World

NetAid A Flop? Only $1 Million

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 17, 1999 / 7:56 AM EST / CBS

Last month's NetAid online concert raised only about $1 million, reports The Washington Post

Three overlapping concerts with performers such as Bono, Puff Daddy and David Bowie were heard by more than a billion people worldwide on radio and television, and received more than 2.3 billion hits on the World Wide Web. It was an ambitious United Nations-sponsored program to raise money and find volunteers to help eradicate Third World misery

Yet since then, only 6,000 people have signed up as volunteers for such causes as resettling refugees in Kosovo and hunger relief in the Sudan, reports the paper.

The $1 million figure doesn't count pledges received before the event of $10 million from Cisco Systems, the computer equipment company that initiated and underwrote much of the event, and $1 million from another sponsor, KPMG, a consulting firm.

The weeks of media buildup for the NetAid project included endorsements from President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former South African president Nelson Mandela, as well as actors Michael Douglas and Meryl Streep.

Other philanthropic events with large numbers of pop musicians have been more successful: The single and video for We Are The World, in 1985, raised more than $64 million for hunger, and 1985's Live Aid raised another $120 million. Both were organized by promoter Ken Kragen, who also coordinated NetAid.

The United Naitons official who manages the NetAid Web site, Robert Piper, told The Post he was "more than satisfied" with the response, saying the main purpose was to pick up volunteers, not money.

"We've been [complaining] for years about the need for people in the developed world to participate [in aid programs], but they never had the tools to participate," said Piper. "With the Internet, people can now get emotionally and intellectually involved."

Kragen acknowledged NetAid was less than a complete success.

"Did it accomplish everything we set out to do? Would we have done things differently if we could do it over again? Absolutely." he said.

The New Jersey concert filled less than half of Giants Stadium, despite artists Sting, Puff Daddy and Sheryl Crow, and lost money.

So did the Geneva, Switzerland, concert, because tickets were disributed free to U.N. workers and guests of Cisco Systems. Only the sold-out concert at Wembley Stadium, headlined by Robbie Willaims, the Eurythmics and Bowie, was profitable.

Kragen cited "compassion fatigue."

"In '85, people were seeing pictures [of starving Africans] on the news for the first time," he said. "Now, we're seeing a disaster a week, whether it's the earthquake in Turkey, or East Timor or the plane crash in Mexico.

"People have gotten used to it, unfortunately."