If Burning Man Dies, Is There A Will?

Is this it for Burning Man? If they don’t get enough donations, there will be no future.

In this post I will provide a brief overview of the Civil War dividing the community, with multiple competing Burn night events; crunch the numbers with some financial analysis; and share some comments from other Burners about the current situation.

They are depending on the extraordinary generosity of “their” community…but what are they prepared to give in return?

So far it appears that Radical Inclusion does not extend to allowing We The Burners expected to fund this Giga-LARP to see what has actually been going on with their financial situation. The figures are public data and the charitable purpose of the organization is to spread Burner Culture around the world. So why not spread the public data to the Burners? Why do we only have 2018 financials to look at when it’s September 2020 and unless we raise $1.5 million in the next month, it’s all over?

This year a bunch of tickets were sold in the earlier days of the COVID-19 outbreak. Then it looked like events were being canceled all across the globe. How would They enforce social distancing when 10% of Black Rock City’s population visit the Orgy Dome alone? Could the Federal Government legitimately host the largest event on their land during COVID-19 Lockdowns?

Of course not. Burning Man was always going to be canceled, like every other big event in the world this year. The question is: will it ever come back? If the Org dies, could Burning Man live on?


Which Burning Man Is Best For Burning Man?

The different responses to the crisis from the Org and the Burner community have now created a civil war.

Black Rock City? Ocean Beach? Baker Beach? Fly Ranch? BRCvr? Some of these events were open for any Burner to attend for free. Some were theoretically free, but subject to technical challenges. Some were shut down by the authorities. Others were ultra-exclusive, invitation-only.

Who had the most fun? Who changed the world the most? What is the yardstick by which a “true Burn” should now be measured?

Source: burningman.org, Sep 2020

Sorry, Sunshine. If you really are about Burning Man, you’d know that the livestream has been available for free on YouTube to any member of the public for many years now.

This year they shifted it to Instagram. Where are all the home burns?

The BJ said there were “thousands” of home celebrations and shared a “highlight reel” of 200 of them:

It’s not quite the same. Maybe they should have come up with a hashtag. I struggled to find any on YouTube other than the erstwhile Halcyon:


Burn The Pixels

It’s funny how this year’s theme of “The Multiverse” (announced October 2019 right before the release of Microsoft’s HoloLens 2) seemed to presciently predict the move to Virtual Reality that synchs up with Silicon Valley’s latest desired direction. Enter BMorg’s new “community crisis” where they can work their “Civic Responsibility” public shaming attack vector into the promotion of their new online portal – Kindling. Just in time for Playstation 5, XBox X/S and Oculus Quest 2…

Image: Diva Marisa, burningman.org

Virtual Burning Man happened, aka BRCvr – where the Principle of “Immediacy” means you can instantly teleport in to speak to your friends in a cloud at the Temple.

Supposedly 51,000 “digital devices” tuned in for the virtual Man Burn(s).

Did you go? How was it? Did the DJs play on time? Did you have a “Peak Experience™”? Please tell us in the comments.

Burning Man’s newest project “Kindling” is a platform for live events and virtual get-togethers. This is a site where you can explore the various Bunring Man multiverses (multiversi?)

Some of this stuff looks kinda cool. How much of this year’s budget went to building these virtual reality platforms?

Larry Harvey famously said “Black folks don’t like to camp as much as white folks”. Things have moved on now we have the multiverse, and now BMorg says “Black Lives Matter”.


Radical Exclusivity

An elite group of 25 sherpas production staff and 10 owners volunteers gathered at Flysalen to burn The Man while wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

Although linked from the Burning Man Project official web site, this video is Unlisted – perhaps because of the negative ratio.

Who paid for this giant effigy, complete with fireworks and other pyrotechnic techniques? Traditionally the budget to construct and erect The Man is well into six figures.

This event was livestreamed on Instagram, but for some reason not on the Burning Man Project’s official YouTube channel.

For an IG account with 1m+ followers to only get 11,000 or so likes from the main event that brings those followers together is a disappointing ratio – implying almost 99% of followers did NOT like it. Compounding that even further, there would be few social media posts in history that garnered 11k likes and 80k views but only a dozen comments – and not a single negative one. Clearly, the BMorg Ministry of Propaganda censors have been out in full force, fooling no-one.

