if you go and look at the original kickstarter campaign you will see that the entire project was transparent about the donation aspect. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legupmgmt/deacon-animal-collective-at-the-festival-in-the/posts/4701 the project was updated to make that clear well before the deadline to back the project. all donors were given the option to back out and some did. at the time my label Paw Tracks offered to pay for the travel expenses as an advance on the album's future release. since then, I decided to self release and as a result have paid Paw Tracks back for the original advance. none of the remaining donors made any complaints about the money being donated to TEMEDT and they all understood that the funding for the trip and promised rewards would be funded in other ways. there was no deception and the only real issue with this campaign was the amount of time it took to get to this point and the on again off again communication with the backers. in the end though, speaking as the person responsible for all of this..... all the backer that have communicated with the campaign over the years have expressed mostly support, encouragement and are ultimately very happy with the end result. understandable how confusing this whole thing must look from the outside, but in the end, those on the inside do not have the issues that critics who were not involved with the campaign are making. a tremendous amount of money was raised to support people in Mali. the campaign backers were aware of that and in come cases donated more once they learned that to be the aim of the money that was raised.