Radical Honesty From The Hollywood Fringe Festival, A Call To Action!

Traditional funding structures just don’t include Fringe

A message from Hollywood Fringe Festival Co-Executive Director, Ellen Boudreau Den Herder with some radical honesty about their organization’s struggles. The Hollywood Fringe needs the community’s help to continue in this fiscal year….

Since 2021, we’ve seen the festival through some hard times. From being one of the first live events to re-open post COVID in August 2021 (with zero reported COVID cases on site!) to navigating the rising costs of live-production, we have asked for your help more times than I can count.

Even through these challenges, we have thrived as a community. 2024 saw the highest ticket sales ever at the Hollywood Fringe, with over $640k in ticket sales going back to artists. We funded the highest number of productions (37!) in Hollywood Fringe history. We even hosted the largest Los Angeles theatre awards ceremony to date. The 2024 festival exceeded our expectations, but at a giant financial cost.

The Fiscal Reality Ahead… Austerity for the Arts

Although last year’s festival was one of the strongest we’ve ever had, we fell short in our organizational budget by $62,000 – the first time this has happened since 2020.

The cost of event production has risen astronomically, with event spaces we’ve hosted tripling their rent across the board. In addition, we’ve made moves to create a full-time staff, including moving our team to employee status, creating an increase of $90,000 in payroll taxes.

We wish we could find a magic grant to cure these woes, but Hollywood Fringe doesn’t fit into traditional funding structures. We’ve been rejected from foundations due to the nature of our productions, which tend to lean into queer + political spaces that do not align with a traditional funding bodies’ ethos.

The state of the National Endowment for the Arts is in question, and in 2023 their funding allocations went down for our city, causing us to lose out on the grant for the first time since 2015 (even with excellent scores)!

Even through these deficits, we are committed to not raising the cost of participation for artists – keeping our registration cost low is a key commitment for the future of Hollywood Fringe. These deeper financial hurdles have made creating a festival rooted in the community a challenge, but it also gives me an opportunity to ask you for something special…

Will you recommit to helping sustain Hollywood Fringe into our 15th season? We rely on donations like yours to bring the Hollywood Fringe to life each year.

It’s Up To Us…

Your donation of $100 or more will give you special access to events, planned by yours truly + the team, 25% off tickets at next year’s festival and more! Members will also have access to special “member nights” where we will curate a selection of events to go to during the festival together and have a night on the town!

Your donation truly has an incredible impact on our organization and we are committed to financial transparency on where your dollars go. Each donor, at the end of each fiscal year, gets an individualized donor report to track where your money was spent.

Wanna dive deeper into how Fringe works before you donate? Take a look at our annual report that has detailed information about our organization and festival, and the impact we have made this past year.

We truly appreciate your donation, and look forward to playing around the festival with you in 2025. With your help, we truly can make a difference in the lives of artists.

Thank you,

Ellen Boudreau Den Herder Co-Executive Director at Hollywood Fringe Proud member of the Hollywood Fringe Commissioners Club