The Burning Man Project reassured us “we will always Burn The Man”, but Burners were skeptical:

Magnum offered one of the best comments I’ve ever seen at Burningman.org:

Source: burningman.org, Sep 2020

Getting Down on the Beach

Many SF Burners decided to go to Ocean Beach for a large celebration, perhaps 3000 people. The authorities then closed the carpark so San Francisco’s largest beach could not be used at all on Labor Day Weekend.

San Francisco’s mayor admonished these Burners as “absolutely reckless and selfish”.

No data has been shared on how many contracted COVID-19 from attending the event, so I’m going to assume it was Zero.

Source: SFgov.org

Not every politician was a hater:

A smaller group went to Baker Beach, officially the home of the first ever Burning Man (though we’ve shown evidence that earlier effigy burns had occurred at Ocean Beach and also in Sausalito). This Man was displayed but not burned.

Source: vjay3, Reddit
Source: Reddit
Snake Theater Beelzebub Burn, Sausalito 1979. Image: Bruce Forrester
Wicker Man Burn by Elder Mech, Ocean Beach 1985

Radical Self Reliance

A Rebel Alliance of Burners chose to show up at the Playa anyway. Just people camping, with sound systems and glowy shit. According to a video posted at the Reno Gazette-Journal somewhere between 2,000-5,000 people showed up at “Not Burning Man”.

Reminds me of my first Burn in 1998. They had aircraft, art cars, flamethrowers, and even port-a-potties!

Image: Tally California, YouTube

What do we need the Borg for?

The argument has always been that we need the Org because without bureaucracy, people will die. However this was one of the rare years in recent history where nobody died at Burning Man.

Well, there’s one thing we know we can rely on the Org for: hitting Burners up for donations. They’re at it again now, causing huge controversy.

Comments are disabled, because Radical Inclusion and Civic Responsibility and Immediacy and Communal Effort and Radical Self-Expression and stuff. There is only one Principle that matters now: G(r)IFTING.

The guilt trip is strong – “if you want us to live, we need $1.5 million by the end of October…this is not a drill”.

You could be forgiven for interpreting this as they need to raise $1.5 million or the event will not survive. You have to read the fine print and click through to get the actual information.

What they are really asking for is $12 million just to get them through January – March 2021. Even though the previous information we have, when they were definitely having a Burning Man later that year AND paying for event-related expenses left over from the previous one was $10 million for January – April 2020.

Source: burningman.org, Apr 2020

That’s right, they are planning on INCREASING their expenses despite not having an event – while claiming they have cut their budget 51%.

What they are saying is that even without putting on Burning Man it will cost them $32.3 million in 2020. Their “worst case scenario” without building Black Rock City, still requires a burn rate of more than $2 million per month. Por quoi?

Burning Man is so much more than a week in the dust. Our nonprofit organization spends the other 51 weeks sharing the 10 Principles, supporting community initiatives, funding artists, and elevating Burning Man culture

Source: burningman.org May 28 2020

So much more? Like, $2 million+ a month more? What is the world getting for that?

In April they told Billboard:

The vast majority of ticket revenue is spent producing Black Rock City. Some of our largest expenses include staffing, fees paid to the federal, state and local government agencies, heavy equipment rental, and porta-potties (for more details check out this pie chart of expenses).

So if there is no Black Rock City in a year, wouldn’t the “vast majority” of expenses no longer be an issue? There are no Federal, state or local government fees, no heavy equipment rental, no porta-potties, no commissary, and no event-related staffing. In their official reports they say they have around 1000 staff, but how many of those are for the event and how many are for the charitable purpose of spreading Burner culture? If spreading Burner culture gets paused for a year or two but the event survives, isn’t that better than spreading Burner culture the same way as before until you burn through all the cash and the event never happens again?

In April they told us they “Now we’re in the process of implementing salary cuts, making layoffs, and slashing expenses.” So what happened there? How many were laid off? How were they able to reduce expenses?

Source: burningman.org, May 2020

If your revenues drop 90%, you need to slash your staff by 90% and the rest of your expenses by 90% – at least. This is Business 101. Black Swan events require a re-think of the business plan.

How many fixed and variable expenses were they able to slash? How many projects were put on hold, and how many new projects were initiated? Fundraising expenses were just over $900,000 in 2018 – has this been cut?

In 2018 the amount of non-Black Rock City revenue was about $3 million. What’s happened to all that?

What did they sell in 2020? We know about the Directed Group Sale, although the Billboard article states that all they did was a first “FOMO Sale”. Did the Low Income sale happen? How many $140 vehicle passes did they sell – 20,000?

