Queer Fam Fund

Queer Fam Fund (QFF) prioritizes the joy, inclusion, and communal care of Black, Indigenous, people of color, and people of trans experience at Honcho Campout.

About

Through fundraising and societal engagement, QFF reduces cultural and financial barriers that hinder our recipients from the festival experience. In turn, QFF seeks to impact culture-at-large by championing community and cultivating sacred bonds that expand beyond the festival.

This program, subsidized entirely by donations and fundraisers, alleviates the financial hurdles that may prevent the most marginalized of our community from attending–more on that below. Since 2018, QFF has proudly sponsored over 200 recipients, and we’re excited to welcome a new round of recipients this August. Campout has evolved beautifully and irrevocably because of this program and, with your help, we can continue to expand upon and improve it every year.

Applications are now open!

Apply Now

What's Included

1x General Admission Ticket
1x Meal Plan
Recipient-Specific Travel Arrangements
All Necessary Camping Gear
$80 Facilities Fee is Covered
Spending Credit On Site

Direct Donations via Gofundme

Larger Tax-Deductible Donations via Fractured Atlas ($1,000+)

Donate Now

Meet the QFF Team

The Queer Fam Fund team is composed of six incredibly hard working members of the queer community; each bringing our own unique skills, personalities, and experiences to the table. Building out QFF every year begins seven months before Campout, so to say we’re deeply invested in the success of this program is an understatement. Get to know a bit more about us:

Clark Price (he/him)

Communications Lead, Selection Committee
Pittsburgh, PA

A Pittsburgh native, Clark Price is a founding member of Honcho. He has promoted and DJed nightlife events locally and across the globe - holding space and serving the LGBTQ+ community and sharing his love of dance music. In addition to contributing to global queer nightlife, Clark has been a web designer and front end developer with a focus in marketing products and growing businesses for 14+ years.

Why are you a part of QFF?

“As a member of the QFF, my goal has always been to expand access for black people, people of color, and trans and non-binary people. The Honcho Summer Campout is an incredibly liberating and fulfilling event to build. The ability to help others share that experience has been a personal highlight as a promoter. I see this program as an important commitment to broad inclusivity and creating a safe, welcoming environment for the most vulnerable in our community. I seek to not only enrich the Campout experience, but to also facilitate an important dialogue among the dance music community outside the bounds of Honcho Campout.

huny young (she/they)

Experience Lead, Selection Committee
Pittsburgh, PA

sarah huny young is a DJ, event producer, and visual artist. She primarily soundtracks, documents, and exalts Black womanhood and BIPOC queer communities through portraiture, documentary, and sound. huny was named Person of the Year in Music by Pittsburgh City Paper in 2021, one of the "Best in Pittsburgh'' for co-founding the Pittsburgh Artists Emergency Fund in 2020, frequently exhibits work championing Black queerness in galleries and museums, and heads Mostbeautifullest, a nightlife collective creating overtly welcoming spaces for intersectional Blackness in Pittsburgh, PA.

Why are you a part of QFF?

“Anywhere I go, I'm taking Black women and Black queer and trans people with me. I turned down opportunities to attend Campout until 2019 when I could do just that. It's my paramount mission to create a Campout community as diverse and intersectional as the queer community I consider family around the country. That can only be done by prioritizing Black people, people of color, trans, and non binary people and directly addressing the financial and societal disparities that make events like these far less accessible to marginalized communities. We’re going to change nightlife and festival culture as a whole.”

Sonali Fernando
(she/her)

Fundraising Lead, Selection Committee
New Orleans, LA

Sonali Fernando is a first generation Sri-Lankan American raised in the American South - 18 years in Garland, Texas and 22 years in New Orleans, the real LA. She has worked in a variety of capacities including as a brand director, restaurant owner, music booker, cultural arts educator, marketing manager and performer. Currently, she works as the Operations Director for a small but mighty Community Economic Development non-profit. 

She is deeply driven by community, music, and creating a more just world and believes that only begins when we first center Black people. 

Why are you a part of QFF?

“I first attended Honcho Campout in 2019. Queer Fam Fund and Campout provided healing for wounds of which I was unaware, specifically as it relates to gender and race. Both the physical and emotional space provided at Campout allowed me to address long-held trauma. Being able to reshape my relationship to nature, experience it with fellow queer people of color and truly center joy for myself and others was honestly a revolutionary act. QFF is a revolutionary act. I want to see other QTBIPOC experience this for themselves. And also - top tier music, visuals, and programming. The vibes are immaculate. ”

Joshua Bondi (he/they/she)

Hospitality Lead
Pittsburgh, PA

Josh Bondi is a queer performance artist and event producer living in Pittsburgh, PA, and insists that they contain multitudes. On stage they operate under the alias Pissy. They are a service industry vet and guardian and cheerleader of all queers. As someone who found their identity and community in exuberant queer nightlife, after hours, and dancefloors, creating opportunities for folks to engage authentically with those spaces is a personal mission for them. They wish for folks to not only feel they have access to these spaces but feel that they can be their most free and sexiest selves.

Why are you a part of QFF?

I have been working for Honcho Campout since 2017 when it first moved to its home at Four Quarters Farm. I was helping to manage the Front Gate when QFF was at its origin. There were only 10 or so recipients and when they arrived, I received them, got them safely set up, and tried to offer everything I could to make them feel at home. That is hospitality. From the first moment of involvement with what would become the much larger and even more intention-driven program that it is today, I knew QFF was how I wanted to contribute my skills to Honcho Campout. It was and remains so important to me that folks feel comfortable and taken care of in an environment that can oftentimes feel intimidating and alien (even to me). Those intimidating factors could be that we’re in the middle of the mother-fucking woods or that occasionally overwhelming nature of the non-stop rave. I feel very at home contributing to ensuring that QFF recipients are set up for success. Honcho Campout is a beautiful escape from the world. It’s a crazy, flashy, exquisite queer paradise in the woods and I cannot wait for you to experience it.

Origins

Honcho established the Queer Fam Fund (QFF) in 2018. Honcho co-founder Clark Price was inspired by a similar initiative started by the Gays Hate Techno festival north of San Francisco. The QFF was conceived as a donation-based fund specifically for helping people who may not have the means to get to Honcho Campout. The fund prioritized people of color and people of trans experience. In its inaugural year the QFF raised over $4K via GoFundMe and donations from attendees that were made during the checkout process. These contributions fully funded nine recipients tickets, transportation, food and lodging. 

Determined to further the success and influence of the Queer Fam Fund; Honcho committed to forming a dedicated QFF team and allocated ten dollars of every general admission ticket (and above) sold towards the initiative. Huny Young was an early collaborator and instrumental in diversifying recipients of the Queer Fam Fund.  She joined Clark Price as Co-Director, with Josh Bondi running Hospitality, and Shane Christian providing Administrative Support. Together this inaugural QFF Team grew the fund, raising over $17K and sponsoring twenty-eight recipients.

In 2021, post COVID, the Queer Fam Fund team grew to include eight staff members. They raised over $59K through the historical channels and the addition of a fundraising event and stream.  Fifty-two recipients were funded. In 2022 the team raised over $82K and funded fifty-seven recipients.

The Queer Fam Fund is an ever-evolving project. It’s an experiment not just in what it produces but in how it produces. In this spirit, the QFF team is a reflection of its recipients and also aims to teach what it does to other queer and trans people of color. The hope is that these efforts and skills can be passed on to queer folks in other places so that they may replicate and improve upon this initiative to make dance floors more equitable everywhere.