On May 3, 2022, Pete Seeger’s Birthday, Folk Alliance International will launch the #ForPetesSakeDonate campaign to raise funds and awareness for The Village Fund, a grant program for folk artists and independent music industry professionals experiencing financial hardship.
The #ForPetesSakeDonate campaign will be a collective social media activation where musicians will share a video of themselves playing their favorite folk song on their preferred social media platform and link the video to the #ForPetesSakeDonate Campaign’s website or FAI’s Facebook fundraiser.
The #ForPetesSakeDonate campaign will be viral and artist-led. We want as many people to participate as possible. Not just professional musicians. Everyone.
“Participation — that’s what’s gonna save the human race.”
– Pete Seeger
How to Get Involved
The For Pete’s Sake, Donate campaign aims to raise $36,000 through May 31 for The Village Fund. The first $10,000 of that goal is matched by an anonymous donor.
To draw wide attention to this effort, we need as many people as possible to pre-commit to sharing a song on May 3, then to share it on that day.
To pre-commit, fill out this form (linked to form). FAI will list you in relation to this campaign and send you images, language to use, and a Canva template to use on social media.
What is The Village Fund?
The Village Fund is a grant program for folk artists and independent music industry professionals experiencing financial hardship, administered by Folk Alliance International. FAI has given out $50,000 in $500 grants over the last year to individuals in need throughout Canada, the U.S., and abroad.
While this initiative was founded in reaction to the global pandemic, FAI will continue to award grants indefinitely with the success of future fundraising. In order to raise these funds, we will work to empower musicians in the folk music community to share the fund with their fans while celebrating folk songs.
Why Pete Seeger?
We are excited to celebrate Pete Seeger’s legacy with permission from his family. Pete’s sense of a global village inspired generations and his life’s work celebrated folk songs as a way of connecting people to a common humanity and shared purpose. This campaign is linked to his legacy because it supports the folk community that he helped create and encourages everyone to share a folk song of their own in a community-driven spirit that echoes Pete’s life-long work.
What’s considered a folk song?
“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” ― Louis Armstrong
Your favorite folk song should be folk to you. We encourage you to make your own judgment and play a song that resonates with you. If that’s too broad, we encourage you to play a traditional song or one linked to Pete Seeger in some way.
Who’s involved?
We’re thrilled that these wonderful musicians have joined the campaign as champions, posting videos on May 3 and also securing other artists to do the same.
Additional artists participating will be listed here as folks pre-commit via this form.
- The Accidentals
- Kristin Andreasson and Chris Eldridge
- Jan Bell
- Doug Cox
- Cathy Fink
- Michael Jonathon
- Si Kahn
- Meredith Krygowski (Adrian + Meredith)
- John McCutcheon
- Dan Navarro
You can see the full list of artists who are committed to participating on May 3 here!