In its 116-year historical past, The Explorers Membership has turn into synonymous with grand adventures and historic firsts, with an underpinning of scientific inquiry and infrequently a whiff of outdated cash. Membership members have been the primary atop Everest, the primary to succeed in the North and South Poles, and the primary to step foot on the moon. And shortly, the membership’s iconic Manhattan headquarters could also be renamed for the cable community that introduced us “Deadliest Catch” and “Bare and Afraid,” because the Discovery Channel has secured a naming rights deal.
The rights are a part of a five-year, $eight.5 million deal the Discovery Community has quietly negotiated with the membership’s president, former adventure-show host Richard Wiese. The settlement additionally provides the community workplace house within the membership’s Higher East Aspect mansion, unique sponsorships and filming rights, and the chance to monetize the membership’s intensive collections. Wiese didn’t reply to AJ’s request for remark. In a letter to members, he sought to downplay considerations concerning the deal. “It’s necessary so that you can know that now we have a group of consultants engaged on this sponsorship . . . all working to make a possible Discovery sponsorship a helpful relationship for every of our members,” Wiese within the January 15 letter.
“It could do immeasurable hurt to our Membership’s scientific requirements to grant Discovery—whose fame on this realm is lackluster at greatest —the unique proper to monetize content material from the Membership’s library and archives.”
“His message was basically, ‘We’ve obtained consultants engaged on it, you members don’t want to fret your fairly little heads.’ It was very condescending,” says West Hansen, Treasurer of the Texas Chapter of the Explorers Membership. Hansen and different members expressed concern concerning the phrases of the settlement, however the secrecy is what actually rankles. “Management advised chapter chairs to ‘maintain this underneath your hat,’” Hansen says. “If it’s such an amazing deal, why hasn’t the membership been notified of the main points from the phrase go?”
The New York Publish’s Melissa Klein first wrote concerning the deal in January, with this memorably snarky lede. “The venerable Explorers Membership — whose members have summited Mount Everest and gone to the moon, and revel in feasting on such delicacies as kangaroo testicles and sheep eyeballs — is being rocked by a proposal to make its Higher East Aspect headquarters an outpost of the Discovery Channel,” Klein wrote.
We will’t vouch for the menu, however Journey Journal has obtained a letter containing particulars of the association, and rumblings of rebel inside the membership.
“The present deal is an overreaching, one-sided proposal in favor of Discovery that may irreparably affect the Membership’s property, mission, fame, and legacy,” writes Julian Monroe Fisher III, a 20-year member who has accomplished six expeditions in Africa underneath the Explorers Membership flag. “It represents a elementary change in its nature as a charitable group targeted on scientific inquiry and preserving the intuition to discover: a thrust to the guts of our core values and the intangible spirit of place and fellowship that bind us.”
Explorer’s Membership HQ, quickly to be renamed for the Discovery Channel.
The letter is dated March 2 and arrived in members’ inboxes beneath the substantial letterhead of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, the 166-year-old New York agency that gave younger Franklin Delano Roosevelt his begin. It describes the monetary phrases of the settlement between the membership and Discovery, which embrace $1 million a 12 months in grant cash, $2 million to renovate the membership’s Manhattan headquarters, and $300,000 yearly for the appropriate so as to add the Discovery title to that iconic constructing. All advised, the deal can be value about $eight.5 over the preliminary five-year time period, with a provision to resume by mutual consent.
That cash comes with strings connected. Discovery would retain appreciable management over how the $1 million in grant cash for membership packages and expeditions can be used. In keeping with Fisher, the deal provides Discovery the appropriate to movie any expeditions funded by such a grant, and the unique proper to “exploit that footage in any means, on any platform, at Discovery’s sole discretion”—a clause that would upend the fragile economics of modern-day exploration. As Fisher places it, the plan “neglects the pursuits of a core constituency—those that monetize their expeditions by the manufacturing of movie and TV to be marketed to National Geographic, movie festivals, and theatrical distribution.”
The deal would additionally prohibit the membership from working with competing sponsors, such because the Historical past Channel and National Geographic, with out Discovery’s consent. That provision has the potential to chop off present and future income streams, and will harm the membership’s long-standing relationships with different organizations.
The $2 million for renovations will fund much-needed repairs to the membership’s headquarters, and entitle Discovery to house within the constructing—together with the workplace historically reserved for the membership president. “Discovery would have approval rights of the renovation plan and would oversee the mission, basically forcing the Membership to cede management of the long-lasting townhouse that’s its fundamental asset,” Fisher writes of the six-story Jacobean mansion inbuilt 1899 by an inheritor to the Singer stitching machine fortune.
