Aaron Muszalski is fundraising
Donate to Make Burning Man Accessible for Cancer Patients
I’m thrilled to announce that Burning Wish is once again helping cancer patients realize their brave dream of attending Burning Man. This year, more than ever before, we need your help.
Your donation will help us:
- Purchase an electric trike for a mobility-impaired senior and two-time cancer survivor
- Replace several shelters destroyed by last year's extreme weather
- Provide vital financial aid for several patients who would otherwise be unable to attend the burn
- Ensure that another incredible group of cancer thrivers has the support they need to experience Burning Man safely
What is Burning Wish?
Founded in 2017, Burning Wish’s mission is to make Burning Man more accessible to cancer patients and survivors. The primary way we do this is through our annual patient program, which provides selected recipients with the resources they need to attend Burning Man safely—physically, emotionally, and financially.
All recipients receive tickets to the event for themselves and a companion or caregiver. Depending on their individual needs we also offer other forms of support, including placement within a theme camp, meals, housing, mobility devices, and even financial assistance. In keeping with the Second Principle of Burning Man, we provide our services entirely as a gift, at no cost to recipients.
Burning Wish recipient Ben Baity and the words he wrote in the Burning Man temple.
What is Burning Wish's impact?
We've helped over 30 people attend Burning Man. Recipients come from all over the world, and include people from a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. We've helped cancer survivors and their family members, patients still undergoing active treatment, as well as some truly incredible humans who were living—and thriving—in the face of terminal diagnoses.
Burning Survivors at the temple. Photo: George Post
In short, Burning Wish makes Burning Man possible for people who would otherwise be unable to attend. The best way to understand the impact of this gift is through the words of our recipients.
“Thank you for the opportunity for the amazing time that K and I had at Burning Man. It was everything I'd hoped for and so much more.”
“S was a beautiful soul whose loss made an impact to the world. [Attending Burning Man] turned out to be one of the best decisions we made in the last year of her life.”
“It was an amazing experience and one I'll never forget! I really do believe, the opportunity to participate in it changed my life!”
“The experience you made possible was so impactful. Thanks for making one of the biggest adventures we shared together a possibility.”
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you did. The Burning Wish volunteers were amazing and made the event so incredibly special for everyone.”
Our work has been featured on the travel website Adventure.com (“The patients who said ‘f*ck cancer’ and went to Burning Man instead”), on the Accuracy Third podcast, “Lightning in a stone soup”, and by Burning Man’s Event Director (“Radical Radical Inclusion”).
Burning Wish recipient Brian Monahan. Photo: Stephanie Foden
>> OUR NEED IS EXTRA URGENT THIS YEAR <<
Many of Burning Wish’s existing resources were damaged or destroyed entirely as a result of last year’s extreme weather event, including all of our Shiftpods (a type of rugged tent-like shelter). These and other crucial items urgently need to be replaced so that we can support our 2024 Burning Wish recipients.
Further, more of our applicants are in need of financial assistance than ever before. As burners well know, a trip to Burning Man can get very costly. From travel expenses, which have increased greatly in recent years, to camping equipment (all of our 2024 recipients are first-time burners, who don’t already have the ridiculous pile of gear necessary to survive in BRC) and more. These costs can be prohibitive for healthy people with full-time income. For people navigating cancer, the expense of a trip to Burning Man may simply be impossible to manage alone.
This year we are supporting a mobility-impaired senior. Reaching our goal will allow us to purchase a used electric tricycle or golf cart so that she and future recipients can participate in Burning Man safely and independently.
Burning Man founder Larry Harvey often spoke of Black Rock City as being created from gifts, saying “Value within a gift economy passes from person to person, from heart to heart. It is as if it draws on the soul, on some unconditional, inexhaustible source of value. The larger the gift, the more transcendent the flame.”
Donate today and help us keep this transcendent flame alive!
Burning Man Temple. Photo: John Curley
Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes! Burning Wish is a 501(c)(3) organization, so your donation is tax-deductible.
Do you accept in-kind donations?
Enthusiastically yes! If you’re a business or institutional donor who’d like to help our mission, we’d love to hear from you. We’re especially in need of shelter (like motorhomes, travel trailers, and RVs) for our more at-risk recipients, mobility devices for our disabled or mobility-impaired recipients, as well as the entire range of other equipment people need to attend Burning Man, from shade structures to sleeping bags. Whether you’re able to offer the temporary use of rental equipment or would like to make a more permanent gift, please contact us!
How else can I help?
We love our volunteers! Whether you're a burner, a cancer thriver, or just want to help us in our mission, you can volunteer using this link .
