We are at an inflection point as a nonprofit. On the one hand, global interest is at an all-time high, and the world needs Burning Man more than ever. On the other hand, we are well past the point where ticket revenues from Black Rock City are able to support our year-round cultural work.
A call for your support, this post shares more about our finances, and builds on my prior communications about what’s happening in the world with Burning Man (8/18) and our current financial situation (10/3). The financial information I reference throughout this post is available in full detail here. As I previously shared, the big revenue shortfall causing today’s cash crunch is primarily from 2024 Black Rock City higher-priced tickets not selling as planned. This $5.7M shortfall, combined with a $3M dip in receipts from main-sale tickets and vehicle passes, means that our year-end charitable donation target has essentially doubled to nearly $20M. This needs to happen before 2025 ticket sales and our annual revenue cycle begins in January.
We are working behind the scenes to raise money from dedicated major donors, but this moment will work better if we look to the long term and engage everyone. Translation: We need your help to keep Burning Man accessible for the next generation! Gifting is a core value to our culture, and we need your support now and into the future. Your steadfast generosity and ongoing donations are needed to help secure the long-term of Burning Man.
Before we get into where we are going, it is important to review how we arrived at this moment.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Core to Burning Man is our practice of the 10 Principles, which enable the conditions for authentic moments of awe and joy. That being said, to operate in alignment with the 10 Principles, including without corporate sponsorship or merchandise revenue (while other events and festivals rely on it for nearly 25-30% of their revenue), generous philanthropy is required to grow and keep Burning Man economically accessible.
Many are surprised to learn that ticket revenue alone does not fund all that Burning Man Project does to bring Burning Man to the world, including the production of Black Rock City, and has not for years. Specific to BRC, in 2023, the cost to produce the event was an estimated $749 per participant while the main sale ticket price was $575 per ticket. Further, since 2014, the Black Rock City production cost per participant has been greater than the main sale ticket price and the event has had to be subsidized.
This gap is why we have sold higher-priced Black Rock City tickets. A concept we talked about back in 2016, these higher-priced tickets not only kept main sale tickets reasonably priced, they also enabled us to provide lower-priced tickets to participants with financial need. And through 2023 the higher-priced tier helped to subsidize some, but not all of the cost increases.
Over the years, we also increased our annual goal for our contributed donations to address this gap and support the global mission. The community rose to the occasion, helping us raise $2M in 2019 up to $8M in 2023. With this increased philanthropic support, we felt confident in our financial outlook despite increased costs following the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been working since 2020 to increase the relative importance of philanthropy to achieve our mission. This year’s ticket revenue shortfall is accelerating our plans and has underscored the importance of year-round philanthropic support.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, and thanks to a lot of hard work by our staff, we had more than $16M in cash. Then, in the face of the pandemic and without BRC, the incredible response from the community and beyond in 2020 and 2021 resulted in more than $39M in contributed revenue. Like many other organizations, during this time we reorganized our staff, including layoffs, and tightened our belt.
Without Black Rock City in those years, but because of the community’s generous support, we were able to “Save the Man” and retain many full-time employees for a post-pandemic return to BRC and continuation of the cultural movement. Staff were deployed to do work that needed to happen to amplify the global culture. We fostered creative connection through Art Speaks, launched the Burning Man LIVE podcast, provided resources to bring Burning Man to life 365-days a year, celebrated micro burns and promoted local events through Kindling.
Between 2020 and 2022, we also invested in maintenance of Northern Nevada properties such as the 360, and other assets that directly support Black Rock City production (to go deeper on how we invested in those assets during those years, see Summary Financial Information).
Through 2023, the reliable revenue from higher-priced tickets and charitable contributions enabled the nonprofit to produce incredible programming, including Black Rock City, and support other low-budget, high-impact primarily community-driven efforts that stoke the Burning Man global culture and benefit the vibrancy of Black Rock City.
The combination of these efforts is working — there is more Burning Man out in the world and the movement has momentum!
For example, campouts at Fly Ranch have produced and fueled participant efforts, including: Burner Leadership Achieving Sustainable Theme Camps (BLAST), Renewables for Artists Team (RAT), and the Green Theme Camp Community, which then bring their forward-thinking solutions to life in Black Rock City. Participants from around the world (including From the Windy City to Romania) attend Black Rock City to learn and they then bring Burning Man back to their local community members. For nearly 20 years, Burners Without Borders local groups have utilized the skills and can-do attitude refined and realized by so many in Black Rock City to respond to catastrophe and provide humanitarian and community support after events such as Hurricane Helene. The combined budgets to support these efforts can be seen in the Summary Financial Information, under “Civic Engagement” and “Other Programs.”
The result is that global participation is now at a record high. In 2023, 95,000 people participated in official Burning Man Regional Events (check out the map!) around the world — on top of the more than 74,000 people who came together in Black Rock City. This means 170,000 people experienced Burning Man events directly in just one year — this is mind-bending!
TODAY
We started 2024 with approximately $9M cash in the bank. As noted above, even with our initial $10M fundraising goal for 2024, we face a cash crunch and need to raise $20M this year.
Fundamentally, we must balance the budget for 2024 now, and then readjust the revenue objectives and cost objectives for 2025 and beyond to secure Burning Man’s future.
Starting to sell tickets now just kicks the can down the road, and increasing Black Rock City ticket prices to cover the nonprofit costs to get more Burning Man in the world is another untenable option. This would price out diverse community participation and is inconsistent with our principles.
With everything at risk, we continue to focus ourselves on the future. This includes examining and restructuring our operations and reducing our expected 2025 (and beyond) costs by several millions of dollars. This has already included reductions in payroll and vendor costs. As you may have heard, we had to lay off talented and brilliant people who make Burning Man happen year-round.
At this inflection point, it’s important to remember why we are a nonprofit and why we must sustain the culture and make it accessible to all through impactful programming.
First, we became a nonprofit in 2011 to better scale the values born of the playa. The first Regional Event, Burning Flipside in Texas, started in 1998, and there were countless untold stories like Flipside, about how our desert city’s culture was spreading its wings far and wide. Being a nonprofit enables those stories to be told, and for resources to be developed to meet the growing demand for tools that enable anyone, anywhere to manifest Burning Man’s 10 Principles.
Second, all nonprofit programs, and the personnel supporting those programs, are part of the vision to bring more of this culture to the planet. As I shared in several examples above, these programs provide value to our culture in two directions — they enrich and support communities around the world and additionally are key to the vibrancy, evolution and innovation of Black Rock City. They are vitally important as we go forward.
The bottom line: We can’t cut our way to securing the long term future of Burning Man.
We must maintain the ability and caliber of our workforce and the diversity of our programs to bring the culture to life. Further, rather than in a vacuum, this work must be done in partnership with the community to ensure the culture remains relevant and accessible for future generations. We seek and appreciate your input!
Specific to the moment we are now in, our need for philanthropic support is extremely urgent.
So, what’s our path forward?
When I say we are at a new moment as a global nonprofit, I invite you to embrace and advocate what we are: A global force for good! The world needs what we offer now more than ever. For us to continue to be this force for good, convening people in person, inspiring creativity and innovation, and storytelling in ways that spark change, we need your help to raise the funds needed to preserve Black Rock City as the vibrant heart of Burning Man, and to protect the culture with which the event is intertwined.
Philanthropy has always been part of the long term plan for Black Rock City and the Burning Man culture. Just like other nonprofits, Burning Man Project depends on financial support to accomplish its mission. The moment to step into this future framework is now.
Give $20 a month to keep Burning Man going year-round!
If your life has been positively affected by Burning Man, you understand the personal growth and wellbeing that results from this cultural movement. Whether you’ve been to Black Rock City, or still attend, or not, you are a member of the community. We are committed to a future where Burning Man continues to be available to more people in the world.
Now, if you are interested, the deep details are available on our Summary Financial Information.
Together we are a community that’s excited and motivated to bridge the gap between people, reduce the loneliness of our time, and lean into “yes we need more connection, creativity and engagement, and we need it now!”
Thank you for all that you do to bring the values of our culture into the world!
Your Support of Burning Man Project creates a thriving world:
- It enables connection: Makes Black Rock City a reality for tens of thousands of participants to find their voices and creativity, including through initiatives such as the Ticket Aid Program and ticket pricing that keeps the city financially accessible and ensures the cultural diversity of the movement.
- It stokes Burning Man culture: Enables the next generation of leaders to connect and create the future of communities and Burning Man at global and Regional leadership gatherings, and funds resources and tools to adapt and bring Burning Man to life in locally relevant ways, in every corner of the globe.
- It inspires creativity and innovation: Makes prototyping the community and regenerative practices of tomorrow a reality and fuels the creative vision of artists receiving grants to build incredible, inspirational pieces of participatory art for BRC and beyond.
Set up a recurring payment today or reach out to giving@burningman.org if you would like to speak with us about how you can make a difference!
Cover image of “Dream Slide” by William Nemitoff, 2024 (Photo by Gurpreet Chawla)
i’d gladly pay a one time fee of $666 for a lifetime ticket.
it’s the 1997 solution.
just a thought.
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10k “lifers” would raise 1/3 of the shortfall.
and we’ll probably all die…eventually…
so…win-win.
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So, your response to requests for more transparency than the 990s is to make charts out of the 990s? Nothing here explains what the heck your expenses are. For example, your table shows you spent $18.2 on BRC during covid when the event didn’t take place?!? What is included there? Either your CFO is clueless, or you are being deliberately vague and misleading.
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I also think that this report lacks transparency. Please provide a meaningful breakdown of the Black Rock City costs. At least for the last year(s) that should be possible.
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Early in the year in 2020 and 2021 we made preparations for producing Black Rock City. Both years we prepared to produce the event. Both years we then canceled and put a stop to production due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As with any Black Rock City production cycle, we began incurring unavoidable expenses for staff, service providers, equipment and logistics in the first and second quarter of the year. When we canceled the event both years, we cut the costs as fast as we could, but some expenses were already in play. Learn more about the challenges of planning an 80,000 person city during the uncertainty of COVID-19 in this Journal post: https://journal.burningman.org/2021/02/black-rock-city/building-brc/2021-february-update/
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You spent $9 million each year ramping up? There is no way that’s true. And if it is, why do you refuse to release the details? Where is the money going?!?!
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The money is going to infrastructure, staff, contractors, permits, and all the other details that need to be in place during the early months of making a large-scale event happen. I wish there was a sexier answer. Event production is expensive, and growing more so every year. In fact, since 2019 Burning Man Project vendor- and permit-related expenses have increased $6.2M or 31% (well ahead of the 22% inflation for that same period).
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Please stop trying to be everything to everybody Hire a consultant if you can’t find a volunteer among the thousands and thousands of people who are Burners, which I doubt. Use the core values of Burning Man (the Ten Principles) and write a (new) (short) mission statement that tracks those values.
Create an organizational chart setting out every current function of the Burning Man organization, together with a line-item estimate of the cost for each.
Recognize that the organization is in a tailspin and that everything must be on the table. Move items from the organizational chart to a new one in order of which programs most closely satisfy the mission statement. Put BRC at the top. Next put the regional Burns, removing ones, if any, that have historically lost money. Continue in this fashion until you have reached a total budgetary amount that reflects what the organization can reasonably expect to raise in a year from ticket sales (lowered to something reasonable), major donors, and other reliable sources of income. Stop.
Create a new (conservative) administrative budget.(office space, staff, etc.) appropriate to serve the new organizational chart, removing programs from the bottom of your list in order until the administrative budget is satisfied. Get rid of all remaining programs. Stop trying to raise money from attendees, many of whom sacrifice all or nearly all of their disposable income to attend as it is.
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Couldn’t agree more. The fact that this isn’t their starting point is really concerning. It suggests a level of mismanagement and lack of understanding of how to run a business effectively that is quite frankly staggering
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BRC is not a business. It’s a non-profit.
For a business, its reason for existing is to make a profit.
For a non-profit, its reason for existing is to realize its mission.
It’s very typical that non-profits are not profitable. It’s right there in the name.