The Explorers Membership acquired the constructing in 1965 with substantial backing from the globetrotting journalist Lowell Thomas, for whom it’s at the moment named. Members stuffed it with artifacts from their wide-ranging travels: The huge globe Thor Heyerdahl used to plan his Kon-Tiki expedition stands within the heart of the lobby; the sled Robert Peary mushed to the North Pole (or thereabouts) hangs in a stately eating room; and tons of of stuffed animals adorn the partitions, together with a lion shot by Theodore Roosevelt. Different notable members embrace Charles Lindbergh, Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay, and astronauts Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The Explorers Membership flag they carried to the moon is among the many membership’s many priceless artifacts.
The membership maintains an intensive analysis assortment, filled with maps, journals, pictures, and scientific paperwork out there nowhere else. The deal provides Discovery the rights to all of it, Fisher says. “It could do immeasurable hurt to our Membership’s scientific requirements to grant Discovery—whose fame on this realm is lackluster at greatest —the unique proper to monetize content material from the Membership’s library and archives.”
The deal could lead on the membership into unsure authorized terrain. “The characterization of the deal by the board member spearheading the transaction as a ‘partnership’ between the Membership and Discovery is telling: it exhibits that the Board has acquiesced to a deal that places Discovery’s enterprise pursuits on an equal footing with the Membership’s charitable mission,” Fisher writes. “Mischaracterizing Discovery’s funds as donations when they’re in truth funds made in alternate for the appropriate to take advantage of Membership property might additionally jeopardize the Membership’s tax-exempt standing.”
The legal professional who distributed the letter on his behalf, Pamela A. Mann, is chair of Carter Ledyard & Milburn’s tax-exempt organizations group. She suggested Fisher that the deal could also be so sweeping that it requires member approval underneath state regulation—it doesn’t matter what the membership bylaws say. “My understanding from my counsel is that New York regulation requires that such a serious transaction have to be authorized by a two-thirds vote of the Members and by the New York Legal professional Common or a Justice of the Supreme Court docket of New York County and can’t be authorized by the Board of Administrators alone,” Fisher writes.
In his letter, Fisher asks members to offer him their voting proxy for the membership’s March 22 Annual Assembly, which might enable him to “take steps to lift points concerning the Discovery deal.” If Wiese and his allies gavel down his protests, Fisher will try and name a particular member assembly to handle the Discovery deal. Underneath the membership’s bylaws, a written demand by 10 % of voting members would set off such a gathering, “at which the members could vote on whether or not to approve the proposed settlement between The Explorers Membership and Discovery Communications and to take such associated actions as could also be applicable.”
It’s unclear what number of proxies Fisher has obtained, or whether or not he’ll attain the 10 % threshold. In a memo accompanying the letter, Mann said that the letter was despatched to all membership members, however AJ spoke with some members who had not obtained it instantly. “I obtained a replica from one other member, and that member obtained it from any individual else,” Hansen says. Different members inform AJ they obtained it by way of e-mail. Mann didn’t reply to a request for remark, and a name with Fisher ended shortly after he introduced that he was calling “from the jungles of Belize.”
After the road went lifeless, one thought lingered from his letter: “Discovery’s slogan is ‘The World is Ours,’” he wrote. “If this deal is allowed to proceed, that world will embrace The Explorers Membership.”
I’m a Fellow of The Explorers Membership since 2000 and have carried the Membership flag on six
expeditions to Africa. I’m at the moment conducting exploration in Belize.
I write with a way of urgency to tell you of an imminent risk that may tarnish the Membership’s extraordinary historic legacy, name into query its fame as dedicated to the dedication of scientific subject analysis and exploration, and supply a frontal assault on two of our Most worthy property — the Lowell Thomas Constructing and the bond of fellowship, collegiality, and exploration which is our unifying DNA. We should act collectively to protect our group and its wealthy legacy or will probably be too late!
As it’s possible you’ll remember, the Board of Administrators of the Membership is on the cusp of coming into or has entered right into a contractual association with Discovery Communications. See New York Publish article of January 5, 2020 and the biographical info for potential administrators distributed not too long ago. The Members and, as I perceive it, the chapter chairs and Honorary Administrators, have been supplied little, if any, details about the proposed transaction and have been led to imagine that it’s a easy and profitable sponsorship association.
Biographical info for a candidate for Director, nevertheless, referred to the deal as a “partnership” with Discovery. Primarily based on info I’ve obtained, this can be a much more correct characterization. The deal as at the moment written would give Discovery unprecedented management over the Membership and its property—together with its web site, priceless Analysis Collections, model title and mental property, and even its iconic headquarters. The transaction basically quantities to full-scale acquisition of the Membership by Discovery. Members should take motion to stop this deal from shifting ahead. Be part of me in demanding that the Board stop all additional consideration of the deal till it absolutely discloses all phrases to the Members.