BMorg said in April “If everyone who bought a DGS or FOMO ticket asks for a full refund, we would be refunding approximately $22 million in ticket revenue”. As usual, you have to parse the wording carefully. Tickets are not the only thing they bill their customers for. Here’s our estimate:

Of the 39,000 tickets sold, 6,000 donated all or some to the Burning Man Project. This only resulted in $3 million. 3,000 more Burners donated another $1 million.

Source: burningman.org, July 2020

Then you have another $3 million in major gifts and $2.7 million in Federal government COVID assistance loans, plus donations since July – bringing the total to at least $10 million. Without “the vast majority” of expenses going to Black Rock City…surely this should be enough to survive at least a year? Why did they need to spend ANOTHER $10 million on top of that, burning through the entirety of their cash reserves in a matter of months? Why do they plan to keep spending money at this level?

Source: burningman.org “Big Picture”

What happens if their fundraising only raises (say) $10m for Q1 2021? What happens if the plague still exists in 2021 and not every Burner has been vaccinated? Are we going to have to donate $12 million every quarter in perpetuity just to keep their web site going?

$12 million in a quarter works out to $48 million a year. Their 2020 annual budget was $53.3 million. What happened to the 51% cut?

Their 2019 Annual Report says the “overhead” of the charity is 20.99% – just under $10 million for a year. 51% budget cut should get this down to $5 million, but you could argue that things could be slashed even further than that if no event is being put on for 12 months or more.


Crunching the Numbers

Source: Burning Man Project 2019 Annual Report

Since we don’t have 2019 numbers from the IRS, I’ve just taken the financial information provided in the 2019 Annual Report. If you read the tiny sideways fine print it explains that these are actually the 2018 numbers.

History suggests that every year revenue, payroll and profit tax-free cash surplus goes up.

With no more Burning Mans to plan, everyone working from home, and a financial crisis requiring millions of dollars of community help…surely somebody should do the books?

While not precise, the cumulative picture since The Burning Man Project became a 501(c)3 tax-exempt “non-profit” on January 1 2014 is certainly illustrative.

They’ve taken in more than a quarter of a billion dollars over 6 years, and paid out less than $10 million in grants – of which a large proportion went to infrastructure items like The Man, Man Base and Temple.

The Board paid themselves more than they paid the artists. And my understanding is that most Board members are doing the job for free.

Source: Burning Man Project 2019 Annual Report

The “overhead ratio” is stated as 20.99%. Presumably this is a percentage of revenues. Black Rock City is 80.1% (of expenses). With 2020 budgeted expenses of $53.3 million, this should be about $42.7 million. Call me crazy but if you don’t create Black Rock City for a week why would you have Black Rock City expenses? Even if there are some, why would they be more than a million dollars or two?

A more standard calculation of a charity’s “overhead” is how much gets taken in as revenues, and how much is given out in grants. From the cumulative data (ignoring 2020 and assuming 2019 is the same as 2018), this figure is 96%.

For every $1 you give the Burning Man Project, they give 4 cents out in art grants, keep 8.5 cents in profit, and spend 88 cents on overhead.


Radical Transparency

Burning Man were very pleased in 2015 when Philanthropy.com called them “An Unlikely Leader in Transparency”. As a businessman with an accounting degree who has looked at thousands of corporate financial statements in my life, I would say any leadership from the Org in regards to transparency is indeed unlikely.

Source: Burning Man Project 2019 Annual Report

The CEO’s commentary for the 2019 Annual Report said they handed out $1.4 million in grants in their Honoraria, Global Art Grant and Community Grant programs. If revenues were $48 million, this is less than 3%. Why the big drop from 2018? Most likely this is the cost of “internal” art projects like The Man and Man Base.

The math to calculate “grants” was altered several years back to include the construction of The Man, Man Base and surrounding sculptures, and some of the Temple costs (see Follow The Money, March 2016). They can’t hold the event if they don’t build The Man, so that should be considered Program Cost rather than a Grant. It used to be itemized as a line item in the Afterburn Reports, now it is all very murky.

“Burning Man Arts” is listed at 7.74%. I can’t reconcile that number to anything in the Form 990, so your guess is as good as mine how that’s calculated and what it actually means.

BMorg are suing the Federal Government in order to stop a FOIA request to reveal the structure of their ticket sales, something that has been redacted in previous FOIAs.

