Transparency & Financials

At the beginning of 2020, we were a small walking parade with a budget of $90,000 a year. We had developed a strong following (the parade attracted around 15,000 folks that year). But we had no idea what was about to hit — COVID.

In the early days of COVID, we were inspired to create an effort called "Feed The Front Line." Our goal was to buy yummy food from local restaurants and have it delivered (by musicians) to ERs and ICUs in New Orleans — to "Feed" the "Front Line" healthcare heroes that were risking their lives treating patients with COVID. (New Orleans was one of the hardest hit cities in America.)

What we didn't expect was that this effort blew up. In six weeks, we raised $1 million and created the largest effort of its kind in America. After that, we kept coming up with other efforts to help NOLA.

In 2020 and 2021, at one of the hardest moments New Orleans had faced in years, the Krewe of Red Beans mobilized. In the first six weeks of COVID alone, we raised $1 million — directed entirely to our city's healthcare frontline workers, local restaurants keeping their staff fed, and musicians who had lost every gig overnight. By the end of 2021, that number had grown to nearly $3 million. The donations we raised went 100% into the community.

We had discovered what we were capable of. And we started to dream bigger.

3300 Royal Street — a former furniture warehouse in the Bywater — came onto our radar. The price: $2.4 million. We had no building fund, but we dreamed that maybe it was possible. After our COVID success, we thought it might be possible. We applied for a bank loan but were turned down. Most organizations would have stopped there.

We didn't. We went back to the owners of 3300 Royal. They had an idea.

The previous owners of 3300 Royal Street believed in what we were trying to do. Rather than simply selling to the highest bidder, they agreed to owner-finance approximately $1 million of the sale, essentially becoming our lender when no bank would. That generosity changed everything — and we're proud to say we paid them back in full. A separate private loan of $1.4 million served as the down payment, raised from individuals who shared our vision for what this space could become.

What we bought was, to put it plainly, a mess. The roof leaked. There was no plumbing. No air conditioning. The yard had been untouched for years. But we walked through those doors and saw exactly what it could be — a permanent home for the krewe, a cultural anchor for the neighborhood, a place where New Orleans could gather, create, and take care of its own.

That's Beanlandia. And it belongs to this community.

Immediately after our "Feed the Front Line" project, we created Feed The Second Line to support the culture bearers we admired — folks like Mr. Benny Jones of the Treme Brass Band, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, our grandmarshal, and so many others in our city. We began with an effort to buy and deliver groceries to culture bearers (this was during COVID and we didn't want them to catch the virus at the grocery store).

When Hurricane Ida struck New Orleans on August 29, 2021, we mobilized immediately. Our relief effort went out under the banner of Feed the Second Line — a sister organization we had created to focus specifically on direct community relief, rooted in the second line tradition and the neighborhoods it comes from.

Feed the Second Line was our intentional creation — built from the ground up with the goal of eventually becoming its own independent, community-led nonprofit. I ran it from its inception, with the explicit plan to find someone from within the community to hire, train, and hand the reins to.

There's an important detail worth explaining clearly: at the time of Hurricane Ida, the IRS had not yet officially approved Feed the Second Line's nonprofit status. That meant all donations for the Ida relief effort were received and processed under the Krewe of Red Beans nonprofit umbrella. The money went to Ida relief — every dollar — but it flowed through our books, which is reflected in our 990 filings. On our 990 from 2021, the spending for FTSL's hurricane response is listed under "hurricane" in addition to funds spent on Feed the Second Line's job-creation and safety-net spending.

On January 1, 2022, the two organizations officially separated (as was the plan from day 1). We transferred all funds that were intended for FTSL from the Krewe of Red Beans bank account to a new Feed The Second Line account — they had been approved by the IRS. Feed the Second Line became fully independent — with its own leadership, its own nonprofit status, and its own path forward. That was always the goal: not to grow our own organization, but to grow the community's capacity to take care of itself.

We're proud of that decision. Building something and then giving it away is one of the most meaningful things an organization can do.