by its own staff?
I didn’t really get an answer to that. But out of the corner of my eye, I might have glimpsed the ghost of Pete Seeger wielding an axe.
Listening to: Žaltys by Raphael Rogiński
Cooking: Succotash
Thank you for touching on this as it pertains to the arts. The nonprofit sector in general has a HUGE staff burnout issue for exactly this reason.
There were several high-profile exposés in the 1990s & early 2000s about nonprofit executives who were making truly outrageous salaries. Unfortunately, the response has been that many nonprofits now advertise that 100% of donor money goes to the mission.
But few large donors understand that operating expenses are a huge part of making sure the mundane parts of that mission actually function and, as you said, very few grants are available to fund that side of things. The result is a skeleton crew that lives on government assistance in order to do “meaningful” work, working inhumane hours in order to keep the mission alive. It’s an impossible situation.
I think using radical fiscal transparency *specifically* in marketing materials would go a long way toward helping donors understand how nonprofits function and gaining public trust and support for all aspects of a nonprofit’s budget.
This is true even of some for-profit companies (usually small enigmatic ones) where the staff essentially take a lower pay rate in exchange to working on something they (at least feel like they) believe in. (Sigh. Actually that's true of most publishing companies. I guess what I am saying is you have really hit on something here.)