It’s also very typical that non-profits look to donations to cover shortfalls. Think of PBS, ballet companies, etc.
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@Kiran
“It’s very typical that non-profits are not profitable. It’s right there in the name.”
You’re conflating profitability with *sustainability*.
We’re dealing with a crisis of the latter.
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Non-profits are corporations. That is their legal form. Being a non-profit doesn’t mean an organization cannot make money; it means the organization cannot distribute the money it makes to shareholders.
There are many non-profits who run at a financial surplus each year. That surplus is used to build up a reserve account for unexpected shortfalls (e.g. COVID) or for extraordinary expenditures that support the mission/operations. That surplus can also be used to fund other non-profits.
Yes, non-profits do have shortfalls from time-to-time, and yes, it is completely normal and expected for them to look to philanthropic giving to close those gaps. It is another thing entirely for a non-profit to actively plan to spend more than it takes in every year for a decade and to ignore warning signs that demand may be cooling.
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Again, there is a really easy solution to this. Split off the burning man event from everything else so that you have two separate organizations with distinct purposes. Promise that all ticket sales will go directly back into the event and not to other work of the burning man org. Then, see where people donate money.
If people donate to keep the event alive then you know that people value the event. If people donate to keep the other stuff you do (which you are totally unclear about) then that will survive.
I suspect that if you separated these things out you would quickly find plenty of donors to keep the event going. And, the funding for your other work would be minimal But, I could be wrong so test it. Create these two separate pots of money for donations (and promise to use ticket sales only for the event) and see what happens.
I understand you have your own personal things you think are important, but don’t ask us to donate to those things by being opaque about how much of our donations are going to your personal pet projects. I donated to Burning Man in 2020 and would do so again if I knew all of my money was dedicated solely to the event and that ticket sales would only be used for the event. The way to save burning man is by splitting off your other charitable work from the event.
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Very well said.
I would add that they take a look at the property they purchased around the playa, such as the ranch. Is it in their best interest to own this and other property in Gerlach? Could some of this be sold to meet the current financial needs? Time to regroup, adjust and tighten the belt.
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Really well stated. You’ve summarized every essential organizational change more succinctly than I’ve ever seen before. Thank you for your lucidity :)
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Thank YOU for your kindness and support.
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This is exactly it. Start with the event at the top and tree line your budget down until you don’t have money. Get rid of all of the extraneous top-heavy programs that the organization has invested in over time that May have been feasible before Covid, but now stretch the resource system. It’s time to regroup and return to the core of why the ORG exists, which is the core event. If the fees to use the public land are too great, maybe we need to look at other locations. Maybe we need to look at other countries to have the court event where land fees are not so massive. Maybe we need to downscale the event so that we are not trying to host so many people in the land fees aren’t so high. Out of the box thinking is definitely needed, but I don’t think we’re seeing it from the org right now, we are just seeing corporation trying to struggle to stay alive.
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Agree. I think the organization is trying to be too many things to too many people. Have some trust in those who go to BRC/regional burns that we take the goodness back to our day to day lives and therefore spread it organically. It is such a common non-profit issue to think bigger is always better.
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Retired CPA, be glad to help. Also very interested in Virginia regional which apparently is on rocks. Live there. Maybe work on both.
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“On the other hand, we are well past the point where ticket revenues from Black Rock City are able to support our year-round cultural work.”
Perhaps we should ask whether ‘year-round cultural work’ should remain a goal for the organization given that they are not supported by ticket revenue
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I hear you. But I think it’s worth pointing out that Burning Man doesn’t get to be a non-profit just by being Burning Man. If all they did was produce the event at break even, that would not entitle them to have nonprofit status. Even giving the art grants for Burning Man is not sufficient, because Burning Man is a ticketed private event. They have to do some sort of mission driven outreach to the public or pay taxes, it’s just that simple.
Now, if paying taxes is cheaper? I’d be open to the idea that maybe they should do that… but that’s a different conversation, and I could be convinced otherwise. Either way they’d have a budget shortfall, though.
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I don’t think it’s a pay taxes/not pay taxes situation. I think it’s an accept donations/can’t accept donations issue.
They’re operating at a loss. Their corporate taxes would be low. But that $10m – $20m they’re looking for from donations wouldn’t be a possibility.
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THIS!
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The entire request is all too reminiscent of sitting in church sermons as a kid listening to the pastor ask us to give 10% of our income to the church so that it could grow and spread the good word. The event is lovely and has an impact on the world already through its attendees. I absolutely do not believe we should be evangelizing the burning man principals. This isn’t a religion, please don’t ruin it by making it one.
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Ms. Goodell,
You have one of the most powerful (and coolest) brands in the world, but when I go to the BM site I see no merch or cool products tied to current and past burns that could be very popular (and profitable, even for a non-profit).
I suggest you crowdsource our creative burner family to create some BM sponsored (and curated) merch that can spread our culture and earn new revenue.
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Yeah, let’s commercialize our culture and not cut all the unnecessary expenses out of the budget. Go look at the 990 filing for 2022. I see $20m that can easily be cut just by fully working from home and stopping compensation for “select” board members.
Sale of SF office building – $12,000,000
“office expenses” – $(1,500,000)
“Select” officer salaries – $(3,500,000)
“Other expenses” (line 11g) – $(2,500,000)
Bearcom radio rentals – $0.5 million (buy radios, volunteers operate)
TOTAL – $20,000,000
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Decommodification stands against this suggestion.
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I mean there’s a marketplace…
You can for instance buy posters:
https://marketplace.burningman.org/product-category/posters/
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Eh, I’m wearing a t-shirt with “Burning Man” printed on it. Distributed to those who donated CASH MONEY to an art project. Swag is just merch with extra steps.
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If that is true, then decommodification stands against charging admission to the burn.
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Decommodification is not a general principle of life. It’s part of the 10P that is the recipe for creating an environment that fosters connection between strangers (a vital facet of life that has been eroding for years, see technology and politics). Decommodification doesn’t work in the default world (just in those spaces we carve out from it).
As a business in the default world (yes a nonprofit is a business) BMP shouldn’t be tying one hand behind its back. Go ahead and merchandise (tastefully) in the default world, just not at BRC or any other event (no we will not be exudusing through the gift shop).
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Burning Man and Burners have always stood (quite proudly) against the sale of Burning Man products. Plug n Play camps have been almost eliminated.
This is part of the Burner ethos.
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Look…it’s high time to get back to basics. Inflation has impacted everyone, so expensive desert vacations aren’t as high on the list for a lot of folks. The BORG has to adjust. It’s all possible by 1) dramatically cutting costs and 2) hitting up Elon, Eric, and other Silicon Valley types for big donations.
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Simping for Elon is NOT a solution nor a good look. He would RUIN the burn.
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He’s been burning for years and hasn’t ruined it yet!
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…financial troubles quietly vanish, and for some mysterious reason, the name of the event is suddenly changed to Burning X-Man…
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He had a Twitter account for years before ruining that site.
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Precisely
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You guys can start fixing the problem by admitting that you are the problem. And quit acting like you deserve Some special treatment for being a nonprofit. Being a long time, Burner, this constant Panhandling to us is ridiculous. I’d rather have you come out and say that you are a for-profit organization and come at us with integrity. The way you’re doing it right now It feels cheap and completely Erodes the equity that you have with us. Sell Some of your assets that you bought with our $. It sounds like it’s time for the organization to have some radical accountability and responsibility.
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Any other organization when faced with financial difficulty would scale back everything to the most basic of needs, ie produce the event that brings you in the most money and scale everything else back.
Instead we see “up your donations so we can keep doing 999 other things that don’t bring in money”. It doesn’t take a genius to see that repeating the same mistakes over and over again isn’t going to give a different result because we hope it will.
I would rather see the ORG up the ticket price to what the event costs to produce or perphaps scale back the event to make the costs to produce it less than the tickets. What kind of accountant would tell you to keep producing an event that you are constantly losing money doing but can scrape producing by asking for donations every single year.
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The accountant that is manipulating numbers and getting paid heavily to do it
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The two most familiar models for live events that may resemble ours would be festivals or opera companies, theaters or film festivals. Festivals do not cover their operating costs with ticket sales, they fill the void with vendor fees, merchandise revenue and sponsorship. By comparison, a ballet or opera company fills the gap with philanthropy. As a nonprofit that stokes a decommodified event and global cultural movement, we are choosing the latter model — philanthropy — to cover operating costs not met by ticket revenue. Learn more about our role as a nonprofit in this Journal post: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/08/black-rock-city/building-brc/ceo-beach-to-brc-to-the-world/
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The challenge with your comment here, Burning Man Project, is that you all do not have the traditional overhead that festivals, theater companies, and operas do. Your “model” is one where you ask the Citizens of Black Rock City to take responsibility (including financially) for over 90% of the relevant aspects of organizing the event that would typically be provided at a festival. Functionally, you sell tickets to your volunteers, who are also the people you theoretically serve with your mission. I suspect the challenge you all are running into here, and the accusations of tone-deafness is that someone high up in the chain thought it was wise to ask for donations from what are ALREADY functionally your own volunteers/main financial supporters/constitutes. The Org decided years ago to embark on a strategic path that looks at the “global” impact as more important than the local BRC impact. Based on your financials, this was a bad decision. There are plenty of nonprofits whose sole job is to manage a single event. I can provide a list. Your message isn’t resonating with the people you want to be your donors — I gave in 2020 and 2021 when the event was cancelled, but in a year when the event happens, I do not believe the global work should cost me more money than the amount I already spend as a theme camp organizer (including hundreds of hour of my time!) My credentials here are as a professional nonprofit fundraising consultant, 11-year attendee of the Gerlach Regional, and festival and event organizer. Listen to your audience — put a moratorium on the global work, change the mission, and figure out how to keep BRC sustainable and affordable for the vast majority of us who already spend too much of our time, money, and energy to get out there.
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Maybe the millions of dollars of unpermitted, improperly zoned, run down real estate around Gerlach shouldn’t be a priority. Company Towns were gross in the 1800s, and are gross still.
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You have lost your focus and are trying to be too much, too diluted, too commercial. Your job is to run BRC every year, not to be some ‘international force of good’. Don’t let it get in your head. Strip out everything that is unnecessary to your primary job: to get the BM event running well every year. Anything surplus of that is unessential and only serves to feed some egoistical goals that the community does not care for.
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^ This is absolutely on point. As a long time burner, I don’t give a shit about all the other stuff, I just want you to get burning man running smoothly. The community will show up. I feel used to some means I don’t want or care about — this idea that you should ‘spread’ burner culture globally. Shut up already, and run the goddamn event and stop moving money we pay for it to some other purpose
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Why isn’t the end goal here reducing the scope of this ‘vision’ to effectively running the event the ticket sales are meant to fund. Cut all the other surplus activity and get your basics running right. Any decent non-profit financial director will be giving you the same advice.
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Black Rock City will always remain our priority. It serves as the heart and foundation of this global community. But also, Burning Man is not, nor has it ever been, “just a festival.” Even in the 1990s, Burners in the Bay Area and elsewhere were producing events and projects beyond the Black Rock Desert. To focus solely on producing the event would be doing a disservice to all the amazing humans and projects that are actively bringing the Burning Man ethos into the world. People come to us with ideas for how they can create participatory events and experiences, support community resilience or carry out disaster relief work; we give them tools and knowledge to make this happen on its own. We ensure that people who want to bring Burning Man into the world are able to create projects and events that are nonprofit, decommodified, participatory. Learn more in this Journal post: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/10/burning-man-arts/brc-art/sparking-kindness-connection/
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“ all nonprofit programs, and the personnel supporting those programs, are part of the vision to bring more of this culture to the planet.”
This is the issue. The community wants the event to happen. Period. This mission to bring more. Urning Man to the planet is not necessary to the event, and feels like an egoic ideal that the founders have become attached to.
Event production is what we want. Anything not directly contributing to the event should be cut at this point. Yes, that will likely mean a dramatic restructuring of the org. If you showed the community transparently that all the excess has been cut, then people may be willing to donate, but I don’t think this letter comes even close to inspiring what you’re requesting.
