The Jackrabbit Speaks newsletter — affectionately known as the JRS — has been burning brains since 1997, when it was penned by the original Jackrabbit, now Burning Man Project’s CEO Marian Goodell. Earlier today Marian sent an important message, written in the style of her early JRS editions. We’ve shared it here in its entirety. Enjoy!
Hi,
If you’re getting this email it’s because you’ve probably had a ticket to Burning Man in the last 20 years.
Either Burning Man is still a huge part of your life, you F **#$% ing hate Burning Man, or maybe you’re ambivalent. Wherever you land, it’s probably been just as impactful for you as it has been for many of us.
What started for me in 1995 at the edge of a dry lakebed — where a tall man wearing a bedsheet and holding a plastic flamingo told me to “drive 12 miles to a black mountain and then left until you see five pointy things” — has evolved from a bunch of weirdos with guns into a global institution reimagining and reinventing what the world could be like if we did things a little bit differently.
Burning Man now is a worldwide cultural phenomenon that, since 1986, has been built and experienced by nearly a million people, both in Black Rock City and at more than 80 annual official events around the world. You may be one of those people. Whether or not you come to Black Rock City regularly, you are part of the community and we value the ways you have contributed to make Burning Man happen. Thank you.
It’s a little-known fact that revenue from tickets does not support the cultural movement that Burning Man has become. We do not want to raise ticket prices. In the name of Radical Inclusion, we actually prefer to lower them. But, the fact of the matter is that the cost to produce Black Rock City in 2023 was $749 per participant while the main sale ticket price was $575. You can read more about this inflection point and the reduced ticket sales in 2024 and how this has forced a much larger fundraising goal to keep operations going. Or explore the summary financial information going back 10 years to see how the higher-priced tickets have been subsidizing the event for some time, and how the drop in those sales threatens Burning Man.
The plan for 2025 and beyond is to flip the script. It’s time to think about the most Burning Man way to close this gap.
No, we won’t go towards corporate sponsorship, additional RV fees or merchandise sales. Instead, we will turn to the community and invite participation and support to help fill the gap. Yes, we have reduced the number of regular year-round employees on staff, and we’re diving into the budget to trim what is already a lean and tight Black Rock City infrastructure and nonprofit management. But that alone isn’t enough.
Now is the time to ensure that Burning Man can persist into the future — not just as an annual event in the desert, but as a cultural institution that will be here decades from now, empowering future generations to reimagine the world they live in.
I would certainly prefer that our focus be solely on pushing the edge, rather than having to raise money all the time. But as we continue to provide containers for the future to be prototyped, we operate in the context of the default world, and that requires ongoing charitable support year after year to keep this thing going.
You already know we’re not a normal nonprofit — we never wanted to be “normal.” But we are a nonprofit and to keep doing what we do, we need your help.
F-*&$ commercial sponsorship! \<>/
Contribute today so we can:
- Prototype new ways of living, working and being together
- Support art and artists through grants
- Get Black Rock City off fossil fuels
- Nurture Burning Man culture around the world
- Capture the DNA of what we are doing to hand off to the next generation
- Get funky and bring more cacophony of chaos
We are moments away from announcing the Black Rock City 2025 theme — one that’s rich with creative possibilities! Simultaneously, community-led Temple and art teams hopeful for an art grant are hard at work on their proposals for the 2025 event. We urgently need your support to finish 2024 and prepare for 2025 and beyond.
If your friendships, community, family, or personal life have benefited or could benefit from the magic, creativity, and inspiration of Burning Man, I urge you to please support the movement with a gift today.
How much would you pay to keep corporate sponsorship out of Burning Man?
Listen, I am happy to fundraise — it’s an important part of who we are and what we need to do. But, let’s not get so tangled up in that part of the process that we lose sight of what my colleagues and I are driven to do with you. We’re facilitating the building of a massive city on a dry lakebed. Our relationships and friendships with 1,000 temporary seasonal employees help further drive and facilitate 10,000 volunteers directly related to the city infrastructure, who in turn are in service to the 75,000 participant creators of one hell of a magical Brigadoon appearing and disappearing in the middle of the desert. And then THAT brings collaboration, communication, empowerment, resilience, self-reflection and joy back to the world.
I don’t want to raise ticket prices. I wish we could offer Black Rock City as a gift for free. I want more art. I want ephemeral pop-up cities around the world thriving with life and possibility. We are not in service to consumption. We are in service to social interaction. Let’s realize the cultural impact that the experiences we have at Burning Man events can have in the cities and towns we all live our day-to-day lives in. This is the long game toward a cultural shift, and I believe strongly that Burning Man has a role to play.
As our dear friend and OG Burner Larry Harvey once said:
“We think Burning Man has great application to the world, but a larger iteration can only occur as people incorporate the essential ethos of it. The Ten Principles are meant to describe that ethos, that way of life; and then, by their own inspiration and by collaboration with others in the everyday world, people will find applications that are as various as the many gifts they bring to it. It has to be culturally transmitted that way.”
He also spoke about money not “being inherently good,” nor “irretrievably bad,” and that money can be made “to serve non-monetary values in a way that’s self-sustaining” to the culture.
“If there is a moral here, it is that money isn’t moral. It is not inherently good, it is not irretrievably bad; it is like water as it tumbles in its pell-mell progress through our world. But money can be canalized by culture; it can be made to serve non-monetary values in a way that’s self-sustaining.”
It is with these words in my heart that I ask you to join me as I am turning my annual donation into a recurring monthly donation.
Whether or not you regularly attend Burning Man, I hope you’ll join all of us in supporting Burning Man in Black Rock City and in the cultural work that we do out in the world.
Stick with us as we unfold the story together. \<>/
Thank you,
Marian
P.S. Why aren’t we all covering the logos on our trucks like we used to? Let’s make that a thing again. )*(
Cover image of The Man, 1995 (Photo by Rick Egan)