We have to think about the total affect of the deal, in addition to think about all different choices after which vote on whether or not or not the Discovery partnership is within the Membership’s greatest pursuits. The next are simply among the actually disconcerting phrases of the proposed transaction:
1. Discovery to Purchase Naming Rights of Membership Headquarters. For a mere $300,000 per 12 months, the Discovery deal would enable Discovery to place its title on the Membership’s headquarters. The constructing and its historical past are an iconic illustration of the Membership. It’s named in honor of Lowell Thomas, the devoted Membership member whose generosity helped make the constructing buy potential. What’s to cease this rebranding from extending to different Membership occasions such because the annual Lowell Thomas dinner or Lowell Thomas Awards? This title change will dilute the Membership’s heritage and considerably undermine its independence and permitting Discovery to place its title on the constructing is a proper value thousands and thousands of dollars particularly in New York Metropolis. Such a major shift requires the enter of the Members.
2. Discovery Will Management Renovation of Membership Headquarters. Discovery initially supplied to accumulate the Lowell Thomas Constructing. Discovery is now mentioned to offer $2 million to cowl the price of repairs to the Membership’s headquarters over the course of 1 12 months. Nevertheless, these funds would come at an amazing value to the Membership: Discovery would have approval rights of the renovation plan and would oversee the mission, basically forcing the Membership to cede management of the long-lasting townhouse that’s its fundamental asset. Discovery proposes to have a consultant appointed to the Home Committee. This time period poses the actual danger that Discovery will mildew their plans for the constructing’s renovation to serve Discovery’s wants slightly than the Membership’s wants. What’s extra, the deal would reserve vital workplace house (together with the workplace historically utilized by the Membership president) for unique use by Discovery executives. Discovery executives (and their visitors!) would even have unfettered entry to the Membership’s Members-only areas. The problem of entry by non-members to this space has already been known as into query on different events. Having a “Members Solely” bodily assembly place for us and our visitors fulfils a core mission of our founders and is especially necessary because the Membership’s bodily capability is strained by rental and public occasions. After I come from Belize, I need to know that the folks I’m assembly are fellow members who share my spirit of exploration and discovery. For the previous fifty-five years, explorers have met on the Lowell Thomas constructing to debate, plan and share their tales about their expeditions. The Discovery deal imperils this important a part of our heritage.
The funds wanted for repairs can completely be well timed raised from the Members, however the Board has rejected a proposal from former presidents to pursue that various and has didn’t pursue different choices. The Board has allowed the constructing to lapse into disrepair and is now anxious for the Discovery deal to be the fast repair, whatever the long-term affect on the Membership.
three. Discovery Will Spearhead a Re-Design the Membership Web site. Underneath the deal as at the moment written, Discovery could have the appropriate to revamp the Membership’s web site, additional diluting the Membership’s model and undermining its unbiased id. Little doubt, Discovery is imagining thousands and thousands of visits to the Membership web site and an enormous quantity of latest member purposes, which might fully change the character of the Membership. Little if any thought seems to have been given to defending Members’ personal info that’s saved or entered on the location.
four. Discovery Will Exploit Expedition Footage. Discovery would offer $1 million per 12 months in “grant” funds to the Membership, however the Membership will even have little discretion or management over how such “grants” are used. As an alternative, Discovery would have joint enter in deciding on grant recipients and approval rights over any fund disbursements. Discovery would have the appropriate to movie any expeditions funded by a grant, in addition to unique rights to take advantage of the footage in any means, on any platform, in Discovery’s sole discretion.
As I’m positive you recognize, filming in distant components of the world could be very intrusive and fully adjustments the character of exploration; in some instances, it could very properly be opposite to the Membership’s excellent of conservation and preservation. As well as, the standard of programing and fame of Discovery are frankly not on par with these of the Membership. Discovery can be identified for slicing prices on unscripted productions. See: https://selection.com/2019/biz/information/discoveryproducers-series-deals-payment-schedule- 1203253772/. The administration of this “grant” program will confer a substantial profit on Discovery and is unlikely to meaningfully advance the mission of the Membership. It additionally neglects the pursuits of a core constituency—those that monetize their expeditions by the manufacturing of movie and TV to be marketed to National Geographic, movie festivals and theatrical distribution.
