On June 2, 2026, Duluth’s Homegrown Music Festival (HGMF) Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned their positions, leaving behind “years of unreported income” for the board of directors to address, according to Board President Don Ness.
In response to a query from the Monitor, Ness wrote that he did not suspect the former directors of having “any malicious intent.” Instead, he characterized the situation as two well-meaning individuals who had become overwhelmed with their responsibilities.
It’s an unfortunate situation and there is no question that mistakes were made and these are significant oversights. At the same time, I feel fairly confident that there wasn’t any malicious intent. Nobody was trying to get away with something. The reality is that the staff for the festival is very part-time; it is a crazy amount of work for relatively low pay. The directors took on the role of running a grassroots music festival—not as accountants and document filers.
I don’t want to dismiss the seriousness of the situation, but … I get how this happened. I’m confident that there wasn’t any malicious intent or deliberate mischaracterizations by Cory and Dereck—it was more a situation of benign neglect. They were focused on other projects and priorities—from all accounts, they did a good job with festival operations.
The popular Homegrown Music Festival takes place each year in early spring, featuring a week of local music at venues in Duluth and Superior. The festival began as a private, grassroots event in 1999, with five bands playing at the NorShor Theater. The event has steadily grown since then. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit known as the Bridge Syndicate took over administration of the festival in 2006.
In 2012, the Bridge Syndicate nonprofit was formally renamed as the Homegrown Music Festival.
Where’s the reporting?
As a registered nonprofit, HGMF was required to file a federal 990 form annually, reporting the organization’s income, expenses, and leadership information. HGMF last filed a 990 form in 2019. In 2022, after three-year lapse in their federal reporting, the IRS revoked HGMF’s nonprofit status.
According to nonprofit attorney Jennifer Urban, if a Minnesota organization raises money for a charitable purpose, and they are not a federal nonprofit, the IRS considers them a “taxable nonprofit.” In addition to still being required to report their income (via traditional tax forms as opposed to 990s) the organization must also register as a charitable organization with the state Attorney General’s Office. This registration must also be renewed annually.
A Monitor public records request to the Attorney General’s Office produced only two documents relating to HGMF:
- A 2002 registration filed by the Bridge Syndicate; and
- An email from 2010, where a representative of HGMF asked for a three-month extension to “gather information needed for a complete and accurate return.”
No other forms were ever filed with the AG’s Office.
After receiving the Monitor’s records request, the AG’s Office sent a formal letter to HGMF on May 14, 2026, alerting the organization that they may be violating Minnesota law by “soliciting charitable contributions in Minnesota without being registered or filing Annual Reports.”
Where’s the money?
Former Duluth Mayor Don Ness joined the HGMF board of directors approximately nine months ago, and he told the Monitor that five of the seven current board members have each served on the board less than a year. Ness said that he was aware that the organization’s financial reporting needed improvement when he joined the board, and he added that he had joined the board so he could help “improve organizational governance,” but that he had encountered “resistance” and made little progress in that regard.
On June 1, 2026, Ness was elected board chair. He told the Monitor that establishing a clear picture of the situation was a challenge. “The first thing on my agenda was to get clarity on all of these issues. We need a higher standard for how this organization handles admin, governance, and accountability … I let the Co-directors [Jezierski and Murphy-Williams] know that I would be expecting more of them, and that the administrative and governance aspects would need to improve.”
Jezierski and Murphy-Williams resigned the following day.
Ness told the Monitor that, during his time on the board, they had received “very little insight into organizational finances” from the former co-directors. The only financial information they ever saw was “a 12-line budget that put the festival expenses at around $130,000 and budgeted revenues around $10k more than that.” The co-directors also failed to provide the board with any records that proved they had reported HGMF’s revenues and expenses to any governmental agency.
If HGMF earned $140,000 in revenue each year and they last reported income in 2019, an estimated amount of $840,000 should have been reported to the IRS during the past six years.
Ness told the Monitor that the board was “taking this very seriously” and that they had hired an accounting firm to “organize the financial records, create annual financials and assess the most appropriate path forward.”
There is a process for organizations to come back into compliance and the Board is committed to doing exactly that … The new board is serious about establishing standards of accountability and formalized processes. Because things have been done so casually for many years, that’s a tough transition …
We will definitely be taking steps to address past years of unreported income. First step is to ensure that we have complete and accurate accounting of the transactions—revenues and expenses. Based on that, we will then decide the best course of action, in terms of how best to file the appropriate tax forms for past years. With any path forward, we will be required to make sure the taxes are up to date. It’ll be complicated and time-consuming. I’ve only had access to the organization’s financial picture for a couple of days, so I can’t say at this moment what the best path forward is going to be. Just that we’re committed to doing this the right way.
When the Monitor asked Ness how HGMF planned to respond to the Attorney General’s May 14 warning letter, Ness said he was not aware of a letter from the Attorney General. “The Directors did not share this with the board. We’re working on getting the keys to the P.O. box this week.”
The Monitor provided Ness with the Attorney General’s letter to review. Because the letter gives HGMF 20 days to respond, HGMF has already missed the deadline.
Ness underscored the fact that he did not want to “throw [Jezierski and Murphy-Williams] under the bus.”
I definitely don’t want to throw them under the bus—they’re good guys and they weren’t given adequate support or direction when they were hired under contract 4-5 years ago. My sense is that the previous board was not fully engaged, which created conflict and confusion. The co-directors are passionate about the festival and they were focused on the operations, and they did that well. The questions about nonprofit governance were not on their radar, so things slipped through the cracks.
As of press time, Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams have not responded to requests for comment from the Monitor which were sent to their Facebook Messenger accounts