Source: Bureau of Land Management, via FOIA

They said in a Court filing in the Northern District of California that “public disclosure of the Revenue Report is tantamount to public disclosure of Burning Man’s entire pricing structure, which is one of Burning Man’s most sensitive and private business details.” Except that it’s a tax-exempt charity, not a business, and its financial information is supposed to be publicly available. Even if it were a business, the reason for commercial secrecy is to maintain competitive advantage; this event has no competitors. Not only that, but their ticket and pricing structure is disclosed publicly on their web site.

We have previously been able to establish that they oversell tickets well beyond their official maximum capacity.

Why should the number of VIP tickets to the largest event on Federal land be treated as a State Secret? Are they providing inaccurate information on their own web site about how many FOMO and how many DGS tickets they sell? What is the difference between “approximately” and “actually”?


Fuck Yer Community! P.S. Give Us Money!

In times of difficulty the community comes together: Civic Responsibility, Communal Effort, Gifting. Sadly, the community who turned this event from some Cacophonous camping to one of the world’s most famous and popular raves has been decimated under the Era of Charity.

People who gave their heart and souls to Burning Man, who made it their life’s work, who played pivotal roles in it becoming the success it is today…can barely even get any DGS tickets for their camp these days, having been shunted aside for glamorous and wealthy Instagram “influencers” flying in on the Org’s private airline to stay in $25,000 hotel rooms with porcelain toilets.

Flushing toilet at hotel camp, 2014

Why shouldn’t the tourists pay? Why does it have to be the sherpas?

Why not just roll the 2020 ticket sales forward into 2021? If 2021 is canceled to, keep them valid for 2022? If Burners want refunds, let them sell their tickets through STEP – where BMorg still gets to earn incremental revenue from handling, shipping and other fees? This would seem to be a simple solution that works for the Burners, even if it would still require some belt-tightening from the Org and possibly some of their “changing the world” projects to go on the back-burner for a year or two. Have another DGS sale in 2021 and forget about the Main Sale. Keep Burning Man for the Burners.

$1.5 million would be a lot of money for any charity to raise in a hurry, let alone an arts project. However, it’s chump change for Burning Man. I’m told by reliable sources that the Google guys have spent more than that just for art installations in their camps. Some camps have $5 million just in art cars. In the past BMorg Board members like Chip Conley and Jim Tananbaum have allegedly had camp budgets higher than that. The New York Times wrote about $2 million Burning Man camps in 2014.

Should We The Burners get our COVID stimulus and use it to support Black Rock City, the annual week-long temporary creation of the Burning Man Project? Or should we use it to support the “other” activities of the year-round staff, even if Black Rock City can’t be built for another few years? What about all the people whose homes just burned down in the worst fire season in California history? Are they less worthy than the team at the Org that’s making the world a better place on six-figure salaries?


Where There’s No Way, There’s a Will?

In March CEO Marian Goodell told us our community would be fine because Radical Self Reliance:

Like you, we’ve been watching with alarm and growing dread as the coronavirus has spread around the globe. And this week, it hit home hard for all of us at our San Francisco office, as residents of California were ordered to shelter in place for at least three weeks.

It might not surprise you though to learn that for many of us, sheltering in place wasn’t that hard of a mental reach — we already know and practice how to provide for ourselves and others. So we dusted off our playa shopping lists, hung up some blinky light strings, and got set to be home for a while.

Our extended community has in a very real way been practicing for this moment for years — how to provide for ourselves in a difficult environment, and then how to take care of each other and those in need. Just like on the playa, once you’ve provided for your own basic needs, the impulse we’re seeing so many have next is, “Who can I help? How can I contribute?”

Source: burningman.org, Mar 2020

As usual, the promises were flowery and exciting. Burners were going to solve coronavirus AND climate change:

To that end, over the next several months, we’ll be rolling out a series of updates, suggestions, and new tools, for how we will safely and responsibly come together at the end of this summer. (If someone has a design for a DIY foot pump hand-wash station, for example, we’d love to see it.)

Some have asked what if anything this means for our long-term sustainability plans. The short answer is we need to walk and chew gum at the same time. Climate change threatens the same scale of broad, deep impacts as the coronavirus, albeit over a longer time scale, and also offers similar choices to each of us as to how we acknowledge, and accept personal responsibility, for our role as a member of our global community to help solve that crisis as well.