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Marian.
At other companies, such huge mistakes that happens under your watch would cause you to step down from leadership or be fired.
Step down.
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Bob,
You clearly think that she is some kind of God on high who makes all organizational decisions with unchecked authority and only has a board of directors for show. If you spoke to a doctor or anyone who understands any non-profit organizational chart, you would immediately be asked to seek therapy with possible medication for delusional affect. Step off.
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How much does it cost to hang out at Fly Ranch?
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It’s free. Learn about nature walks and campouts at Fly Ranch here: https://flyranch.burningman.org/
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Personally, my priorities are the main Burn in August then the regionals , then the other work and projects you support. As a former co leader of a regional I was sorely disappointed in the complete lack of support from the Org. Maybe step in with help in the form of regional event insurance, support the alcohol sales/permits process to raise money and also help find venues for regionals. Then you can truly be a partner and get a cut of ticket sales instead of just demanding support of the 10 principles and other demands. UnScruz sells out quickly and brings in good money. Others could do the same with the right support. Just my 2 cents.
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Don’t hold your breath. Regionals have been asking for support with those items since the 1990s.
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“ all nonprofit programs, and the personnel supporting those programs, are part of the vision to bring more of this culture to the planet.”
Whose vision? Your vision as CEO? Or the vision of the majority of people who consistently go to the Burn? I don’t like paying for all this stuff that I don’t want. I don’t think anyone in my camp does either.
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Many of us go to the Burn because we believe in the values and community of Burners. We want this community to expand world wide. If you are going for a vacation you are doing it wrong.
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Many of the events that they state they are funding are not building the culture. There also is a lot of confusion as to what is being supported at a regional level. Cancel regionals that show a loss. Yet there is two Canadian regionals that operate with lost commitments from the artists. Example the temple for the freezer burn regional the artist bails at the last moment. The land it is hosted at 5 people don’t come through with their commitments. Then we have the prior month ahead of big burn be ruined by an additional month after the event returning the land back to a useable state because people refuse to follow the idea not just the principal of leave no trace.
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This is all well and good and I fully support the expansion of an inclusive community which serves to promote its 10 principles along with the progressive nature and scale of art which is shared at the events. But first and foremost a non-profit or any organization for that matter must live within its own means in order to survive. The BORG is violating many of its very own principles. Let’s start with radical self-reliance. One could argue that asking its participants for donations is a form of self reliance but this principle should work in the direction of inner-most to outer-most. Where-as BORG makes every single internal consolidation possible before moving to the next options. It is inherently failing on relying on self, in a very un-radical manner. This leads into the civic responsibility of BORG. Assuming the responsibility of public welfare, in my opinion, includes taking every step possible to avoid financially straining its less well off participants. Yes they do have low income tickets, but BORG is operating outside of its own means. To such they are being irresponsible, civically, in asking for donations when they have failed to take the steps first to correct their own personal behavior. They are passing the burden because they know they can. They need a good reality check to which they make their own sacrifices to promote the existence of their duty as leaders of BORG. There is much nuance and many interpretations can tie the actions of BORG to violations of principles but the last one I will point out is immediacy. As a duty of many of the given positions within BORG, the steps to fix the inherent issues being addressed should include an IMMEDIATE response to where this discussion should not even be taking place. The inability to enact resolution from the top down implies the unwillingness to sacrifice from its primary leaders. This perpetuates and prolongs the inaction which has been evolving into and issue resembling those in a community facing issues of financial polarization. It is slowly creating an environment where it is unfeasible for those whom are financially less fortunate. A space where the continued participation is just not possible. I would argue that one of the MOST IMPORTANT facets of a well functioning and progressive society would diversification. But hey thats just my two cents, which is all many of these long time supporters has to give for a chance to participate.
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Amen. So many more people want to experience Burning Man than the 70,000 humans who create Black Rock City each year.
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In reply to Dormouse: Burning Man Project does not fund Regional Events. They fund themselves, and all function as nonprofit events. Burning Man project offers administrative support and guidance to Regional Events.
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Lmao! The feedback to your Oct 3rd blog post was overwhelmingly calling for cutting the excess global projects, and narrowing to a simpler laser-narrow focus on only BRC/the event itself.
And yet, here you’re doubling down on the opposite of everyone’s advice: You invite us to “embrace and advocate for what we are: A global force for good!”
Altruism is admirable, but this stinks of “mission creep” and endless expansion of scope. Which means endless need for more money. Aren’t you also explaining in the same breath, that you’ve already bitten off more than you can chew?? It seems like burners are pleading with you to chew the current bite fully. Lest someone choke.
Global force for good?? Heady stuff! Now we’re all saving the world for $20 a month? Sounds like Delusions of grandeur.
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The right way to bring Burning Man’s culture to the world is for Burner’s to bring that culture back to their hometowns, their communities, and work to make those better places to live. Trying to drive those initiatives with a top-down mindset just isn’t going to work. And, if you really wat to help folx bring Burning Man into the world and spread out from Black Rock City, shouldn’t the budget for civic engagement be higher than the budget for management and administration?
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This!
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Hope has nailed it. If there are people willing to support top down spreading to the world make is a separate organization.
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Hope has nailed it. If there are people willing to support top down spreading to the world make it a separate organization.
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We’re so happy to hear you disagree with a top-down mindset for bringing Burning Man culture into the world. So do we. Our Regional Network and Burners Without Borders teams work at a grassroots level with communities. For all of our programs beyond Black Rock City, people come to us with ideas or a desire to create a Regional Event or project. At the moment, we actually can’t keep up with the demand.
Management and administration costs do not exist in a vacuum from our programs — be they Black Rock City, or year-round projects — these teams support all our work with technology, accounting, human resources, volunteer training and learning and other essential administrative needs.
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Marian, you know I’m a true believer. I made a large stock gift to the org in 1999. I led the Playa Resto line sweeps in 2000. I have brought art to the playa 21 of my 25 years there.
So I’m very sad to read this response from you. Rather than saying, “We overspent. We hear you. We’ve already cut all non-event expenditures! We’ve already cut salaries and staff. We’re looking for cheaper office space now!” you again ask for the community to finance the current, unsustainable business model. We all saw the responses to your 10/3/24 request for funds. How could you possibly think that asking again, without first showing evidence of serious belt-tightening would work?
Like many others, I WANT to help, but I can’t possibly stomach doing so until I have seen serious changes at the org. Take some action to slash the budget NOW, before it’s too late. Please.
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Thank you so much Chris for speaking out! You are such a respected member of the BM community, and bring so much to the playa, I hope your voice floats above all the noise and is heeded.
I don’t understand how Marian can be so tone deaf to the cries of the community. She is making something so simple into something nobody wants, and drowning it along the way. I think the org needs a complete revamp, starting with her resignation. Nobody wants this version of philanthropy. We just want the event. Don’t hold the event hostage to get us to pay for lofty ideas that nobody cares about except Marian and her gang. You are destroying everything.
All we want is a place to go every year, this magical place, for a couple of days, keep it safe, keep it honest, keep it special. Nothing more beyond that.
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BAM BOOM YES!
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I don’t know why you people think it’s all just her or that she is the ONLY one who cares about Burning Man’s larger mission. They’ve been talking about this for quarter century, they have hired recruited and train people who also care about the larger mission, and plenty of us burners who have never been anywhere near the org also believe in this, take pride in it, hope for a future for it. In this sort of situation, people asking to see you to step down must realize that they would only be replaced by a board member, likely someone else who has also voted for or champions many of the things that they’re now slamming. So, are you just suggesting they replace one person with tons of experience who was one of a large number of people who did something you didn’t like (but you seem to like it when everything was going good, didn’t you?) with another person with tons of experience who was also backing the things you didn’t like? If you talk to an old school print journalist, they would tell you that for every one letter of complaint they got about something, there are usually 10 or 100 others who felt the opposite way, but people who generally approve of a thing are as motivated to speak up. Especially people who it looks like might benefit (I’m not saying so, I’m just sayin’)
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Thank you for this response <3 #industwetrust
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This is the kind of real talk I appreciate hearing. Thanks Christopher.
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Bingo!
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Boosting this comment!
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I’ve only been burning half as long as you. Agree with everything you’ve said. And you said it well!
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Nice job Christopher and thanks for your input and service!
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THIS !
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So, let me get this straight. You say that, a quarter century ago, you made a stock gift of some uncertain amount and value to a different org, which we have to take your word for. And nothing since, but, that makes you a “true believer.” No idea of the amount of stock, what it’s worth then or now. I’ve looked at the Org’s 990 forms and the amount they get from investment income really is very paltry. Some years, it’s in the negative. No mention of any donations since.
You did a resto line sweep the next year, and then nothing since, so long ago that the Internet still kind of felt like a new thing and 9/11 wasn’t a thing. And neither was the Temple. Nothing like that since, Even when they switch to a non-profit where you get a tax break for that.
And the rest of the time since, you just seemingly made your living from the arts environment that the Org’s efforts provide, party, part of a camp where you get tickets, probably, interacting with the people who support you if not getting tickets outright to give to them. If it was not to your benefit to bring art out there, you would. But, from what I can understand, you make your living doing art, and the Black Rock Desert is certainly a great venue for displaying your art, and the org helps out many things that are of benefit to YOU specifically. No more donations, no more resto sweeps. That’s fine: I’ve stayed out there days afterwards to clean up, sometimes with camps that weren’t even mine.
Oh, it’s nice if YOU have a piece of art out there — I’m sure I and many others have enjoyed them — but yours was 1 of 70, 200, 400 or more pieces of art, And if you weren’t there, maybe others would have been. You up-n-vanish, the event still goes on. The Org up and vanishes, you have no event. Losing out on both things you enjoy, revenue, access to supporters and donors and volunteers, because if you tell someone you’re building a piece of art to go to Burning Man, I’m sure faces light up. You tell them you’re building a piece of art to display in your backyard because there is no Burning Man, I’m sure 90 something percent of your help and sponsors for the art you could have made would have nodded and moved on.
I can’t imagine how any true believer or person who’s been paying attention to the way they all responded to the pandemic doesn’t realize they already did cuts, they must be looking at every single way to cut things and don’t have time to lay out a spreadsheet so YOU PERSONALLY can criticize if they buy creamer for the office coffee, if you think they should be buying their tires at a slightly cheaper place down the street, if you think the top people were paid a couple hundred thousand too much in the last few years because they live in a place where a teacher or a cop makes that much, as if that sort of “If I had a time machine” wisdom would make up a $20 million shortfall needed in the immediate future and convince real true believers to give a donation that’s to their tax and life benefit, anyway.
Look, I don’t know why you don’t know that they did belt tightening a couple years ago when it was big news and they were posting lots of information on it. I don’t know why you would think this hadn’t already happened by the time you know anything about it, but “I’m a true believer. I hear you’re having financial difficulties and I’ve seen you navigate your way through many situations over 25 years. You need a very large amount of money, equivalent to 1/3 of all your costs recently. Have you … thought of cutting costs to save money? Clearly, with two months to go, that couldn’t have been on your minds. It’s a good thing you have me to reveal this information that you couldn’t have possibly thought of by yourself.”
For some of us, we consider some recent events to be evidence that you can “protest vote and abstain” from helping your way to a outcome you want, and then see that there’s very real consequences to sitting on the sidelines and not helping. If that’s not a warning about a future you may not want but allow to happen through inaction, I don’t know what is.
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Stop with the year-round work.
Reduce your scope and costs ASAP. Sell some of that Ranch land, for start. Downsize, downsize, downsize.
Extremely audacious to have such an optimistic budget that can’t cope at all with big changes and then try to solve the problem via donations.
Bridge the gap with cost cuts, asset sales and downsizing..
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In Australia we have a hippy festival that has been going for almost 50 years. I always describe it as “like Burning Man without all the big money”.
Tickets are US$92 plus 2hrs of volunteering for a 4 day festival.
We don’t have all the big art sculptures etc, but there is a profound magical spirit of synchronicity, spontaneity and symbiosis that happens.
