The Philadelphia Folk Festival is canceled this year due to long-standing financial struggles

The Philadelphia Folksong Society is canceling this year’s Philadelphia Folk Festival. The 2023 festival “is pausing this year while we rebuild,” Kimberly Sinclair, the vice president of the board of directors, said to The inquirer via email.

After celebrating the festival’s 60th anniversary last year, the Society, its parent organization, finds itself close to bankruptcy. “At present, the Society is in dire financial straits,” read a letter from board president Miles Thompson that he sent to the organization’s supporters on Monday. “Given our current situation, the Society has two options: we could declare bankruptcy and close. Or, we could take a year to thoughtfully reimagine what [Philadelphia Folksong Society] and [Philadelphia Folk Festival] could be, work to reshape the Society and Fest into sustainable operations that meet our organizational mission, while we raise the funds to make that happen.” He said that they have canceled this year’s festival “in order to thoughtfully plan for, and produce a Festival in 2024 and beyond.”

Thompson wrote that the festival has been increasingly expensive to produce. The society depends on the event for fundraising, but has seen diminishing profits. “The model is broken...Our reliance on the Festival as a fundraiser must be reconsidered,” Thompson wrote. Executive director Justin Nordell left the society last week, in what Thompson described as a “mutual agreement for his separation.”

Considered the longest-running outdoor music festival in the country, the folk fest has attracted generations of Philadelphians to Upper Salford Township for big-name acts, crafting, music workshops, and camping. Thompson reportedly told the board on Wednesday that the society is “broke” and no longer sustainable, although they announced a “Save the date” for Aug. 17-20, 2023. Sinclair reportedly said Thursday that the board never approved this year’s festival. By Friday afternoon, the website had not been updated to reflect the cancellation, and the application for musicians to perform at the 2023 fest was still online.

The Folksong Society is $200,000 in debt and had just under $800 in the bank this week, according to Axios. The organization kept losing money, even before the pandemic led to virtual programming for two years. The Society suffered a loss of $386,595 in the 2019 fiscal year. Although it received $869,254 from the Shuttered Venues Operator Grant aimed at providing pandemic relief in 2021, the nonprofit has continued to struggle. The cost of hosting the festival in-person last year — which Thompson said was about $1.2 million — put a significant strain on the society, which never quite recovered from its pre-pandemic financial problems.

The Festival dates back to 1962, when folk DJ Gene Shay and record producer Kenneth S. Goldstein cofounded the event. The weekend-long festival has attracted some 30,000 attendees at its peak and hosted major stars including Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt, and David Crosby as well as newer acts such as Iron & Wine and The War and Treaty.

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The article has been updated to include details from board president Miles Thompson’s letter to the supporters