Tricycle Gets Ugly

www.zenunbound.com




by Tom Armstrong, Posted 4/8/04
Large increases in fundraising and administration expenses have caused a big jump in losses for the parent corporation of Tricycle Magazine, according to financial information just released by the New York-based non-profit organization.

Last year, Zen Unbound reported that the parent corporation, Buddhist Ray, was in a debt spiral and that continued publication of the magazine was imperiled. This year, we have to believe that the end for Tricycle magazine is very near and that the organization is throwing in the towel, making ready to abandon its creditors -- comprised mainly of its tens of thousands of subscribers -- to the loses it has accumulated in the last five years due to poor management decisions. Currently, Buddhist Ray has an astronomical debt-asset ratio of 2.51 -- that is, its debts are more than two-and-a-half times its assets.

Despite a fifth consecutive year of losses, Tricycle reported increases in pay to its two most-senior employees, exceeding 33% for each. Even with the big pay jump, their salaries are not much more than that of a mid-career policeman; still, it appears that the organization is becoming less restrained and must have abandoned any hope of finding its way back to the sounder financial footing of 1997.

For a period of less than six months last year, Tricycle employed Stephen Donato, a man with a background of successful fundraising, as Executive Director

Buddhist Ray, Inc.
As of	Debt-Asset Ratio
9/30/97	0.64 to 1
9/30/98	0.67 to 1
9/30/99	0.85 to 1
9/30/00	1.25 to 1
9/30/01	1.87 to 1
9/30/02	2.08 to 1
9/30/03	2.51 to 1

of the Board for the parent corporation. While an improved record at fundraising was the best news of its 2002 report, in its year ended September 30, 2003, with Donato's help, Buddhist Ray's expenses raising money exceeded acceptable levels. According to the view of the American Institute of Philanthropy, "... $35 or less to raise $100 is reasonable for most charities." Tricycle spent nearly $143,000 raising $372,150 – or, $38.40 for each $100 raised. In 2002, Tricycle spent nearly $60,000 less to raise a similar amount: $83,485 raising $388,281, or $21.50 for each $100 raised.

Tricycle should have been keeping an especially sharp eye on its fundraising expenses last year, in light of Zen Unbound's report last year that in the past, for each year during a three-year period, they actually spent more on their effort to raise money than what they brought in. [See Buddhist Ray's Record of Irresponsible Fundraising.]

While Tricycle has now raised its subscription rate, and has raised the single-copy price by a dollar, losses in the quantity of magazine sales and in advertising revenue are sure to ensue. As well, the publication is not as good as it has been in the past: There is more reliance on book excerpts, old interviews and the recycling of old material. Tricycle is also not keeping up with competing Buddhist magazine on the news rack, many of which are in full color and consistently offer intriguing cover stories.

And there is this: An absurd article in its recent winter, 2003-2004, issue charged Vipassana and the Zen and Tibetan sects with racism, this paragraph being most central:

When African Americans step into a Buddhist meditation center, that invisible culture is the first thing they see. They may be strong enough to participate in it without losing heart, or their racial identity, or both. Or they may be so strongly motivated to practice in that particular tradition that it just doesn't matter. In any event, they won't be kicked out for being black, because there are few outright bigots in the white Buddhist world. But the deeper racism, the passive racism committed to all the mannered nuances of its own culture – that is felt right away. No wonder most African Americans never make it through the door. There's no sign saying they can't come it. There doesn't have to be.

In his "Editor's View," Tricycle's James Shaheen praised the article for offering challenging answers to sanghas that are largely white.

One can only hope for a big drop in its circulation and advertising after an article so insensitive and non-insightful that it sees Zen, Vipassana and Vajrayana as being passively racist. It's nutty and irresponsible to blast away with a venal charge such as this without a scintilla of evidence. Zen Unbound has called its series of articles about Tricyle "Asleep at the Wheel." Today, our title seems particularly well chosen.

I almost want to say that it is too bad longtime editor-in-chief Helen Tworkov is no longer in that position at Tricycle. She showed some common sense with regard to Western Buddhism's racial issue. In a "Religion & Ethics" newsweekly conversation, dated July 6, 2001, she said of American Buddhism, "There's definately some divides, and I think we could call it a racial divide. I do not think it's a racist divide." And, she said of Buddhist groups, "There's a lot of concern about bringing [them] together. But frankly my own view is it's always coming from a place of being politically correct, and there's not necessarily a good reason for it. There's no reason why people should not be developing their own kinds of practice and their own forms of practice and working according to their own needs." At ZU, we would like groups brought together, but we agree with Tworkov that the animated feelings out there, [with the Tricycle piece being a classic example], come from the bad place of wanting to be rigidly politically correct.

The accumulation of blunders and problems seem to be bringing Tricycle magazine to the end of its run. Its death may be little mourned.

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