San Diego Pride, beset by funding woes and about to lose its seventh executive director in the last three years, could be close to sharply curtailing its flagship July events.
KishaLynn Elliott, the first Black lesbian to lead the organization, is departing Nov. 6 largely for financial reasons. Starting in November, Pride also will reduce its staff of 14 to three part-time employees. As a result, the volunteer board is transitioning from governance to operations as its members take on the work of departing staff members.
The board, speaking at a Tuesday meeting billed as a community listening session, did not provide any specifics about what the 2027 parade and festival could look like. Members, though, described the current model as infeasible — particularly the group’s large music festival in Balboa Park intended to raise money for the organization.
In 2026, the cost of permits tripled and fees associated with having police and fire monitoring crowd safety also rose. The city, amid its own budget crisis, refused requests to lower the fees. Then, attendance fell enough in July that Pride’s take from concessions suffered too.
“Essentially, San Diego Pride builds a venue for two days, and that was where all those fees come into play, right?” said board co-chair Martha Henderson. “That’s not sustainable any longer. That cost us too much to do.”
For 2027, that likely means a return to how Pride started, as a volunteer-run, grassroots event, said board co-chair Paris Quion.
“We’re just going back to old school steps to save money until we find ourselves in a more comfortable position, then we can go back,” Quion said.
In addition to affordability and inflation concerns, San Diego Pride sits at the apex of two industries struggling to survive this economy: music festivals and LGBTQ+ nonprofits.
Several prominent music festivals in San Diego have folded or gone on hiatus. Simultaneously, LGBTQ+ nonprofits have struggled to secure government grants and philanthropic funding that were once readily available. Individual donors have been unable to make up the difference.
These are issues in other cities as well. Phoenix Pride filed for bankruptcy and Long Beach Pride is in a “debt crisis.” One of the oldest organizations, Tucson Pride, shut down after 50 years.
“LA Pride has one staff member. One,” Quion said. “Now they’re lucky. The city of (Los Angeles) pays for their police (and) fire.”
She estimated that San Diego Pride paid over $150,000 to police and fire in July for an event that in the past has drawn 250,000 attendees, providing a major economic boost to the region. San Diego Pride’s 2025 economic impact report estimates that the parade and festival generate almost $30 million in greater San Diego.
At the dire town hall Tuesday, Pride board members offered up no big numbers, instead discussing the organization’s financial challenges. But they frustrated those in attendance by withholding firm budget numbers.
Still, many community members have longtime investments in the organization and are committed to seeing it go forward. Yet they want more communication and involvement in how that can happen.
“I feel out of the loop,” said a volunteer and festival manager, Shiloh Tamir. “We’re kind of feeling like these (financial issues) are coming from nowhere.”
Pride’s website has not posted financial reports since 2024 when an audit began. Only one set of meeting minutes have been posted in 2026. The fact that Elliott is leaving and layoffs are imminent has been reported in the media, but Pride has yet to announce it on social media or in email newsletters that used to be sent weekly.
Sue Hartman, who claimed that when she left the board in 2023, Pride had around $2 million in funds, begged the board to let the community step in.
“Please let us help you, because you’re going to fail all of us,” Hartman said. “We’re all showing up, and literally showing up not to disparage you, but because we want Pride to survive.”
The only board minutes posted this year date back to February. In that meeting, which went over the year’s final budget, the document notes that Pride had net $20,000 due to “extraordinary circumstances.” That was attributed to extra consultants brought on to navigate the backlash to 2025 festival headliner Kehlani’s criticism of Israel.
Despite the serious internal issues San Diego Pride needs to confront, the organization faces the additional issue of ongoing community conflict over its response to a number of issues, from prominent staff departures to Kehlani and the Israel-Hamas war.
How the conflict in the Middle East derailed a San Diego civil rights organization was again in evidence Tuesday night during the listening session at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The meeting included a pastor describing Zionism as an “abomination,” prompting an outcry from nearby Jewish attendees.
More than the financial future of the organization, attendees re-litigated decisions in the past three years related to Pride and the Middle East. They include leaders canceling a SheFest workshop on pinkwashing the Palestinian conflict in 2024, sticking with Kehlani in 2025 despite comments perceived as antisemitic, and a parade contingent that this year bore an Israeli flag splattered in blood.
Eric Ramirez, who attended the meeting, wanted to hear a discussion of “what’s going to save Pride from insolvency.” That didn’t happen.
“I feel like a single issue has just taken up so much air in the last year. I’m concerned about how much effort and hours this board is dedicating to that, when there’s really more pressing issues, like the fiduciary breakdown of Pride,” Ramirez said.
At Pride’s last town hall, following the departure of Executive Director Fernando Lopez in 2023, community members urged the board to keep up its year-round advocacy and programming. In 2025, former board members, staff and volunteers sent a letter sharing concerns that governance of the organization had gone sour, while urging more year-round public advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights beyond the July celebrations.
Quion admitted the board did not want to cut popular programming that started at the high-point of the organization, so members hoped raising revenue could make up the difference.
That didn’t occur as many corporate sponsors that officially boycotted the event in 2025 due to Kehlani did not return this year, despite promises to do so, according to Pride leaders. They attributed that in part to Trump Administration pressure on businesses to drop DEI efforts.
But revenue projections also were based on record-breaking ticket sales to see Kehlani and the other 2025 headliner, Kim Petras. While Jewish organizations and some sponsors fled the 2025 festival, people flooded in to see Kehlani. That flood stopped in July, when the 2026 slate of performers failed to attract nearly as many people.
The funding outlook worsened despite Elliott instituting new ways for individual donors in the community, rather than corporations, to fund Pride. They included a fashion show fundraiser.
