Burning Man’s CEO on Budget Shortfall, Community Blowback & What’s Needed to Keep It Going

On Oct. 22, Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell published an urgent message to the global Burner community. The gist? The organization needs to raise a whopping $20 million in charitable donations by the end of the year — or it may need to raise ticket prices for future events.

“We are well past the point where ticket revenues from Black Rock City are able to support our year-round cultural work,” Goodell wrote, explaining that Burning Man Project — the nonprofit behind the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and other Burning Man-related initiatives — experienced a significant revenue shortfall this year.  

Goodell explained that the primary reason behind this shortfall was that Burning Man’s highest-priced tickets for the 2024 festival had not sold “as planned.” Each year since 2016, before the main sale begins, roughly 4,000 Burning Man tickets go on sale for much more than main sale tickets — this year selling at $1,500 and $2,500. These tickets, which are typically purchased by people who have cash to spare and don’t want to risk not getting a ticket during the main sale, usually bring in approximately $7 million — and nearly $10 million in 2023. But a spokesperson for Burning Man Project says that in 2024, higher-priced ticket sales totaled $3.4 million, down nearly $6 million from the prior year. 

“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,” Goodell wrote.

The financial issue was compounded when Burning Man 2024 failed to sell out, with organizers pointing to the generally soft 2024 festival market and the fact that after two difficult years — temperatures reached a grueling 103 at Burning Man 2022 while rain created issues in 2023 — many people opted to stay home. Goodell says all ticket tiers saw decreased sales in 2024 and estimated that attendance was down by roughly 4,000 this year, bringing total attendance to approximately 70,000.

“The drop in the population, but particularly around the higher price tickets, simply pushed us into a spot that I knew we were going to be in,” Goodell says, explaining that she and the team had seen this financial turning point coming for several years as production costs increased.  

Burning Man typically relies on $10 million in charitable donations every year, with a varying number of full-time staff dedicated to philanthropy, depending on current projects and time of year. Now, given the doubled demand for donations in 2024, the organization has launched a new fundraising model through which people can subscribe to make a monthly donation, with one-off donations also being accepted.

Goodell declines to give a number for how much money has been raised over the last month but says engagement with the new model has been high and that Burning Man is “at a record for recurring gifts.” The organization is also seeing new donors “coming in at decent amounts,” she says. 

Still, not everyone in the community has been enthusiastic about the request. The comments on Goodell’s post and social media have veered toward critique, with some accusing her and the organization of mismanaging funds, despite Burning Man sharing information and tax filings about the tax-exempt organization’s annual revenue and expenses for the last decade. For 2023, Burning Man cited $63.6 million in total expenses, with $43.8 million of that spent on Black Rock City and the rest spent on art, civic engagement, administration and fundraising efforts.

“I like reading Reddit because it’s really mean,” Goodell says with a laugh about the comments on her announcement, all of which she’s read. “I really process it all as people having an incredible amount of passion. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be Burning Man.” 

Some commenters have accused the organization of spending unnecessary money on Burning Man Project-related projects including the disaster relief volunteer group Burners Without Borders and programming at Fly Ranch, a 3,800-acre property near the Black Rock City site that the organization bought for $6.5 million in 2021. But Goodell says there is “absolutely” a misperception that these projects use more money than they do, adding that the initiatives are largely funded and run by groups of independent Burners and that their cost accounts for less than 4% of the organization’s total programming dollars. “So even if you get rid of them,” she says, “you still haven’t solved the budget problem whatsoever.”

The general consensus from commenters is that they want the focus of the organization’s expenditures to be on Black Rock City itself. To that end, says Goodell, the amount of money raised through the end of the year will determine the price of Burning Man 2025 tickets. As she explains, the price of many Burning Man tickets is subsidized by tickets that sell at a higher price. These higher-priced sales have made it possible for Burning Man to sell main sale tickets at $575 since 2022, an increase from $475 in 2019. (Burning Man didn’t officially happen in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.) Without this subsidy, Burning Man estimates those $575 tickets would be priced at $749.

“If we don’t set ourselves up right, we’re going to have to raise ticket prices,” Goodell says, “[especially because] we don’t have the sponsorships that the other festivals do. And I’d like to lower ticket prices.”

With respect to prices for the 2025 event, a Burning Man Project spokesperson tells Billboard that current fundraising “will inform operational decisions including pricing for Black Rock City 2025. Philanthropy, which is key to subsidizing ticket prices, helps us avoid a situation where the cost of a ticket prevents a community member or new Burner from coming to Black Rock City.”

To save money, the organization has looked at, Goodell says, “all the ways we can be working better with resources” by reviewing all expenditures from Black Rock City electricity use to medical facilities to the number of toilets rented. She adds that the landlords of Burning Man Project’s San Francisco office have “been really flexible” in adjusting their rental agreement to provide them with “a little relief.”

With many tech billionaires, movie stars and other one-percenters all trekking to Burning Man every August, there’s also presumably a short list of rich Burners who could solve the current financial shortfall by donating a million or two. But Goodell says that’s not the point.  

“Just going to major donors right now without having an outside world narrative doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “It’s not like the pandemic where we’re short, so we call up a couple people… We need to build a narrative and a conversation about what we’re doing for the long term. That’s why we’re creating this public conversation, which is not something we’ve typically done.” 

The idea, Goodell says, is that creating widespread community engagement via information sharing and the subscription model will help set up Burning Man for the long run. In making this point, she emphasizes that many cultural institutions — ballets, operas, museums, etc. — rely on patrons who believe in the cause and underwrite costs. As she puts it, “I want to get through this moment [to a place] where people get excited and feel good about the philanthropic nature of Burning Man culture.” 

Raising this money is especially crucial given that Burning Man has a strict no-sponsorships policy that’s part of its “decommodification” principle — one of 10 principles that guide and shape the event. Burning Man doesn’t have a merch stand or sell t-shirts or posters on its website; the only thing one can buy onsite is ice. (This cash transaction-free setting of course strongly contrasts with the typically high price of attending the event in the first place.) 

“We’re deliberately creating an environment that brings people together so that they can collaborate, create art and do it without interference from transactions or from commerce,” Goodell says. “We’re going to keep protecting that.” She adds that this decommodification principle is so entrenched that when Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Ben Cohen came to Burning Man and drove around giving away ice cream, he used an unmarked truck and cups without a logo.  

“[People from] Coachella, from Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, they’ve all come to Burning Man, and they’re all like, ‘You’re crazy. You don’t have sponsorships? How the f— do you guys do it?’” says Goodell. She adds that the producers of one California festival with corporate sponsorships told her their event gets 25-30% of its total income from, as she puts it, “forms of commerce that Burning Man has banned.” 

While the current financial situation is creating questions about the viability of Burning Man 2025 and beyond, Goodell says that the event “has to happen, and it will happen, because that’s who we are.” In true Burner spirit, she speaks of the current need as an opportunity to set Burning Man up for the future: to create more art, to bring a more diverse group of participants to the event and to spread Burning Man culture around the world.  

“There are definitely some skeptics out there,” she says. “But what we’re hearing is the majority understand that we’re a nonprofit and that we’re depending on financial support to accomplish the mission.” 

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