After the 1981 festival, Michael Eavis donated £20,000 of its profit to CND.
The 1981 edition was the first Glastonbury festival to make a profit. Eavis donated £20,000 of that profit to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the organisation working with the festival that year. The donation reflected the event’s political purpose as well as its growing ability to raise money through music and cultural programming.
The festival, held from 19 to 21 June 1981, attracted 18,000 paying attendees at £8 per ticket. Its programme included Hawkwind, New Order, Taj Mahal, Ginger Baker, Roy Harper and John Cooper Clarke, while the newly rebuilt Pyramid Stage used telegraph poles and metal sheeting. Later Glastonbury profits supported several charities, including Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid. Those later beneficiaries can make the donation easy to misremember, but the specific 1981 gift was £20,000 and went to CND.