We don’t need all the bells and whistles. In fact they can become a distraction.
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Yes! Second this! Confest has been going for decades without huge inputs of cash from participants. It inspires people who attend. It isn’t an event with widespread, highly visible global impact. But it has changed every person who has attended and most of us bring that energy into the rest of our life.
Impacting the lives of the participants of BRC could be enough. An annual event of 70k plus people is huge! All the other projects should be considered bonus and there’s no shame in focusing on what has brought us together to begin with–responsibly expressing the principles at BRC.
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What are you talking about? My understanding this is Bohemians not hippies, it’s way shorter, 4 days versus 9 or sometimes 3 weeks if you’re there for pre-build and strike, or even months if you are on the DPW crew, doesn’t do anything on the scale of a Burning Man does, not similar at all. You can have your little cousin put on a costume and jump off a trampoline in the backyard or someone can plan a MCU battle stunt, but that don’t make them the same thing.
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https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452638273#compensation
These are 2022 numbers, and Ms. Goodall got 20k more than 2021, which got 40k more than 2020 (years where we didn’t have an event).
Where did you tighten your belt again?
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Cut everything in the budget not related to the event and regionals. The mission of bringing burning man culture around the globe with a million different spin off projects is something the org wants to fuel its never ending requests for donations. Just produce BRC sustainably. That’s it. I have personally been the president of a nonprofit that had to go through a similar transition after getting too inflated with programming. You have to get back to the core of what you do and leave out the rest.
Also many many thousands of us already donate to the event yearly in the form of spending our own money creating art installations and camp interactivity for participants in addition to purchasing tickets and vehicle passes annually. Your long winded request that we make additional monthly donations to you so you can fulfill a vision we don’t agree with is like a slap in the face given all the work and money we already put in.
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“global interest is at an all-time high”
actually, look at the data in google trends. Outside of the very obvious Mudpocalypse attention of 2023, interest has been steadily on the decline (really, since Larry passed, if you look at the charts).
The buck stops with you Marian. You can’t have catered lunches year round in a big beautiful SF office while passing a hat around to people who are out here struggling. well, you can, I guess, but you really look pretty out of touch.
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Thank you for sharing, Marian. I appreciate the level-setting and road mapping to the future. The last thing any of us want is for Burning Man to disappear — I donated to Burning Man Project in 2020 and I plan to again. We’re all in this together.
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Thank you for your support Delilah. We appreciate you.
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Where is your contrition? Where is your apology for letting the global, year-round mission grow too big? A non-profit should be able to weather a down year in ticket sales. Perhaps several. Sounds like you got way out over your skis and you need to pull back considerably. Focus on Black Rock City and shut everything else down if you have to. Regrow to the point you can support a wider mission because right now you can’t. Asking for $20M, doing layoffs and reducing some expenses are not going to solve your problem. You need to thoroughly re-evaluate where your money is going and then redirect. Can you sell Fly Ranch? If so, do it. And if that sounds insane to you, I don’t think you fully grasp the emergency you’ve created. Long story short, this sounds like a you problem.
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Perhaps if the org is not profitable, those who are reaponsible should not receive compensation increases.
Perhaps they should avoid superfluous land purchases. Perhaps they shouldn’t stray to projects that compromise the integrity of the event that made them who they are.
Perhaps they should even move offices from one of the most expensive cities in the US to some of that aforementioned purchased land in nevada.
Perhaps if the org is bleeding money, they should seek to fix the leak internally, rather than seeking to drain the ocean – requesting even more from the people who wreck themselves physically and financially to actually make the city happen.
You’re pricing the event out of any form of radical inclusion, and making it seem like it is the responsibility of the community of volunteers, builders, international burners, and everyone in between, rather than the leadership.
This is a failure of leadership. Plain and simple. Not a failure of $$$ participation by the community you claim to serve.
Please consider engaging in some radical accountability, or the ticket sales and community will suffer even more in the years to come.
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Correcting the inappropriate spending of the org is your job, not ours. Most of us have *other jobs* that we leave for several weeks a year to build, enrich, and participate in this city. We pay handsomely for this privilege, and cannot be expected to continue to fork over cash for y’all to spend on things that don’t actually improve the “global impact” of your vision.
Stop giving raises if you fail to meet your targets. This is a problem you have created, and have the capacity to solve. Please do it. Practice any form of accountability for your failures.
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All this to essentially tell us to pound sand and send you checks. I made a medium sized donation in 2020 and bought FOMO tickets consistently over the last few years to support BRC. I stopped making contributions last year. Until the org can show reasonable use of funds and refocus on the event only I will not resume.
Non-event related activities which have contractual obligations should be split into a new legal entity, everything else needs to go on the chopping block. Stop making BRC something which it is not.
It is an open secret that there is scarce accountability for a good portion of the long term staff. Donations just keep covering up the inefficiencies.
Don’t get me started on the Fly Ranch ‘project’, something of an Albatros which merely consists of a few good feel blog posts every year. 99.9% of BRC attendees and the regular public get no benefit from this private property.
So much waste…
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Fly is a tiny cost and what is done at the production ranch and 360 is pretty pivotal to the event. That stuff is significantly beneficial. Having an expensive office in SFO and a frankly useless CEO that gets paid 300,000+ a year is a significantly higher and more pointless burden.
Time for a revolt fellow peasants.
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Dear Marian and the rest of the executive team: the content of this post is staggeringly tone deaf. Just read the comments!
Worse, the same feedback being expressed has already been ignored. This year round mission noise is old. We the people, just want a week-long get together in the desert. Please quit choking that out with all this other nonsense.
As it stands you and your team deserve nothing more than the price of the ticket.
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Three words: radical self reliance.
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Are none of you having an existential crisis around the possibility that Burning Man could never happen again? Am I the only one? Regardless of how imperfect or awkward the call for support may be, maybe we just need to pull together and make sure we can keep this thing alive?
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It will happen again. The question is whether the Burning Man Project will be at the helm or not.
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There was a journal entry about are regionals becoming more popular that brc and the response was fully charged showing that the financial responsibilty of going to brc as well as the increasing climate change that is for some making brc inaccessible. The burner community is aging and the new burners are showing a mindset that brm events are events which in itself is ruining the culture.
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Don’t worry Eve. 2020 and 2021 provide that it’ll happen with or without the org.
Burning man is like a monarchy. The king is dead, long live the king.
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Burning Man will continue, no matter what happens with the current org. We proved that in 2021. There will certainly be growing pains, but the culture and community are solid.
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Spare us the verbose rationalizations, Marian.
Beyond the ticket price, Burners already make massive personal and financial donations and sacrifices to make Black Rock City and the magic that is Burning Man.
Others above have pointed out the obvious path forward. That you continue to resist taking it is quite telling.
Come down out of the ether, or step aside.
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Marian, with all due respect, I think you are too close to the issue. With statements like this, “ When I say we are at a new moment as a global nonprofit, I invite you to embrace and advocate what we are: A global force for good! The world needs what we offer now more than ever.”, it is clear that you are grasping at straws. I don’t want burning man to die, because it truly provides me so much, but its value from my understanding has never been about being a global force for good. Yes, emotionally healthy people are more capable of helping others, but that starts with transformation. The transformative nature of the event is being diluted by an attempt to be too welcoming. Art that offends is being removed, in an attempt to make more diverse communities feel welcome we are compromising the rough edges that challenged people and gave them the opportunity to evolve. I’m not advocating being less welcoming, I’m advocating finding a way for these two ideas that you seem to think are mutually exclusive, to work together. We have lost so many long time burners and have gained some folks that participate, but a lot that do not. Burning man will have a hard time charging more or gaining donations in the long term, because the event has driven away those that are the roots of the community. Sure, it still feels like it’s burning man, but it does feel like the writing is on the wall, and I hope we can turn it around.
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I am saddened to read this tone deaf post in the light of the push back and consistent call from across the burner community since the previous 10/3 post to detangle the financials of the event from Civic Engagement, Other Programs and any other expenditures not directly tied into supporting the event. At this point it seems like an unwillingness to hear the feedback that is being given, which certainly will not inspire donations and support. Perhaps in the end these side projects of will be cut by necessity due to fiscal reality. They are bleeding the event and the organization that produces it dry and until that bleeding is stopped I suspect this fundraising effort will not gain traction.
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First, “non-profit” is just a common general term for “tax exempt”, which is the designation actually given to a corporation by the IRS and California franchise tax board.
After seeing Burning Man change over the past 20 years, it seems that there is a widening gap between top management’s view and we on the street who make much of the BRC happen. This trend needs to be reversed. Management needs to get back to its roots, and build up to what can be sustained from there.
Third, too much hubris at the top has infiltrated their view and what feeds their egos. Not a good trait for a strong leader of such an org.
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If Rainbow Gathering can host a 20k person event on public land for $0 per person, and Plan B can host a 30k person event on public land for $10 a person, you can host a 70k person event on public land for less than $749.
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Rainbow Gathering events keep on getting shut down and there’s tons of arrests there or the police arrest the organizers to try to find people who are responsible but don’t expend the money and resources that the org does to be good neighbors and clean up after itself or prevent problems at the event. Might want to use a better example of a responsible organization. I’d say one doing the same thing, but that means that you never should have mentioned Rainbow in the first place, And I’m not going sure where you going to find another thing like Burning Man and Black Rock City that you can make a reasonable and rational comparison to, anyway
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To solve the deficit and overspending issues directly related to the org “mission”, how about an 11th BM principle – radical exclusion (of all non-BRC-related expenditures from the budget).
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I had to look at the calendar, because for a moment I thought it was April 1st. Then I realized this was no joke. You are actually serious.
Even Stevie Wonder can see where the org is headed. All you are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship. Your pleas for more money are falling on deaf ears, and will do nothing to cure the problem, which sadly is YOU.
First of all, drop your ego. While certainly world renowned, it is not a cultural movement in any appreciable sense, so stop with the rhetoric. Burningman is just a big festival in the desert, and the sooner you realize this the sooner the org can take steps to reel in expenses. But here’s a start:
1) Marian needs to step down. Not next week, not next month, not after the 2025 event, but now. Submit it tomorrow morning.
2) focus only on things that will sustain the event. All that other crap looks good in press releases, but harms the event
3) sell fly ranch. During the pandemic you had the audacity to hold a mini burn there and shove it in our face as tho you were gifting your experience to us. You are definitely not good at PR
4) sell other un needed real estate. You really screwed the pooch with the 360 property. Maybe next time someone will remember to get permits before building
5) consolidate offices. Move all operations to Reno.
6) immediately cease any and all overseas activities/grants/donations
7) hire a legitimate, outside company to oversee finances/purchasing
8) dump High Rock security. There is absolutely no need for another level of oversight. You have the rangers. That is/was their job until someone thought pronouns were more important than safety. Not to mention some of High Rocks owners are rangers. Rangers that are already paid by the ORG
At this point a name change to BoeingMan might be in order, as the similarities are strong
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Your math is misleading, probably deliberately so. Nobody pays $575 to attend burning man. They also pay the org vehicle, bus, plane, oss, and ticket fees. Of course, that’s in addition to the insane value of ten of thousands of hours of free labor and millions in donated art each year. To come begging without clear recognition of how much the community already contributes (while ignoring calls for genuine financial transparency) shows how out of touch leadership has become. Thank you for your service, but it’s time to pass the torch.
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Perhaps buying all that land, having those fancy offices and paying the people at the top 400k/year is not such a good idea when your organization is struggling for cash.
Most of us never got to use Fly Ranch (because it’s in the middle of nowhere) so MAAAYYYBEEE you should stop spending so much money that we give you stuff that only those with extra time and money can benefit from.
Perhaps look at your financials and trim a lot of fat, just like every other company struggling for cash does.
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While I appreciate the apparent transparency of the financials, the elephant in the room from my perspective is why were BRC expenses ~$27M for 2017, 2018 and 2019 and this year they were $45 million. That right there is your $18 million gap. Now, there might be valid reasons for part of the increase but without some detail and transparency on this specific topic, I cannot possibly think about contributing more.
