What is Burning Man’s Charitable Purpose?
Have you heard about this Burning Man Festival thing out in Nevada’s Block Rock desert? A bunch of 21st Century Woodstockers out in the desert engaged in what some might think hedonistic. Like Woodstock, the Burning Man Festival has it all, and all without pretense. Art, music, poetry reading, entertainment, the Devil’s lettuce for sure, religion and spirituality. And sex with all of the above if you like, apparently. You can scroll through a somewhat tedious history of Burning Man. At last week’s annual festival the rains came and now the dessert floor is like wet cement. Upwards of 70,000 pilgrims couldn’t move or get out. But experiencing mother nature, whether in a good or bad mood seems to be the purpose and a lot of people partied like it was 1999 anyway. Everybody was supposed to shelter in place anyway until the quicksand goes away.
The Burning Man Project is a 501(c)(3). Its called Burning Man, by the way, because at the end of the desert festival, a wooden man is burned in effigy. People dance around the burning man, apparently, as though in some old Testament paganistic scene. Its latest available 990 reports $27 million in donations, give or take, and $700,000 in service revenue. In years past, the ratio was the other way around, with $45 million in service revenue and less than a million in grants and donations. Part VII reports that all the top hats make six figures. The highest paid employee made $330,000 in 2021. But this is all small potatoes for a group that started on the nude part of Baker’s Beach in San Francisco. You might get an SRO in San Francisco for $300,000 a year. Burning Man’s largest independent contractor payment was $450,000 in legal fees to Holland & Knight’s Orlando office and Farella, Braun and Martell in the Bay Area. I expect Burning man’s tax exemption paperwork is in order but the meter is probably running extra fast at both firms these days with so many people stranded. Force majeure is all it is though.
But I can’t figure out what the exempt purpose is, at least not with the satisfaction I would want if I worked at Holland & Knight or Farella. From the 990:
Burning Man Project facilitates and extends burning man culture into the larger world. Its charitable mission is to uphold and manifest the values reflected in the ten principles of burning man, specifically: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self reliance, radical self expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation and immediacy through arts, culture, education, and civic engagement.
I still can’t tell what its mission is except to make a space where people can hang out and do whatever they want according to the spirit that moves them. Paganism is a valid religious purpose, by the way, so that might be it. If its educational, its certainly self-directed. The curriculum seems to begin and end with the 10 Principles, though there are plenty of books to be read while hanging out in the desert. That and the workshops might make for a proper educational purpose I suppose. It also makes grants to artists. But its most famous purpose is the annual festival in Black Rock City. From its 990 again:
Black Rock City (BRC) is a temporary metropolis dedicated to art, community, and culture created by its 70,000+ participants and guided by the ten principles of burning man through the construction of this physical space, burning man project empowers and inspires participants to discover, invent, and engage in new ways. This experience leads to more art and more civically engaged citizens around the world. BRC serves as a blank canvas that inspires participation, creativity, and artistic and cultural experimentation. Burning Man has developed an approach to art that is community driven, inclusive, interactive, and participatory. BRC is a manifestation of art’s culture building capacity, one of arts most valuable functions and one that is vital to a thriving society.
I’m still not quite sure, dagnabbit, what the charitable purpose is. Because if Black Rock Project is just an HOA — managing a temporary housing area every year — I’m not sure it gets over the private benefit hump. Check out today’s other post for more on that. It might be that Burning Man’s exempt activity is just to provide recreation for its members. In which case its really just a social club. I guess if its an educational organization (perhaps with a not regularly carried on unrelated activity) or a social club, it might escape UBIT given that the Black Rock Festival is only one week per year. But I am not sure the festival needs to be regularly carried on if Black Rock Project is really just a social club. See IRC 512(a)(3)(A).
The land comprising Black Rock City, by the way, was donated to to Burning Man Project, allowing it to stop burning effigies on Baker Beach where I once saw two fully clothed people kissing from here to eternity style and thought it was a porn show right there on the beach. The local constable thought burning effigies was getting too dangerous, especially with crowds growing larger every year. The original burning man was only about five or six feet tall. Today, its 40 plus feet tall if not taller. So the project moved the whole thing to the desert. What could go wrong? Here is how Burning Man Project describes it:
Burning Man takes place in Black Rock City, a full-fledged, thriving temporary metropolis. Like any other city, it has essential infrastructure and community services — including city planning, emergency, safety and sanitary infrastructure — to keep it functioning. These are primarily volunteer-created and run services, and provide just enough structure to support the survival of this civic organism — the rest is up to YOU.
So maybe Burning Man Project is exempt as a sort of quasi-governmental entity. It has a volunteer cops — “rangers,” they call them — along with drones and lasers to help rescue people lost in the desert. I am not gonna spend too much time on the question. Articulating a charitable purpose is not hard these days. Its just that Burning Man’s activities aren’t as obviously charitable as we might think.
darryll k. jones