If you're part of a theme camp and would like to learn more about potentially hosting a Burning Wish recipient please email us! Hosting is a deeply rewarding experience, and previous host camps have said that it positively transformed their burn.
What is Burning Man?
Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance” held annually in the western United States. The event’s name comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night, the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Since 1991, the event has been at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. There are no headliners or scheduled performers. Instead, the participants design and build all the art, activities, and events. Artwork includes experimental and interactive sculptures, buildings, performances, and art cars, among other media. [via Wikipedia]
For people going through cancer, Burning Wish can be many things: the fulfillment of a once-in-a-lifetime dream, a short but vital break from an exhausting treatment schedule, a “bucket list” goal for a terminal patient, or a celebration as they begin a new life as a cancer survivor.
No matter what their circumstances, the experience Burning Wish recipients find in Black Rock City is one of incomparable joy, adventure, and reconnection.
Burning Man from above. Photo: Scott London
Wait. Is it really possible for cancer patients to attend Burning Man?
Yes. While it’s not for everyone, it’s more possible than you might imagine.
Despite taking place in a harsh environment, many of the challenges that Burning Man presents can be mitigated with sufficient planning and preparation. Burners are an incredibly resourceful and generous community. Often, all it takes to make Burning Man possible for one of our applicants is to connect them with the abundance of resources that already exist within Black Rock City. Nor is Burning Wish’s support limited to Black Rock City. For applicants for whom a trip to the Nevada desert isn’t realistic, we can help them participate in burner culture closer to home, thanks to the dozens of events in Burning Man’s global Regional Network.
Burning Wish recipient Stacey K. Photo: Steve Courtney
Is this like a package tour of Burning Man?
Absolutely not. There's no such thing as a “package tour of Burning Man” and that's not what Burning Wish offers. Burning Wish exists to help make Burning Man safer and more possible for people affected by cancer.
We believe in Burning Man's principle of Radical Self-Reliance and encourage our recipients to take as much responsibility for their own trip as is realistic for them.
Okay, so what sort of support does Burning Wish offer?
It varies from individual to individual.
Burning Wish works with people, not their disease. Since everyone's experience of cancer is different, we don't have a single, “one-size-fits-all” approach. Rather we strive to center the individual in everything we do. By taking the time to understand each person’s personal experience and their unique hopes and fears, we can support them in the ways they most need to be supported.
This can range from helping connect people with theme camps able to accommodate campers with special needs, to providing gift tickets (for both our recipients and their family members and/or caregivers), vehicle passes, shelter, meals, transport, and, when needed, even financial assistance. For recipients with specific health needs, we've even been able to source camping trailers and RVs, along with portable generators and air conditioning units, so that they have a cleaner, more climate-controlled space in which to live and sleep.
Our ability to provide these resources depends entirely on our annual fundraising—in other words, this GoFundMe. So if this sounds like a worthy mission to you, please give what you can and share this campaign widely.
Lung cancer patient, Shannon Quiroz, inside her donated trailer at Burning Man. Photos: Stephanie Foden
Do you charge for these services?
Never. In keeping with Burning Man's principle of Gifting , Burning Wish provides all of our services entirely as a gift.
Wow. That’s amazing. What else does Burning Wish do?
We are continually working to advocate for improved accessibility, both at Burning Man and across Burning Man's global network of regional events. While these efforts are primarily informed by the experiences and needs of cancer patients, we believe that all accessibility needs deserve consideration, and that improvements made for one group almost always result in benefits for all, abled and disabled alike. (Though to be clear, we do not believe that "universal benefit" is a valid requirement for implementing accommodations; it is sufficient that an accommodation benefit only those who need it, full stop.)
The first of Burning Man's Ten Principles is Radical Inclusion. It reads: Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Burning Wish envisions a culture where this commitment to inclusion has been made truly radical, extending beyond healthy and able-bodied privilege to welcome and embrace all bodies and abilities, and making our events accessible to all. Even—and especially when—doing so may be inconvenient or challenging for those of us fortunate to not yet need such accommodations.
We have, as we've built Black Rock City, surpassed greater challenges than this. With our mighty hearts and boundless ingenuity, let us surpass this one next.
Burning Wish recipient Harout Yerganian gazes up at the burn. Photos: Stephanie Foden
Is there anything else?
I think you look awesome in that outfit, and I see that you’re really doing your best today. Thank you for being you, and for reading all the way to the end!
In love and gratitude,
Aaron “Slim” Muszalski
Executive Director
burningwish.org
Burning Wish founder Aaron Muszalski with Burning Man founder Larry Harvey. Photo: George Post
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