Would strongly suggest someone on your finance team become educated on zero cost budgeting as a first step.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Decade long burner and BRC is so core to my soul. However, if we are not going to have an adult conversation about this problem, count me out.
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Inflation in the cost of producing events is very real. Many news agencies reporting on it. NPR recently deemed 2024 the year of the death of the festival. The economics of events are getting harder and harder across the US and Europe, this is not just a Burning Man problem.
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Inflation alone (around 20%between 2019 & 2023) can only explain a 5M$ raise not the 18 m$ gap between now & then. Can we please be considered adults and have details on BRC production costs?
Thanks
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Marian, I’ve met you personally more than once. You seem like a lovely person, dedicated to the culture and the event, and I am grateful for all that you have done.
Burning Man and the community that surrounds it completely transformed my life after my first trip in 2009. I became an evangelist for the event, dragged many friends to it, had a wedding ceremony there, started a local edition of FIGMENT, attended the Regional leadership meeting in SF and visited your offices. I won a grant for an honorarium project, and that led to paid work. I’ve now been to 7 big burns, plus 7 trips to 4 different regional burns, and hardly a month goes by when I don’t get together with my burner community for some smaller unofficial event.
My wife has been to more than half of those with me, and we’ve now started bringing our children to smaller events. When you add in travel costs, camp dues, infrastructure, and tickets, we’ve poured tens of thousands of dollars into Burning Man and the wider Burner culture over the last 15 years. We happily donated the price of a ticket in the first pandemic year.
In different circumstances, I would gladly chip in $20/month to keep this thing that has been so special to me going. But those are not the circumstances you’re in.
It is clear that something drastic needs to change. Calling it an inflection point is accurate. But simply coming back to the community asking for more donations is not going to fix the structural problems you’re facing. What we as a community are asking for, here, on Reddit, and privately in conversations at weekly meet and greets and around campfires coast to coast, is for some sort of meaningful response.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you should resign. But there needs to be some drastic action or the event is going to collapse. People want to be part of something fun and exciting, not jump onto a sinking ship, and right now the event is projecting sinking ship vibes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to planning my trip to Love Burn. It’s a great event, fun and exciting and youthful and run by a small, scrappy team who do it for love, not money. Reminds me a lot of what Burning Man used to be.
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I have nothing to say about anything other than the part about Love Burn. You ARE aware that they’re not only under sanction, but this is after years of complaints? And, I mean, I’ve been hearing these complaints for most of a decade now. Someone posted their financials, and it looks like the way they keep afloat is to sell somebody tickets that people have to camp in the parking lots and financials they post look … Funny. Like the amount they post don’t add up to the ticket sales and the cost, And when somebody posted about it on FB, a couple of artists posted that they felt really loved and supported by LB. And a bunch more posted that they really got shafted by them.
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Love Burn has it’s problems but they’re more solvent than bmorg while also spending more on art. Oddly enough BMorg operates more like a business *since* becoming a non profit.
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Go find a sit and spin.
Nonprofit boards shouldn’t make this kind of scratch.
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Thank you Marian for providing a more thoughtful response to your fundraising request as the first request lacked critical information this community needed to decide how to support the BMorg going forward.
We’re making progress…thanks for listening to Part I. However, your biggest fan base, donors and patrons are Burners and many are still not happy with your growth/solution strategy.
I recommend re-visiting the recommendations the community is sharing with you and come back with a more refined strategy that focuses on three things:
1. Scale back / Focus on the event
2. Reduce expenses
3. Provide more support to regionals
PS- I reviewed your teams’ salaries and you pay your employees as if they worked for a corporation – These salaries are super high for a nonprofit!!!
Marian Goodell (Director/Chief Executive Officer) $346,747
Steven Blumenfeld (Chief Technology Officer) $306,540
Heather White (Chief Operating Officer) $224,017
Harley K Dubois (Director) $223,396
Adam Belsky (General Counsel) $212,995
Daniel Kaufman (Director Of Philanthropic Engagement) $200,535
Doug Robertson (Director Of Finance) $198,431
Matthew Kwatinetz (Dir/Senior Dir, Nevada Operations) $197,563
Charlie Dolman (Director Of Event Operations)$195,262
Kim Cook (Director Of Creative Initiatives)$189,223
Pedro Vidal Flores (Director Of People And Learning) $184,544
Marnee Benson (Director Of Govt Affairs($174,273
Jonathan Rosen (Associate Dir Of Product And Design) $171,370
Stuart Mangrum (Director Of Philosophical Center) $171,370
Christopher Breedlove (Director Of Civic Activation) $157,339
Nanci O Peterson (Secretary) $153,578
Again, we’re making progress. This is a good thing. Looking forward to seeing part III of your refined strategy.
Your patron & donor.
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I don’t understand why you think these salaries are super high for San Francisco non-profit, a place where the starting salary for a rookie cop is over $110,000. I’ve seen videos online about dudes incensed at only making $70K a year in the Bay area and wondering how they were going to live on that. The San Francisco Chronicle did an article about the 24 highest paid non-profit CEOs in the Bay area and some of them are more than twice that. I think the highest non-profit CEO salary I’ve heard of is around $16 or $17 million. Maybe you think this is an umbrella factory in San Francisco that can be moved to Vietnam, but I have years of fundraising experience and I’ve never known seen an arts non-profit that can just move far away from its community and donor base and have it end up a net positive. I once had a friend who owned an art gallery, and when she moved it, I totally have no idea where it went or what happened to her. Slipped right off my radar, and kind of stop caring, to be honest. And the freaky, outsider, inventive culture of the Bay area isn’t easy to replaced if they move to a coal mine in the Appalachians, say.
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Time for new leadership. Time to step down and let the competent people step up. You’re killing it.
End the pointless waste of the SFO office and cut the salaries of the top of the stack. Move all operations to Reno.
What’s going on is idiotic. It’s not thought out and we don’t have appropriate process to analysis if different programs and goals are working, achievable or have been achieved.
We have piles of vehicles we hire in, we’ve got other options and overloading auto shop with dog shit is not what I’m talking about. We can hire vehicles from staff at considerably lower cost and put money in the pockets of deserving folk.
We burn money on silly shit left and right. It’s beyond a shame.
The community has shown it can do burning man without the org so either get out of the way and let new talent take the reigns and slash costs and right the ship or the org dies and burning man carries on anyway.
Honestly you’re not needed.
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An inflection point indeed. Please hear this, because this really is everything: the actual inflection point you’re at right now is whether you’re going to listen to your community or not.
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I just want to add to the chorus who think that this fundraising appeal is insulting to those of us who already give so much to the event.
If BM is going to survive, it must reduce overhead by making executive compensation sane, selling the trophy office and ending the spending on Fly Ranch ecology and art projects that have no material benefit to the organization or 99% of event participants. Wow, millions of dollars spent to… bring 8 composting toilets to the playa.
Burning Man is not a vessel for your dumb top-down “year round cultural work.” No one cares except your wealthy coterie and the people getting paid by it. Reduce bureaucracy, focus on the mission, and listen to the community!
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Bring back center camp coffee
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Many of the comments in the discussion thread mirror my own opinion – the org needs to recognize that it’s in a downward trend for a variety of reasons, and adjust itself accordingly, before and in addition to asking the community for help.
The core of the organization’s mission is and should continue to be to create the event that birthed the movement. One of my frustrations with the org has been to try to act “above the event”, and actually kind of look down on the event. Yes, we’re “a global movement of artists and activists seeking to to change the world, and blah blah blah”, but the central core of that movement arose from and continues to be fostered by the event held at BRC. To downplay the importance of the event is, to me, entirely misdirected. Roots are crucially important, and expanding too far beyond those roots risks having the organization & the entire movement becoming untethered and losing its identity.
Aspirations of global culture leadership are laudable, but this is not the time for them.
During this time of crisis, the org needs to tighten its focus on making the event happen in a way that develops the core community and supports its principles. For the time being, cut everything else out. EVERYTHING. Ask regional organizations to stand largely on their own for a year or two. Scale back art grants, particularly for art not heading to the playa. Scale back near-term Fly Ranch aspirations. Reduce the services the org provides to the event participants, particularly those that coddle or ease the inherent misery that is BRC. Cut organizational operations to the bone. Put all initiatives towards developing the global movement on hiatus. Ramp up income streams that work within the framework of our principles.
Stop, for the moment, from trying to a global movement and protect your core.
Perhaps in a few years the situation will improve and dreams of fostering a global burner culture can be rekindled, but for now it’s superfluous and a drag on the org’s survival.
These last few years have been hard, for everyone. Covid + two years of difficult weather has killed a lot of people’s momentum. People caught other hobbies and interests during the pandemic, and are looking elsewhere for joy & fulfillment. The up and coming generation are less drawn to large scale events. And many of us have just sort of grown tired of the bigger, better, more treadmill of the event and everything else in our lives.
Maybe this is a time to get the event back to its roots of smaller, more intimate and more DIY. Maybe it’s time to rightsize for the moment, and see what direction the community takes the event. Maybe after things have stabilized, the org can reengage with those other initiatives, but now is the time to get back to basics.
But for now – protect the core.
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Get rid of your offices and let your staff work remotely. Cut excess costs and non-essential projects. Don’t put the burden on burners who like another commenter mentioned, already spend their expendable budgets to attend the event.
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Boiled down, your message is “Donate $20M in the next 60 days so we can continue doing all these random activities in my personal vision as Org CEO, or we won’t have the event next year.”
That’s not fundraising; it’s a shakedown. And it’s poor leadership that you as CEO have waited until October 3rd and 22nd to address the situation by blog posts (as if THAT is going to raise $20M in 90 days!) when you have to have known by the beginning of August that the Org was facing a major revenue shortfall. Since ticket sales cannot be guaranteed and the last two years were unusually hot and wet, reducing interest in attending, the Org should not have budgeted based on an assumption that the event would sell out.
You say, boiled down, that ‘The event can’t pay for itself, let alone all these other activities.’ So, fix those problems.
First, have the event pay for itself. Raise ticket prices overall with a larger number of OMG sales and the number of low income tickets kept at the same absolute level. And yes, cut expenses. Maybe fewer funded art projects, a smaller Temple and Man, etc.
You say that revenue from the event is highly variable. OK, that means you have to manage the budget accordingly.
So, cut your fixed costs. Sell the Fly Ranch; that purchase never made sense and is clearly a luxury the Org was never able to afford in the first place. Sell the building in SF and have everyone work from home. The startup I work at is 100% remote and it works fine.
Use any LEFTOVER FUNDS after event expenses are paid off to pay for “art out in the world” projects that can be committed IF the revenue arises. That way, you wind up with variable revenue and also variable expenditures instead of variable revenue and fixed expenditures.
Part of the problem is that you’re inserting the Org as an intermediary between art projects out in the world and donors. Org wants donors to donate $20M per year so you, the Org staff, have funds for the event and for an expansive menu of activities YOU choose. That’s not the Burning Man Project; it’s the Marian Goodell Service Projects Endowment, and while I’m sure the projects you want to fund are well intentioned and nice activities, it’s pretty clear your sprawling vision has exceeded the ability of the Burning Man community to reliably fund.
Since you’re facing a revenue shortfall, cut salaries starting with your own. The poor financial management and failure to take timely remedial actions you’ve displayed here don’t justify your current salary. Ask yourself honestly whether you’re the right person for the job you hold.
The Org must budget with the assumption that ticket sales will be variable and COVID-19 won’t be the last shock that will cause the event to be cancelled. If bird flu mutates to readily spread person-to-person, we could be in global lockdown again NEXT YEAR!
I’m willing to donate something to support the event, but not to subsidize a grab bag of random disconnected activities and to enable continuing irresponsible financial management. Change is necessary, possibly starting with who is the CEO.
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We started the nonprofit in 2010, and always knew we were going to move towards more philanthropy to help keep ticket prices accessible for more people.