We intend to make the annual event and global community an ever-evolving laboratory of innovation and experimentation, where the best ideas can be tried, refined, and shared in an open and collaborative way.

Source: burningman.org, Mar 2020

Six months later, what happened? What are the new tools and ideas that we can use to get through this difficult time? Virtual reality? New machines for washing hands?

If Burning Man collapses because they can’t support $18 million a year in annual salaries and consulting fees from $10 million in donations and government bailouts…what happens to all their assets? The brand, the “Burner Profiles” corporate database, the multi-million dollar real estate holdings, the royalties from movies, books, photo shoots & other commercialization of intellectual property, the stock they’ve been Gifted, the millions of dollars of cash in the bank?

The trademarks are valued on the books at $300,000. It seems a little low for a party bringing in a cool quarter billion every 6 years. They’ve spent way more than that on legal fees fighting to defend the trademarks. Goodwill is on the books at $4.2 million. This relates to the initial transaction where Black Rock City LLC got absorbed by the Burning Man Project and Decommodification LLC was spun out as a private company ostensibly controlled by the 6 official founders (although the publicly-available paperwork said something different) that owned all the IP. Technically, amortizing intellectual property over time is acceptable accounting practice. In reality, the few millions paid to buy Burning Man back off the 6 founders looks cheap. They made more than that since just in vehicle passes! The value of the intangible assets has increased dramatically.

Who gets it? Can Elon Musk or Sergey Brin step in and pick it all up for cents on the dollar? Will it be handed back to Stanford or DARPA?


Is More Gifting the Only Idea?

Here are some suggestions for them. These things could be cheesy (but Burning Man survives), or you could tap into what is probably the world’s greatest creative community for ideas and contributions to solve the current problems in a cool way that makes the event sustainable and able to grow even bigger and better in the future.

  1. Sell art – you have a community of artists and global audience of art enthusiasts
  2. Pre-sell tickets to future events
  3. Sell tickets to COVID-friendly events in the present
  4. Sell tickets to electronic gatherings in the multiverse
  5. License the brand
  6. Sell merch
  7. Sell Zoom calls with curated groups
  8. Sell advertising
  9. Sell corporate sponsorships
  10. Paid directorships
  11. Pre-sell VIP tickets to Commodification Camps
  12. Sell camp spots on AirBnB
  13. Sell timeshares
  14. Come up with a new and more expensive type of vehicle pass, “RV pass”
  15. Pre-sell Airline Tickets
  16. Pay-per-view Virtual Reality regional events
  17. Distributed fundraising – let the global Burner community run their own fundraisers
  18. Have a smaller event at Fly Ranch that requires less of a year-round team
  19. Big-ticket items at the Charity Auction
  20. Sell plant and equipment
  21. Rent plant and equipment to non-Burning Man events
  22. Sublet office space
  23. Sell real estate holdings
  24. Use some of their massive cash reserves
  25. Reduce head count
  26. Reduce work hours
  27. Reduce salaries
  28. Reduce fixed costs
  29. Reduce variable costs
  30. Sell Burner tokens in an ICO

If it was up to me, we’d do everything I just listed and more. Survival is at stake, there’s no time to fuck around with “nice to haves”. The Ten Principles were not supposed to create hills to die on.

Of course, despite the “laboratory of innovation” promised by the CEO, it’s likely that none of these ideas will be considered. The options are “a) more of the same from the same people, or b) we let Burning Man die”. If Burning Man does die out, of course it will not be the Org’s fault for financial mismanagement, it will be Burners’ fault for not Gifting enough.

You might say “the principle of Decommodification says we can’t sell things”, but we’ve debunked that here time and time again. There are more than 100 licensed vendors selling stuff on the Playa every year, which we’ve proved with FOIA requests to the Bureau of Land Management. They’ve been selling merch since practically day one and have never stopped. They have no problem coming up with new things to buy like vehicle passes and VIP tickets and increasing the price of those every year, just like the most rapacious price gouging customer-hating greedy capitalists you’ve ever seen. Profiteering at its finest, and hey, hats off to them for that – but they have some gall to then put that same hat out again for donations on top of it all. This time, the ask is to give them money just for being fabulous while “working” from home, not for throwing the party.


Conclusion

The Burning Man Project has great potential as a business turnaround story. In my opinion it has been financially mismanaged by a team who have lost touch with their customers.

