Just show me the money!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

National Alliance for Animals
president Peter Gerard, formerly known
as Peter Linck, on May 29 released long
awaited audited financial statements pertaining
to the June 1996 World Animal
Awareness Week––but they scarcely
answered all the big questions, including
why the cost of the events ran triple
Gerard’s estimate of only two months
earlier, while the crowd of 3,000 was
97,000 fewer than his promotional literature
promised.
Gerard told the April 1996
Summit for the Animals that he expected
World Week to cost $218,000 plus
unspecified amounts for advertising that
he later declared to be $13,320. The
World Week program thanked sponsors
for cash gifts of at least $754,925, and
according to Gerard’s crowd count, ticket
sales for World Week events should
have raised $213,600, for estimated total
receipts of upward of $950,000.

Gerard’s preliminary accounting
statement of September 3, 1996,
however, acknowledged cash contributions
of only $376,157, with ticket
receipts of $205,419, against expenses
of $674,339. Payroll costs, estimated at
$69,000 in April, came in at $160,641.
The audited financial statements
cite mostly similar figures––but
show World Week expenses of only
$626,577, helped by a reduction of
$24,000 in payroll, and ticket receipts of
$228,252, $23,000 more than previously
claimed, for a net profit of $11,658.
Gerard has ascribed the discrepancy
of almost $400,000 between
actual receipts and the amounts that
donors were thanked for to his having
accepted significant contributions in
kind, but has provided no accounting of
any in-kind receipts.
How much Gerard paid himself
was also not disclosed, but the
National Alliance filing of IRS Form 990
for the preceding fiscal year showed his
1995 salary as $39,639, while his wife,
Kathy Gerard, drew $26,175.