This meant that when expenses increased, rather than raising ticket prices, philanthropy would be even more necessary. This is the model by which theaters, opera and ballet companies survive. Universities and museums also operate by this model. In all cases, the cost of admission or a ticket to the event doesn’t cover all of what the cultural experience is offering. All these cultural institutions rely on community support from people who believe in the work. We are moving to that model right now; it was always the plan. It’s just happening quicker than we intended.
The funding for Burning Man Project to purchase Fly Ranch was gifted by 14 Burners who have been deeply affected by the spirit and principles of Burning Man, and felt called to give back to the community by enabling us to explore the potential of having a year-round home. As you can see in the Summary Financial info there was $8.1M in donations in 2016 for the purchase of Fly; it did not originate from ticket revenue, vehicle passes, coffee sales, general donations to the nonprofit Burning Man Project, or any previously existing source of Burning Man income. For more information, check out this Journal post: https://journal.burningman.org/2016/06/news/official-announcements/we-bought-fly-ranch/ and the Fly Ranch website https://flyranch.burningman.org/.
It’s a misconception that we own an office building in SF. We rent. The San Francisco office is a venue for fundraising, a gathering space for up to 120 people, and a space for staff and board meetings. When Black Rock City was paused in 2020 and 2021, we downsized the San Francisco office by half. We have always worked to keep the costs of the office down, and will continue to do so.
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Too much foofiness. Burner culture does not need to be spread out into the world. That’s exactly why it barely feels like a countercultural anything anymore. The reason it got so big and hardly able to contain itself is because you wouldn’t stop talking about it! Stop telling the whole world about us! And stop paying yourselves ridiculous amounts of money to do so.
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Here’s an idea: stop talking about Burning Man so much. Don’t try to spread it around the world. That’s exactly why it isn’t much of a countercultural thing anymore at all – too many people know about it and want to go! So of course the event grew beyond its capabilities and now is barely able to sustain itself! The world does not “need” Burning Man because Burning Man can’t save the world. The qualities that burners ideally show, according to the principles and all, is not specifically unique to Burning Man culture. It’s called being a decent person, and it isn’t the Burn’s job to teach people how to be that. Focus on the event itself, which is what the vast majority of Burners want, rather than trying to spread the gospel and congratulate yourselves for doing so with your outrageous salaries.
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Marion, you have fallen victim to one of the classic nonprofit killers. It’s called mission creep.
Your job as a nonprofit is to listen to the people you serve and remember your core mission. As a leader, this letter shows just how deeply you have lost your way. It is your job as a leader to hold the mission- and you have lost your way.
The purpose of the org is to through amazing burns where this community can connect. Literally anything else is nonprofit masturbation and it will be the death of this organization.
I hope you look at these comments and reflect. Your community is not interested in funding your side projects. Trim the fat. All programs that are not directly related to throwing the event and regional events need to go. You need to make the hard but necessary choices to save this organization.
Signed the president of a large and functional nonprofit.
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My original post was not published by the mods, likely bc I was brutally honest and pulled no punches. So let me tone it down a bit and try again: Marian, if you really believe what you have written, then you have no business being at the helm. It reminds me of when GM execs flew in private corporate jets to the congressional hearing re their bailout. You are completely out of touch with not only reality, but nearly everyone who has attended the event. In 2021 & 2022 we did not need you to have a memorable time on playa. This should have been an eye opener for both you and the org, but like many times before, the signs were missed, and now you find yourselves on the Handout Highway. I will be surprised if any suggestions made here are implemented. We can explain it to you but we cannot understand it for you.
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The trend lines that I seem to see in the comments section here and for the 10/3 message may not be adequately addressed. And perhaps we might say that we don’t know how well the comments represent the community as a whole. Perhaps the org might survey the community to measure how well they are on track. Or perhaps the org hopes they can find enough who share the org’s view and are willing to send $$, and see where this direction leads.
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I’ve been a volunteer for TTITD for 15 years or so. I’ve heard over and over that the staff in most departments are all terrific, but that the topmost managment is all horrible. It’s time to clean house. Just because you hung out with Larry in the 90s doesn’t mean you have any idea how to run the current event. But I’m sure nothing will change and the org will plead with donors to continue to fund the org’s big plans to change the whole world. The event week is all that matters. The rest is all fluff. The fluff has to go when money is tight
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Just throw the god damn party! Jeez!
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LOL. you condensed my thoughts into a very short sentence. THANK YOU !
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Maybe the Mayan Warrior can make some more YouTube videos for you and run ads on them while livestreaming the concerts
The chickens have finally come home to roost.
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Thank you for the update. We live in a time of stress and that can manifest in angry online comments. Forgive.
Burning Man knows it needs to work on the revenue and expense side for the long term while maintaining its tax status and good reputation. It’s clear the next 9 months are a crisis.
I would suggest the 10 Principles are not the brand and mission to bring Burning Man forward towards new burners or new support. The 10 Principles were Larry’s distillation, in enigmatic Larry-speak, of what burners already developed on their own. It is a tool for orienting on-playa behavior. It is too abstract to attract new burners or spread the burner culture. It makes no sense to the first reader.
You need a three sentence summary of what Burning Man is to save it.
We trust you.
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Exactly. Talk about real impacts please.
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How about this:
In a divided world Burning Man provides a pathway to true connection that is uplifting and bonding. It is our mission to continue this phenomenon in the hopes that in some small way we can contribute to helping those separated by ideology and hate to build a better common society. We celebrate our connection but don’t limit ourselves to just “throwing a big party”.
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In case it hasn’t occured to you yet, consider the possibility that demand is down because of what the organization and event have evolved into. Costs go up every year, and yet ticketing remains an annual disaster, porta potties are broken, gate lines long, OSS services unreliable, art projects require an unbelievable amounts of red tape, and smug leadership refuses to increase transparency (financial and otherwise). Nobody read this blog post and came away more inspired to start planning for next year, yet alone open up a checkbook.
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This.
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Stop being activists. There’s no reason why Burning Man needs to promote its vague principles into the real world unless there’s some kind of ideological driver behind it, hidden by those vague notions. BM wasn’t political until BMorg made it political, pulling the Principals out of thin air and declaring a cultural imperative. Like religious crusaders. Just stop. Focus on the event and end the preaching that only creates division and exclusion. It’s so obvious it’s ridiculous, and not even worth the moment it takes to type this out because y’all drinking your own kool-aid. High as fuck! Like trying to reason with a drunk person.
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It would help raise money if the IMPACT of the work was articulated in a clear way. “Record numbers of people participating” is not an impact. Why do those numbers of participants matter? What is the change that is occurring in the world as a result of the work being done? “Spreading the Culture” is not an impact. How does participation shift the behavior of participants over time? How is the quality of lives and communities improved over time by participation? I know, I sound like a fucking broken record. It’s the truth though. There was a donor interested in helping answer those questions in a very quantifiable way back in 2016. Apparently doing that work wasn’t a priority. So we bough property instead.
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We are actively sharing stories of Burning Man’s global impact on lives and communities, pointing to the change that is occurring in the world.
For example, several groups affiliated with Burners Without Borders have been active providing disaster relief following Hurricane Helene: https://burnerswithoutborders.org/press/rolling-stone-helene-article/
Read how Burners in Romania connected with the elderly residents of a remote village: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/10/burning-man-arts/brc-art/sparking-kindness-connection/
Or learn how artists who learned to make big art in Black Rock City went on to become established, respected creators whose work is installed in cities around the world:
https://journal.burningman.org/2024/07/burning-man-arts/global-art/how-burning-man-empowers-artists-from-black-rock-city-to-the-world/
Another example: ongoing work to get Black Rock City off fossil fuels is inspiring sustainable event production practices around the world: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/08/black-rock-city/building-brc/inspiring-sustainability-worldwide/
These are just a few of thousands of stories of people who learned to build community, innovate and create in Black Rock City and in Burning Man communities around the world.
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Those are great stories. Can you itemize how much the Org contributed to them, because I don’t see you spent millions of dollars on these projects.
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I would like to see an accounting of the $749 cost per attendee. Share it and I’m sure we can fix the problem. There are plenty of festivals (I know BM is not a fest, no need to tell me) where the ticket price is much lower as are the costs. But they’re bringing “name the music act”, stage production, etc. etc. I’m assuming you’re rolling in the entire year-end payroll into the cost of producing the week long main burn? Why would you do that? Have you studied production companies on how to host an event? I would have hoped so. I’ve gave money during CV. I volunteer for non-profits. It’s very hard to raise money if you can’t show your ROI. The ROI isn’t always money, it can be lives saved, education advanced and contributing to society x value. I don’t see any of this here. I have no doubt that BM provides certain value, but as other have said, without financial transparency, impact/ROI numbers, and identifying and focus on mission – or w/out support for the mission as stated – I have a hard time thinking people would contribute money.
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Burning Man Project is not a production company, and never has been one. We are a nonprofit with a mission to cultivate and nurture Burning Man culture and community. The event in Black Rock City serves as the heart of this cultural movement, but it is by no means our sole project. The reason ticket costs are much lower for many other “festival” type events than for Black Rock City is because other events rely on corporate sponsorship, merchandise sales and vendor fees, which make up 25% to 30% of their revenue. Cultivating these revenue streams is in opposition to our principles, and would destroy the uniquely decommodified spirit of Black Rock City, and any other Burning Man event.
We are not rolling the entire, year-round payroll into the cost of producing Black Rock City. Specific to 2023, the cost per participant was approximately $749. This includes the cost of Black Rock City and the Arts program, as well as 80% of the time in Management and Administration, divided by the population as indicated on the Burning Man timeline website and submitted and agreed upon with the Bureau of Land Management. Management and Administration is primarily composed of Information Technology, Accounting, and People Operations, where the efforts are approximately 80% of the time focused on supporting Black Rock City.
In fact, we track, measure and document the impact of our work with the community in Black Rock City and beyond. We have published several posts in the Burning Man Journal that document the impact our work is having on the world. For example:
Several groups affiliated with Burners Without Borders have been active providing disaster relief following Hurricane Helene: https://burnerswithoutborders.org/press/rolling-stone-helene-article/
Read how Burners in Romania connected with the elderly residents of a remote village: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/10/burning-man-arts/brc-art/sparking-kindness-connection/
Or learn how artists who learned to make big art in Black Rock City went on to become established, respected creators whose work is installed in cities around the world:
https://journal.burningman.org/2024/07/burning-man-arts/global-art/how-burning-man-empowers-artists-from-black-rock-city-to-the-world/
Another example: ongoing work to get Black Rock City off fossil fuels is inspiring sustainable event production practices around the world: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/08/black-rock-city/building-brc/inspiring-sustainability-worldwide/
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At the time I write this, a week after the blog posted on October 22, there are 84 comments on this post.
One is unequivocally supportive.
Eighty-three beg Org to cut the global and year-round programs and focus instead on the main event, BRC.
I agree with the 83! On your to-do list:
1) cut the global and year-round programs budget to zero and
2) cut the BRC event budget to break even
3) fix the mission to something finite like “to produce the Burning Man event, with special attention to the inclusion of marginalized and oppressed communities”
From what I can glean, BLM permitting and law enforcement demands have greatly increased the cost of producing BRC. What other things have increased the production costs? How small does BRC need to be to break even? Please let us know!
P.S. We can live with cutting the art grant budget significantly. Smaller man, smaller temple, smaller number of installations…
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Marian Goodell makes 346k “compensation” per year. Let that sink in… Take all the time you want.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452638273
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Two things to think about:
1) We had a burn just three years ago which was free to attend. Worked out okay.
2) Burning Man exists in the real world for 50 weeks of the year. As a business – non-profits are corporations too.
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Thank you for being open and honest about the event and it’s financial situation. I’m sure that the pandemic had something to do with it. The rain last year for tent dwellers shying away is guaranteed. Getting bad raps about other things doesn’t help. I would like to add that if someone doesn’t buy a ticket like gifted tickets. Because “Burning man can’t survive without them”.Has to stop. Hard truth that’s the way it will have to be. Everyone BUYS a ticket. Maybe reduce service oriented tickets to fit the economy of scale. Scaling things back to fit the ticket sales may be required. BMORG is trying too hard to do everything. People are smart they find a way. Let the burners find their way. Recycle what you were paying for into something provided differently and cheaper. The Fireworks were really awesome at the burn. Amazing unforgettable!. could you have chosen cheaper fireworks? The current economy of the world my be reflected here. What’s wrong with letting the World change Burning Man? I am done burning my brains up over this. Cozy up under a really hot flame. Good night.