The best thing for Burning Man may be to let the whole thing burn out, so we can rebuild some Phoenixes from the ashes. The Org brings an arsenal of public shaming and social capital to the Civil War; Burners bring the art cars, music, sex and drugs, and good times. Who do you want to win?

Do we need a leveraged buy-out? There are certainly enough financial wizards in the community with the Means, Motive and Opportunity to pull that off. Are the current management team up to the task?

[Featured image credit: Andy Barron, Reno Gazette-Journal]


Communal Effort & Radical Self-Expression

Some selected comments from Burners on De Interwebz:

Source: Facebook, Official Unofficial Burning Man Group
Source: burningman.org, April 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020
Source: burningman.org, May 2020

BMOrg Asks For A Gift AGAIN

Image: Vincent Albanese/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Not every charity has a $30 million budget. Image: Vincent Albanese/Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

As if we don’t have anything better to do with our money at Christmas time. Anyone else get one of these?

It’s not even a week since the last Jackrabbit arrived, begging us to give them money. Nigerian banking scammers don’t spam me this much.

What “experiences that transform peoples’ lives” will you create with our money, BMOrg? A trip to Amsterdam for “community leader” Crimson Rose?

How’s that transparency coming along?


 

From: Burning Man <steven.young@burningman.org>

Burning Man Project

Dear Steve

As you may know, 2014 has been a transformative year for Burning Man. We are growing and changing to more effectively support the Global Network, our Arts and Civic Engagement Program, and building Black Rock City to support growing connections and foster creativity around the world.

We are reaching out to you again to remind you that the end of the year is approaching. Everything we do is driven by community participation, communal effort and gifting. With your help, we will reach our goal of supporting more art, artists and community leaders.

We will focus our momentum on programs and experiences that transform people’s lives. Together we can inspire more creative and connected communities.

We appreciate your participation in our community and we appreciate your help in extending our work beyond Black Rock City. Please give today, every gift is valued no matter it’s size.

To learn more about the programs your gift supports,
follow the links below.

ARTS:
Global Art Grants
Big Art for Small Towns
Black Rock City Art

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT:
Civic Art Program
Burners Without Borders
Grants for Community Initiatives

GLOBAL NETWORK OF EMERGING COMMUNITY LEADERS:
Regional Network of over 250 volunteer Regional Contacts on 5 continents
Global Leadership Conference in San Francisco (April, 2015)
European Leadership Summit in Amsterdam (February, 2015)

Please make a donation today!

Want to learn more? Click here to read the Jack Rabbit Speaks…

catalyst for creative culture in the world

 


 

Related Posts:

All We Want For Chri$tma$ Is Your Money talked about the recent “Special Edition” of the Jackrabbit Speaks, which rather than wishing us a Merry Christmas, was dedicated to us giving BMOrg money, including a cut of our Amazon shopping.

Dear Burning Man… A reader responds to an email from BMOrg soliciting money.

The Art of Giving went through everything Burning Man Project (BMP) has done since they came up with it 4 years ago.

Art World Rocked By Burning Man’s Latest Move looked at the merger between BRAF and BMP, and the poor track record of both charities in giving grants out to the causes they support, versus accumulating cash in the bank and spending it on overheads.

2013 Charity Results looked at the performance of BRAF from the latest IRS filing. We’re still waiting on the 2013 IRS Form 990 for BMP.

Art Versus Money looked at the terribly one-sided Arts Grant contract, that seems to treat artists with contempt.

Charity Versus Tax-Free considers the idea that “non-profit” is not the same as “charitable”, and looks at some of the clauses in the organization’s new Bylaws that don’t seem consistent with Directors running lavish Commodification Camps.

Burning Man’s Gift Economy And Its Effect On Mainstream Society talks about the hypocrisy of BMOrg claiming credit for the charitable efforts of Burners, and pretending they gave financial support to charities that they actually didn’t – including a couple that were substantially funded by myself, and received $0 from BMOrg who promoted them as examples of “all the good Burning Man is doing in the world”.

 

Dear Burning Man…

A guest post from our reader Sandstorm. The email he’s responding to is shared at the end of this post.



Like many members of the Burning Man community I’ve spent the past 2+ months feeling justifiably concerned about the topic of Commodification Camps (aka Turnkey Camps aka Plug And Play Camps) and their place in and impact upon Burning Man and the Burner community. Like many other Burners I’ve voiced my concerns about this subject on websites such as Facebook (FB) and Burning Man’s ePlaya bulletin board, as well as in the comments sections of some of the relevant recent entries on the official Burning Man Blog. I’ve also used my artistic skills to address what I call the Commodification Camp Controversy (CCC). I’ve recently created a handful of light-hearted satirical images that speak to this subject and I’ve posted them in the unofficial Burning Man group on FB. I’ve included one of those images here.