5. Discovery Will Have Rights to Analysis Collections. Discovery would have limitless entry to the Membership’s library and archives and can be granted sure rights to make use of materials from the gathering in its programming and in any other case. The Membership’s Analysis Collections are extensively thought to be a trusted, scholarly useful resource for these and engaged in exploration and scientific endeavors. It could do immeasurable hurt to our Membership’s scientific requirements to grant Discovery—whose fame on this realm is lackluster at greatest —the unique proper to monetize content material from the Membership’s library and archives. The Members should have a chance to vote on whether or not an settlement containing this time period is in one of the best pursuits of the Membership.
6. Membership is PROHIBITED from Working with Competing Sponsors. Underneath the proposed phrases of the Discovery deal, the Membership can be prohibited from working with different sponsors — together with the Historical past Channel and National Geographic—with out Discovery’s consent. This could clearly affect the Membership’s capacity to develop new sponsorships and affiliation and probably destroy different sponsorships and long-term relationships with company and different companions.
The characterization of the deal by the board member spearheading the transaction
as a “partnership” between the Membership and Discovery is telling: it exhibits that the Board has acquiesced to a deal that places Discovery’s enterprise pursuits on an equal footing with the Membership’s charitable mission. Mischaracterizing Discovery’s funds as donations when they’re in truth funds made in alternate for the appropriate to take advantage of Membership property might additionally jeopardize the Membership’s tax-exempt standing. The time period of the deal is 5 years with one other 5 years potential upon mutual consent; throughout that point the Membership might successfully turn into a subsidiary of a for-profit media firm underneath that firm’s thumb.
The present deal is an overreaching, one-sided proposal in favor of Discovery that may irreparably affect the Membership’s property, mission, fame and legacy. It represents a elementary change in its nature as a charitable group targeted on scientific inquiry and preserving the intuition to discover: a thrust to the guts of our core values and the intangible spirit of place and fellowship that bind us. To my understanding, the Board has sought no significant authorized evaluate of the deal’s phrases, nor has it carried out any due diligence to find out if a extra advantageous deal may very well be obtained.
I firmly imagine that the Discovery transaction must be stopped till the Members have a real understanding of its phrases and a chance to vote on them. This deal quantities to the switch of management of a considerable portion of the Membership’s property to Discovery Communications.
My understanding from my counsel is that New York regulation requires that such a serious transaction have to be authorized by a two-thirds vote of the Members and by the New York Legal professional Common or a Justice of the Supreme Court docket of New York County and can’t be authorized by the Board of Administrators alone.
Discovery’s slogan is “The World is Ours.” If this deal is allowed to proceed, that world will embrace The Explorers Membership. The Membership and its legacy have been constructed over the course of 115 years as the results of the enter, expertise and accomplishments of 1000’s of members; it shouldn’t be the purview of some Board members to destroy it. I ask that you simply be a part of me in demanding that the Members be given the chance to debate, think about and vote on whether or not to approve the Discovery deal is honest and affordable and within the Membership’s greatest pursuits, both on the upcoming annual assembly (by signing the enclosed proxy) or at a particular assembly dedicated to this matter (by signing the enclosed demand for Particular Member Assembly)’ and returning them to Pamela on the following e-mail handle:
You might have seen some latest tales within the New York media a few sponsorship alternative with Discovery, and we acknowledge these tales have supplied some inaccurate or misrepresented info. By nature, Explorers Membership members are targeted on scientific research and depend on fact-based documentation, so I absolutely perceive that rumors amplified by these media tales might be regarding.
It’s necessary so that you can know that now we have a group of consultants engaged on this sponsorship. Our Membership’s most excellent leaders together with members of our Board, our Membership’s attorneys (together with professional outdoors attorneys), media and tv specialists, communication professionals and tax consultants – all working to make a possible Discovery sponsorship a helpful relationship for every of our members. From our perspective, this group’s consideration to element, dedication to the Membership’s mission, imaginative and prescient, and values, has been indispensable to Membership stewardship.
On the root of any of our present sponsorships is our capacity to offer expedition funding for our members, development of our Membership’s mission and assist for youth actions and grants. This has all the time been on the forefront of what we do, and the epicenter of any Membership sponsorship. That being mentioned, as with all of our present company sponsors, at no time would we ever compromise our mission, our imaginative and prescient, and the values we maintain as a Membership.
Opposite to the rumors – we’re not promoting the Membership or renaming our group. A Discovery sponsorship shouldn’t be not like our present company sponsorships, however with one exception – now we have negotiated the funds crucial for the a lot wanted repairs to our historic headquarters. In return, Discovery could have entry to solely two workplaces inside the Membership which have all the time been earmarked as rental workplaces. We count on to get again to you shortly with extra particulars which can considerably profit our mission and our members.
