We don’t just pay our directors, we pay a huge number of suppliers, freelancers, artists and facilitators. As soon as we grew beyond 1000 people gathering in the Karoo Desert, we needed more support and better structures to be able to facilitate the AfrikaBurn experience that we all know and love. We modeled our organisational structure in a similar way to Burning Man and many other regionals, and as we grew up to be able to handle 13 000 people in the desert we had simultaneously grown a brilliant, highly qualified team to be able pull off the AfrikaBurn experience each year and more.
Since the pandemic hit we’ve scaled our team back considerably. We’ve reduced our director bill by 75% this was in part due to a restructuring of the directorship from an executive board to a majority non executive board.
Our current paid director is executive, and like all on the team is currently on reduced income and has taken on increased workload as we have not replaced employed posts that have become vacant, rather, relying on volunteers as best possible. Everyone is doing what it takes to cut costs to the bone so that we can (hopefully) rev the AfrikaBurn mutant engine later on this year. We are in the same position as many organisations in the creative sector and we believe in this thing as much as you do, which is why we want to keep the doors not only open but projects alive. There’s been a lot happening to keep community connection going and projects in the pipeline that are co-funded.