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Can’t they sell off Fly Ranch because it doesn’t seem like they use it to store year round burning man equipment and there’s also a warehouse property in Bayview in the city, don’t know if they own it or rent it but I didn’t see any heavy equipment storage, just a nice space to hold burning man events for the burning man elite. So… asking for money at $20/month is just plain rude.
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Hi everyone here is posting because they are passionate about burning man and the community. Thank you for the 10 year financial look back. Maybe I missed it. What is the 10 year financial forward, looking forecast? If we donate and the burning man organization raises the requested $20 million, will that plus a conservative financial estimate of ticket sales, etc. ensure the financial viability of the BRC event and burning man organization and activities for the next 10 years? If yes, I think many of us would be happy to donate. Just as I’ve donated most of the 15 years I’ve been part of the Burning man community and I contributed especially generously during the Covid years. Help us understand the burning man organization’s plans and financial outlook for the next 10 years and I think many of us would be happy to donate!
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Long-term financial planning is essential to sustain our mission to bring more Burning Man to the world, including through Black Rock City. Our long-term plan aims to reduce reliance on ticket sales by emphasizing diversified revenue sources and expansion of philanthropy and grants. Further, building a significant reserve and, in the long-term also an endowment, are things that will enable stability and continuity in the face of economic shifts. The reserve and deeper philanthropy will enable us to support a culturally diverse Black Rock City and keep the event decommodified.
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The shortfall in this budget is not due to Marian Goodell’s salary.
Ripping Marian to shreds for earning a salary is ignorant and non-sensical. Marian runs a major nonprofit with a budget in the tens of millions of dollars. Her salary is way *under* industry standards for a nonprofit of this size. Suggesting that Marian is the problem and that she should resign is also an absurd, cruel, and cold-hearted approach. Do you want to do this job?
CEO of BM is a thankless job and there isn’t a line of people wanting to replace her. Just think of the absurdly long list of responsibilities and also the bratty attitudes you have to deal with (just read most of the comments above!). There are so many armchair quarterbacks commenting here.
Burning Man’s org appears to be on life support. And the attitude of most burners who comment is to lay blame, complain, and offer little to no constructive suggestions. How about questions, support, and gratitude?
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Perhaps, but do other nonprofits of this size earn 95% of their income from one event? Do they rely almost entirely on volunteer labor and donated art? Much different situation than the average non profit. I commend Marian for keeping the Burn alive during covid, but besides that I have seen very little leadership of value.
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No Marian’s salary is not the ONLY problem, but it helps/hurts. In 2021, a year in which no event was put on, the org gave Marian and other top earners a 14% raise. Yes they used part of that $39M donated to keep bman alive to give themselves raises. Let that sink in.
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I’m no expert, but it looks to me like the salary was averaged out at 4.77% raise over nine burns. Seems it was lowered and then raised to get it back in line with where it should have been, during the time of the greatest inflation in our country’s history since the Great Depression. Don’t tell me you’re one of these people who complained endlessly about rising cost but then think that the org and the people that work for it should be getting paid like it’s 1995. I don’t know why you think nothing happened in 2021, but there was a lot of very unusual things that must have been complicated, new so they had to be worked out, experimental, in short, nearly transforming your business model for a couple of years and then planning to see if you can turn it back has got to be a LOT harder than just doing a version of the same old thing, over and over again. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people that cherry picks data and ask us to ignore the tree you’re standing under . Or remember history better, because they did things that I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to figure out how to do and definitely made some financial and moral sacrifices, just to get through. That’s why they call it “The big picture”. Looking at one small corner just means you’re probably going to miss most of it
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You’re right – the CEO salary is fair/low, assuming that CEO is performing well. She is very obviously not, otherwise the org would not be in this situation. She seems very nice, and truly cares about the culture. But that’s not her job.
You talk about people being ungrateful…but it’s the community who feels like they are being taken advantage of, and the BORG being ungrateful. They aren’t the ones being paid $400k. She is. Yet they are the ones being shamelessly guilted to bail out the BORG from their mess…again.
These are (mostly) not bratty attitudes – they are frustrated people, many of them seasoned high level professionals who know how to run large organizations. And yet are all being fed this dog and pony show and are justifiably mad about it. Because we care about Burning Man too, and are watching it all be risked by leaders who have tried nothing but are all out of ideas. With no real plan on how this won’t keep happening, and no true serious show of them understanding the drastic changes needing to be made. Just the same repeating tone-deaf, self-righteous communications – like the email just sent out today. Basically telling a community full of people making 1/5th her salary – and already spending thousands of hours and dollars a year contributing to the burn – that it’ll be their fault if it fails; and they need to do more. But in reality, it’s HER vision and execution of BM that’s failing, not theirs.
And there has been an OVERWHELMING number of question and suggestions. Plenty of sound and obvious advice, to anyone who is looking at this situation objectively. And many insiders have shared that this same advice and more has been given for years and ignored…tellingly by some of the same big donors who are now backing out. Yet, radio silence. Or rather, insultingly patronizing corporate 101 lip-service, which is so transparent it’s nauseating. Because the problem is, they are all questions and suggestions the BORG doesn’t want to hear. They clearly are set in their ways, and have a paternalistic view of the community. They know best because they’re the OGs, and we should be happy to lick the dust off their boots which shared the same yurt as Larry. But their vision and priorities are clearly in conflict with the greater burner community, and their arrogance and mismanagement has finally caught up with them.
Marian is sitting in a burning house, and instead of putting out the fire and fixing the damage…she’s asking for more wood to try to build her way out of it.
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I think people are making the mistake of assuming the execs at BurningMan want to solve the problem; BM leadership seems perfectly fine letting the event die if the alternative means less money for them or their projects.
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Seriously “increasing Black Rock City ticket prices to cover the nonprofit costs to get more Burning Man in the world is another untenable option. This would price out diverse community participation and is inconsistent with our principles”
that is not true and basically tells us “hey, please give us money so we can continue doing all kind of random good” instead of really focussing on the core BM BRC experience, making sure it balances, and only then once it does, start thinking about random good in the world.
They need some seriously good financial advice there.
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Is this a dream?
Only a dream?
Just a dream?
In the flicker of flames, we gather,
The Man and the Temple, rising, falling,
A pyre for our hopes, or a shadow of despair?
Burning bright, yet the world dims—
Climate cries beneath heavy skies,
Human hands scar the earth,
Lives lost in wars, cries unheard,
Children starve in the silence,
Women shatter under the weight of oppression.
Tyrants clad in power,
Fascism whispers through the cracks,
Billionaires grasping at lives,
While the Man always burns,
A phoenix or a ghost, we ask,
Is this a dream?
Only a dream?
Just a dream?
In the smoke, we search for meaning,
As ashes settle on our hearts,
We question the fire’s intent—
Does it cleanse, or merely consume?
In the chaos, we march,
Feet pounding the ground,
Voices rising in defiance,
Every step a heartbeat,
A rhythm of hope against despair,
Is it everything? Or is it nothing?
Is it meaningless?
In our gathering, in our fight,
We seek not just to burn,
But to ignite change,
To carve a new path from the ashes,
A world reborn from the flames.
So we cry out, we refuse to sleep,
Not just dreaming, but awakening—
Together we rise, together we burn,
In the light of our truth, we find meaning,
In every step of this hikoi,
This journey of the heart.
Is this a dream?
No, it is our reality—
Not just a dream, but the spark of change.
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This is lovely. Thank you. <3
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Burning since ‘99 and this shit is hilarious — Get a damned clue.
Sell some of the assets we’ve paid for over the years, move the office to Reno where office space is cheap and the reduced cost of living will allow salaries to be reduced proportionately, and stop the incessant overreaching…
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Burning Man was born in San Francisco, where the largest number of Burning Man creators and participants live. The majority of our year-round staff and volunteers also live in the Bay Area. The San Francisco office is an engaging and colorful environment that serves as a hive of connectivity for the community. It is a venue for fundraising, a gathering space for up to 120 people, and a space for staff and board meetings. When Black Rock City was paused in 2020 and 2021, we downsized the San Francisco office by half. We have always worked to keep the costs of the office down, and will continue to do so.
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That sounds great, but is it $110,000+/month great? Should you be spending as much on rent every year that you do on BRC art grants? Are you really clueless as to why that sounds insane to average burners who already donate enormous amounts of their time and money each year?
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You could absolutely run this production more cheaply from another city, but you refuse to move out of snobbery about working anywhere else because SF is (now was) “cool”. Even if the difference in rent is a drop in the bucket, the optics alone would do you wonders, as evidenced by these comments. You’re not helping yourselves by stubbornly holding onto legacy expenditures that may not make sense anymore while begging for money.
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Radical self-reliance! The nerve of this shakedown knowing the insane salary amounts each person in BM leadership receives…
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Hmmh. Who decided / when did they decide that BM was going to become so much bigger than the annual burn? What was the intention? and was any thought given to asking the community at large if they supported this?
I ask because it sounds like the financial obligations of these endeavors and ‘missions’ are now endangering the financial stability of the thing that gave birth to them in the first place.
“Hemorrhaging money” is the phrase that springs to mind.
Is the Org. too close to these side quests, locked in because of prior commitments and promises made?
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Exactly. Return BM to a financially stable annual event instead of a non-profit complex funding “year-round cultural work”.
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The priority is always to make sure Black Rock City happens. The output from BRC is now a cultural ecosystem and there are low-budget, high-impact program areas that are primarily community-driven which have come from the experience in Black Rock City. In turn those efforts outside of BRC bring in the curious and engaged who first heard about the event from another angle.
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You nailed it. The ecosystem IS primarily community-driven, and the part you seem to be missing is that IT CAN AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO WHAT IT DOES WITHOUT YOUR HELP. Focus on the event, which is the engine churning out inspired participants, and leave what happens beyond the trash fence to the community. That still fulfills the mission.
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Censorship much???????!!!!!!!!!! Jeez, thanks a lot.
Quit drinking the dam kool aid.
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THANK YOU Marian and others making this happen for decades and making this a big part of my life! For over a decade I have been volunteering about 40 hours every year. Every year I look forward to see faces of some of my co-volunteers with a few more gray hairs on their head. I think at this point burning man WILL happen no matter what (Renegade Burn..). I love the art, have hate/love relationship with portos and would love to keep doing shifts with my comrades. Consider this FANTASTIC opportunity/excuse to “trim the fat”. Show me what you have done and I will get on the monthly donor list.
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Thank you Rocky for your love, time and commitment.
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Yes, this is an inflection point. Finally. 2020 was a great year to step back, with all that goodwill from the community, and re-focus on what is important. BMORG did no such thing. How to fix this: Sell anything that doesn’t directly support the event, pull back from community support if you can’t afford it, and stop subsidizing superfluous infrastructure. (gas station? high speed internet? fancy housing for BLM? come on) And absolutely change the venue if the governments around it have become too dependent. The evidence of how important all this crap is will become so obvious if the ORG folds and burning man happens anyway. and if the org knew ticket prices weren’t covering costs, they should have raised prices long ago. I don’t need a handout for an important, yet highly optional event.
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If we were to increase Black Rock City ticket prices, we would price out community participation; this is inconsistent with our principles. We are committed to making Black Rock City more radically inclusive and accessible to more people who can experience and co-create culture and community. To do this we need to continue keeping ticket prices affordable and accessible, which requires philanthropic support.
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lol. Those concerns haven’t stopped you from raising ticket prices pretty much every year, and adding vehicle pass fees and raising the price of those.
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You aren’t selling a vision.
Here’s a vision:
“””
We believe in a world-wide network of regional burns that uphold the 10 Principles through the unique lenses of their countries and continents. As such, we are adjusting Burning Man into being the Nevada regional burn.