BIG JIM JTS

2 days ago I and countless other Burners received a fundraising email from the Burning Man Project (BMP). I was not pleased when I read that email and that’s because until now Burning Man’s official response to the CCC has been at best lacking and at worst inept. After reading that email I carefully drafted and then sent a reply email to the BMP. I then posted the contents of that email in the unofficial Burning Man group on FB and also on ePlaya. I did so because I wanted to share with other Burners how I was trying to constructively address the CCC. I was honestly surprised by the amount of positive response that I received to those posts.

At some point on Thursday evening the owner of burners.me reached out to me on FB via PM and asked me if I’d be willing to post on his site my above mentioned email to the BMP and some of the CCC related images that I’ve recently posted on FB. I asked him to let me think about the matter before I said yes or no to him and I did so for a variety of reasons.

Although I’m a 6 time burner I believe and know that I’m a nobody in the Burner community. I’m sure as hell not a spokesperson for this community. I’m also neither an attention seeker nor am I someone who seeks to or enjoys to stir up discord about sensitive topics. Given those facts and given the amount of debate surrounding both the CCC and burners.me I was initially reluctant to share on this site the reply email that I recently sent to the BMP. That said, I know that I wrote that email with integrity and honesty and thus I’m comfortable with sharing it here.

My reply email to the BMP seems to have resonated with many of the people who’ve read it. By posting that email on this site there’s a chance that my email will reach a wider audience and perhaps inspire other burners to find their own ways of peacefully and creatively confronting the CCC. I refuse to remain silent about that topic and that’s because I love Burning Man so much. The event and the community have changed my life in so many positive ways and even if this post ends up having no impact on Larry Harvey & Co. I at least know that at a time of crisis in the Burner community I spoke up for the values that are meant to be embodied by Burning Man.

It’s important for me to state here that I do not have a broad spectrum dislike for BMORG. I can only imagine how many wonderful people work in that organization. In this situation my dislike is directed solely at a specific group of people within the Burning Man power structure. I am displeased with those who run or help to run the event in ways that clearly run counter to the stated ethos of the event and the actual ethos of the people who physically and/or creatively build and run Black Rock City.

I want to send out my sincere thanks and respect to the countless people who make Burning Man a reality through their labor, passion, time, money and principles. The truth is that YOU are Burning Man, YOU are Black Rock City.

I want to thank the owner of burners.me for the opportunity to write this post. I also need to thank the Burners who took the time to read and respond to this post before I published it on this site. Dusty hugs,

Sandstorm


From the unofficial Facebook Burning Man group:

“I thought that I’d share this with the group. (Note: If you’re a member of the tl;dr crew then just move along because these are not the droids you are looking for.)

So, yesterday I received an email from the Burning Man Project asking for a monetary donation. After I got some feedback from some fellow burners I sent the below email to the Burning Man Project.

“Steve,

I hope that this finds you well. I’ve taken some time to thoughtfully respond to your fundraising email regarding my potentially donating to the Burning Man Project. As a point of reference, I’ve known about Burning Man since late 1996 and it’s been a huge part of my life over the past 7 plus years. I’ve been burning since ’07 and I’ve been to Black Rock City 6 times in total. Since I’ve started burning the only 2 burns that I’ve missed were in ’09 and ’14, the former by choice and the latter due to my being unable to make the trip.

During each of my burns I’ve volunteered my time to groups such as The Lamplighters, Arctica, Center Camp Cafe, The Temple Guardians and a variety of theme camps and art projects. During that time I’ve made numerous monetary donations to groups such as Black Rock Arts Foundations and Black Rock Solar as well as to individual art projects and the 2013 Temple build. During my time as a burner I’ve repeatedly sold to other people Burning Man tickets that I did not need or could not use and when I did so I sold those tickets at below face value. On 4 occasions I’ve gifted Burning Man tickets to other people. In 2013 I helped half a dozen people I didn’t know acquire the Burning Man tickets they needed and I did so free of charge. I did that because Burning Man meant so much to me and I wanted to use my time and contacts to help other people make it HOME to Black Rock City.