This change centers on two things:
1) shrinking the size of the burning man event
2) re-orging the Org with respect to burning man and the other regionals
Item (1) will allow us to cut costs and to reintroduce scarcity, stimulating FOMO ticket sales (which will be ~$0 in 2025 since everyone knows BM didn’t sell out in 2024) and camp participation.
Item (2) will see us spinning off burning man as a distinct legal entity just like Unscruz, YOUtopia, Transformus, etc. It will relocate to Reno, Nevada. The SF office will downsize and turn into an international cultural center raising funds, educating, and connecting people nationally and internationally across regional burns.
“””
You are the CEO, it’s your responsibility to make sense of and create meaning from the declining demand for burning man. So please do so, rather than improvidently clinging to a formula that has stopped working.
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Burning Man’s time has come and gone. Impermanence people.
And *yawn* regarding this “global mission” BS.
Get over yourselves everyone.
Go volunteer at a neighborhood community center.
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Please read all of these comments. There is a consistent theme: stop the outreach work and focus on the event only. Please listen to all of us.
This issue is particularly frustrating because the org obviously should never have been using funds for outreach. Even prior to the financial shortfall, the org should not have been focusing on outside projects because there are serious issues with burning man that the money should have been allocated to first.
For example, entrance and exodus lines are huge. We all know this, we all hate sitting in line, and this is a solvable problem. Shambhala this year managed to drastically cut lines from 24 hours down to nearly nothing. This year I drove straight in with no wait at a time that had a 24 hour wait the year before. The fact that Shambhala was able to shorten lines means that the org probably could have figured out how to shorten lines if they had dedicated funds to solving that problem instead of using funds for outreach.
This is 101 stuff, don’t spend your money on unnecessary outreach until burning man is running perfectly. It is extremely frustrating that the org didn’t spend their money to fix the long wait time and instead chose to work on outreach first. Marian’s post here shows that she is too invested in the outreach to be the leader the org needs now. It’s time for someone new who will narrow the orgs focus to the event only.
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Every time I see this, I am completely puzzled by those people who think it should just be some party in the desert. One of the reasons I stuck with the event and tout it so much is that it’s more than just the that little thing it once was. I’m proud to be part of the community that seeks to grow come help others, not just be a place where people can build big camps and stages and ride around in crazy vehicles that light up.
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This is typical for non-profits as well as any org. Mission creep. Empire building. The people involved will always tend to grow their org, come up with new projects, look for where to branch out. It always benefits the core one way or another.
Non-profits play on the idea, but still spend money on people and services. Really the only clear difference is there is no investor group or stock market to reward with excess but those in the org are still earning just like any other. And the bigger the org, the more to be earned, the more power, the more reach. It’s human nature to want to gain turf. Most will not know when nor where to stop. Nor want to.
This is a case of – “we make so much money, what else can we do?” “Oh wait, now we are not at peak earning or “projected earning”. So what do we do? Scale back to sustainable or push for more ?” MORE, more more.
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As we shared earlier with another contributor:
Black Rock City will always remain our priority. It serves as the heart and foundation of this global community. But also, Burning Man is not, nor has it ever been, “just a festival.” Even in the 1990s, Burners in the Bay Area and elsewhere were producing events and projects beyond the Black Rock Desert. To focus solely on producing the event would be doing a disservice to all the amazing humans and projects that are actively bringing the Burning Man ethos into the world. People come to us with ideas for how they can create participatory events and experiences, support community resilience or carry out disaster relief work; we give them tools and knowledge to make this happen on its own. We ensure that people who want to bring Burning Man into the world are able to create projects and events that are nonprofit, decommodified, participatory. Learn more in this Journal post: https://journal.burningman.org/2024/10/burning-man-arts/brc-art/sparking-kindness-connection/
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35 years is a good run. The universe is trying to tell y’all something. Let the desert be.
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As the no-burn years showed, if the org isn’t there, the desert doesn’t rest. It just gets populated by disorganized people who don’t clean up after themselves well and leave human waste there, on the native lands, and at businesses nearby
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Somebody who makes more than 3x what I do asking me for money. Cute.
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I think the vast majority of us like what you are doing and appreciate you. You’re getting some feedback from a few people and that’s okay, but I hope you just continue being good people and good leaders. It’s lucky to me that I think we have leadership in place that are quite unselfish like you are. Keep it up, and decide in your quiet moments what you think is best and do it.
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We appreciate your trust and support. <3
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Does the ticket price cover the production costs of the event (with insurances and next year surplus and such)? If so, cool. Event will happen. People will attend. *THIS* is what sows the seeds for regionals, for community, for inspiration and for art and for everything else. Attending the event at BRC.
Any other costs and expenses are irrelevant. Any proactive global outreach will have to dial down or stop. I am not even sure that anyone buying a ticket to the event for the first time even knows what programs they help funding. Regionals can – and will, and do – radically self-produce. They need no financial support from the BMOrg.
What if the ticket price does not cover the event itself? Scale down the event, or find a new venue, or take a year or more of hiatus if producing the event means losing money. BM happened on 2020, and it happened without any tickets. This is a fact.
Burning Man is a platform for participants to create their own. Make it large, make it small, but make it nothing else.
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To your question about ticket prices covering the cost to produce the event — no they do not. And, yes, we agree that Black Rock City is important to sowing the seeds of the culture.
We started the nonprofit in 2010, and always knew we were going to move towards more philanthropy to help keep ticket prices accessible for more people. This meant that when expenses increased, rather than raising ticket prices, philanthropy would be even more necessary. This is the model by which theaters, opera and ballet companies survive. Universities and museums also operate by this model. In all cases, the cost of admission or a ticket to the event doesn’t cover all of what the cultural experience is offering. All these cultural institutions rely on community support from people who believe in the work. We are moving to that model right now; it was always the plan. It’s just happening quicker than we intended.
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Dear Burning Man Org,
As a long-time Burner who has made multiple contributions to Burning Man, I want to express my deep gratitude for how profoundly this community has impacted my life. My experience serving on various Boards of Directors, including in the nonprofit sector, has given me insight into the importance of strong organizational leadership.
Having reviewed All of the above comments to and responses from the Org, I am struck by the consistent feedback emphasizing the need to focus on our core mission. Many community members are calling for a reevaluation of extraneous programs and costs, particularly during this time of fiscal uncertainty. There is a clear desire for transparency, with many expressing their willingness to help if such measures are taken.
However, I find the Org’s responses to these concerns to be insufficient and lacking in demonstrated value. This disconnect is troubling for me and many others who share similar feelings.
It is crucial for the Org to acknowledge that it cannot sustain this level of budget shortfall while relying on donations to bridge the gap. Even if additional donations were feasible, many supporters do not perceive the value in certain projects contributing to cost overruns, which only serves to alienate us further.
I urge the Org to listen closely to the community’s feedback and take decisive action to align with our shared values. Thank you.
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In 2008 I was the CEO of a company whose Revenue dropped over 50%. I promptly gave myself a 60% cut in salary and I gave all the employees a 10% cut in salary. As I recall you had 48 million dollars in the bank pre-covid. Which you spent during covid. You need to figure out how to reduce your expenses and continue your fundraising. It would be smart to give all your $50 an hour employees, we both know who they are, a pay cut. Additionally you should move out of the overpriced offices in San Francisco and get a place in Reno. Prove you are serious about keeping BM solvent, and more people will be willing to help.
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Shout out to every entrepreneur that survived 2001, 2008, COVID and this
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What if I don’t want my money to be spent to “global outreach”, which is just another way of saying marketing to build the brand? Who ever said this was necessary or even relevant to organizing the main event – or even supporting the community that focuses more on the regionals? This sounds like a very arrogant and cocky approach by those looking to feather their nest through expansion. Most of the burners I know aren’t interested in global outreach and would prefer their contributions to be spent locally and to put on the main event. Get over yourselves.
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Seems like it’s high time to scale back the Big Burn towards the attendance levels of the larger Regionals, lest TTITD collapses under its own weight…. look at the growing success of the smaller Burns, how they are spreading globally and building tight-knit communities with a more intimate, localised experience. Imagine a much smaller version of the Burn in Nevada with a more ‘manageable’ Exodus, still financially self-sufficient – returning to its roots.
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Today the BMorg double-, tripled-, etc. down on it’s fund raising efforts with their latest email this time by Stuart Mangrum. Once again, the community’s clear message has been ignored. So instead of scaling back their global aspirations and instead focusing with laser precision on just BRC & regionals so that they can live within their financial means, they press ahead.
Today’s email states:
“…the current money challenges are predictable growing pains rooted in our transition from an event production company with a nonprofit side-hustle to an arts and culture nonprofit that also performs the annual magic trick that is Black Rock City. We are taking a cue from other cultural nonprofits, such as orchestras and theater companies, and swinging the finance needle away from ticket sales and deeper into philanthropic support now and into the future. ”
This is precisely opposite to what the commenters above–and on other forums–have posted repeatedly along with detailed, cogent recommendations on how to right their financial ship. Clearly, they are uninterested in changing direction and making the hard decisions required.
We donated joyfully to BMorg during the pandemic as we believe in the community and the event. No more.
Sadly, It seems that transparent, bold & meaningful change will not occur until they are sufficiently starved financially that forces them to focus on what the community wants and that’s financially viable.
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Dear Miriam and all of the 17 paid directors and board members, you are no longer of service to all of the worldwide burners that comprises Burning Man. It’s not just you founding lot anymore, but all of the hundreds of thousands of Burners, who have also been toiling selflessly, at the grassroots level for years, that have spread the burner values, ideas and beauty into the world. Your Mission has to change with the times. It is about successfully inspiring and influencing a core of 70,000 people a year at a place on the playa we call home. So when we all go back to our shitty lives, we still want to make the default world a better place. We are the passionate brand ambassadors that influence people to go to the Burn. You are our servant leaders there to setup the event and then get out of the way so we can do our work in our own communities. If you don’t realize this and think that your overfunded outreach programs, distracting real estate projects and funding of a vastly bloated administration is your core mission, then you are on a runaway train. If you do not hyperfocus back inwards on getting back to core task of setting up our little theme camp in the desert called Burning Man for your dearest Burner family, then your true enduring legacy will not be how the Burning Man Project saved the world, but how you lost sight of the true prize and forever ended the event as we know it. You might not believe it within your own echo chamber, but it’s not just some small minority of burners that are at a very real inflection point with your leadership. We are not going to pay more camp dues, buy an even higher priced tickets, or volunteer blindly until we see that you can actually eat some humble pie, change your tone, course correct and get on a sustainable financial track. But, if you do not, then this mutant trainwreck you are conducting is truly a bust and when you do make your final exodus from the wreckage, I’ll gift you all with stickers that says: “The BMorg really did fuck your Burn in 2025”.
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I think that you have stated perfectly what we are all thinking. Quit trying to spread the ethos around the world, at our expense im sure, and focus on the party in the desert. I can only imagine how they have spent on lavish trips and offices a in San Francisco. Im too disgusted by this to add to your comments . Thanks so much
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One day later…always sleep on something before sending. Guys, sorry for the snark and tone of my comments above. I’m trying a slice of that delicious humble pie. The thought of the Burn not happening definitely triggered my anxiety. I did a lot more reading on this site about the efforts that have been made by the Org. They might be good ideas on their own: become an incubator for regionals around the world, help people in need during disasters, do more solar stuff, secure geothermal rights so that the inevitable power plant won’t destroy the actual playa and also offset some carbon credits, build a private retreat center at a unique ranch, provide better infrastructure for key staff in Gerlach and more. But after all that, I really don’t understand how all these activities are the central vision of the Burn anymore. Miriam, please take out the corporate-speak and budgeting talk and just hold a giant camp meeting with us, because we need to hash out a new vision together, one that we all will want to support.
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I’ll send you 20. First send me a complete detailed expense report from last year. How about try to focus on a party in the desert for a week. Quit all the other nonsense.
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L
Remember 2021,,, it will happen with or without you
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Abso-fucking-lutely
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Do we really need world outreach???
Do we really need an airport???
So much wasted money.
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