At this point in time I have no desire to contribute a single cent to BMORG or any of it’s affiliated agencies. That is due to the fact the since the end of this year’s burn BMORG has hid from the Burner community as many of it’s members have eloquently and repeatedly voiced their concerns about the commodification of Burning Man via BMORG’s enabling of commodification camps such as Caravansicle, which was apparently run and funded in part by Jim Tananbaum, who currently serves on the Burning Man Board of Directors (BOD). There is ample and credible evidence on the Internet that indicates that various members of BMORG, the Burning Man founders and the Burning Man BOD have been engaged in behavior that runs contrary to Burning Man’s 10 Principles and to BMORG’s mission statement. Huge swaths of the Burner community are deeply concerned by the fact that there seem to be forces within the Burning Man power structure that are willing to commodify the event in the name of personal and organizational profit. In light of this controversy BMORG has maintained a level of radio silence that makes many Burners believe that BMORG is simply buying time to get its story straight about the Commodification Camp Controversy, buying time to let BMORG’s lawyers talk with the lawyers for various Commodification Camps and Burning Man BOD members. From this side of this situation BMORG seems both corrupt and inept beyond all belief. This situation makes the 2012 Ticket Lottery Fiasco seem like a small clerical error on the part of BMORG.

Before the Commodifcation Camp Controversy rose up I was identifying next year as one which I’d spend my summer working on the Temple project. I was planning on realizing a personal on-playa dream of mine, which is a mobile, deep playa pop-up bar. I was also planning on volunteering with the Resto team. While all those ideas are still meaningful to me Burning Man itself is no longer as meaningful to me as it was just 2 1/2 months ago when I watched large chunks of the burn via the official live video feed of the event. My lessened passion for the event is mostly due to my sense that elements within BMORG itself are willing to corrupt the event in the pursuit of profit and power and that BMORG is willing to ignore the concerns of the very community that builds Black Rock City and provides its creative content.

I took the time to write this email because I want you to know that the actions and inactions of various people within BMORG, the Burning Man founders and the Burning Man BOD have made me feel that the Burning Man Project is undeserving of my money. I sincerely wish that wasn’t the case. To be honest, it’s galling to receive a fund raising request from Burning Man at a time when BMORG is continuing to ignore the concerns of the Burner community. Like many other burners, I’m not buying BMORG’s company line that they are listening to the Burner community and (that BMORG) will get back to them as soon as possible. Whether or not my perception of that situation is accurate I have been given no indications that BMORG values the event and the community as much as the community values the event.

The Commodificaton Camp Controversy is not about poor burners versus rich burners; it’s about the fact that certain members of the Burning Man power structure have misused their positions in such a way that they have introduced class warfare into both the event and countless Burners psychological relationships with (both) the event and those who are meant to protect it. Shame on them for doing so. The event and community deserve better than that. Dusty hugs,

David / Sandstorm”


Here’s the email that was sent out by BMOrg:

From: Burning Man Project <steven.young@burningmanproject.org>

Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 8:00 AM

Subject: Now You Can Gift Burning Man to the World

Remember your first day at Burning Man? Remember how it felt to bring someone to Black Rock City for the first time? While not everyone can be on the playa every year,Burning Man’s year-round programs make the Burning Man experience accessible to all, year-round and across the globe.Burning Man strives to help people live more creative and connected lives year round and around the globe. Our programs in the arts, in civic engagement, and our investment in the leadership of a global network of regional events have inspired millions to embrace a shared value system that promotes thriving artistic endeavors, increased civic involvement, emerging social enterprise and stronger communities.Everything we do is driven by community participation, communal effort and gifting. While the annual event in Black Rock City is paid for by ticket sales, the work we do through our year-round programs depends on your generosity.Your support provides vital resources needed to keep our core programs running, such as our Regional Network which nurtures 240 members in 125 regions across 31 countries. Additionally, our Art Grants Programs provide close to $100,000 in grants for the creation and public exhibition of art in communities around the world and helps artists raise additional funds through fiscal sponsorships. Your generosity also supports our Civic Engagement Programs which provide leadership and funding of community based initiatives through micro grants and volunteer organizing.Together we can turn our growing potential into programs and experiences that will help transform people’s lives throughout the world. We need your support to make it happen. Together we can build a more creative and connected world.

Burning Man Project is a 501(c)(3) organization; all donations to Burning Man Project are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.

 

catalyst for creative culture in the world