Fireworks going off in a past Family Fourth Fireworks event at Look Park.
Reminder Publishing file photo
NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton Family Fourth Committee has announced its annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration event has been paused for 2026.
“It was a really difficult decision because we really love the event and never wanted to see it have to get to this point, but I think just the economy, and people in their own lives having their own bills and things to take care of. The cost and expense for things have gone up significantly, so it definitely has a big impact on things,” explained Northampton Family Fourth Committee Co-Chair Brenda Ryan.
Since 2011, the event has been powered by a small, dedicated core group of volunteers who have taken on the bulk of the behind-the-scenes work. Their efforts have included fundraising, reaching out to donors through phone calls, emails, letters and in-person visits, as well as coordinating logistics, managing outreach and supporting event operations.
Look Memorial Park, the City of Northampton, and Parks & Recreation have also been essential partners, contributing significant in-kind support, staffing, space and day-of-management.
In recent years, however, the volunteer committee has struggled to sustain the level of work required to produce an event of this scale. No new volunteers have joined the planning effort for several years, and the longtime core members have limited capacity due to other responsibilities.
“We’ve been working really hard for the last couple of years. Once we went through COVID, it was really hard to kind of recoup from that because we had to continue to pay for things during COVID, insurance, and different things like that to maintain all of our status and do everything,” Ryan said. As we got through that, all the costs of things started to increase. Bills became higher, and it kept dipping back into what we had available.”
She continued, “What we’re seeing is that people are really being very cautious and they’re not giving as much as they were in the past. We looked at what we had, the expenses we’d have to take on this year and how they were going to increase. And we had to make that really tough decision to put it on pause and say we really need to sit down and go over how we can raise more money and what can we do.”
Last year’s fundraising effort needed to meet the event’s approximately $25,000 cost. Ryan said the effort became extremely challenging and required considerable time, energy and repeated outreach from the committee. The committee anticipates that, given current economic conditions, raising the necessary funds for 2026 would be even more difficult.
“Last year felt like pulling teeth,” said Ryan. “We barely made budget, and it took a tremendous amount of effort from a very small group of people. We love this event, and it’s been a wonderful tradition for Northampton, but we simply cannot sustain it at this time without more hands and more support.”
Ryan said the committee is emphasizing that this is just a pause and not a permanent ending. She added the group hopes that taking a year off will create a space to reassess what is needed to bring the event back in the future — ideally with new volunteers, fresh leadership energy, and a broader base of support to handle fundraising and day-of operations.
“We would be happy to have more people join the committee and help with this because it does take a lot of people to do the fundraising and reach out, especially when you’re in times like this where you need more bodies to do that,” said Ryan. “Hopefully, we can get some people who have some other ideas on different ways or types of fundraising. And maybe some new energy to help with doing that and reaching out to different groups and people that might be willing to support and help would be great.”
Ryan added that the committee has not yet started looking at new potential fundraising efforts to return the event in 2027, as they still need to finish going through some logistics, but this announcement was an effort to make the community and all the partners of the event aware of the event’s current paused status.
“We’re going to get together again in another month or so and really take a look at what are some different ways that we can actually raise some money. See if we can get some support from the community. Maybe somebody has a different idea than we have to help us out and try to rebuild. You have to have enough money to start the next year to be able to do it, and we weren’t at that point to be able to make that happen this year,” said Ryan.
Community members interested in shaping the future of the event or joining a potential future planning effort are encouraged to reach out to info@NorthamptonFamilyFourth.com. The committee also has a Facebook page with more information. Ryan said people can make more suggestions about the event there, too.
“I’m definitely willing — if they want to reach out and need someone to talk to, they can just send it to one of those two paces, and I’m more than happy to call them back and talk to them about that,” said Ryan.
Ryan expressed gratitude on behalf of the Northampton Family Fourth Committee to all the donors, volunteers, partners and community members who have supported the fireworks celebration since 2011. Because the tradition is such a highlight of summers in Northampton, the committee remains optimistic that, with renewed participation, the event may one day return.
“We would just like to say thank you for all the support that the community has given us in the past, and hopefully, we can work together to make it happen again. By taking a one-year pause, hopefully we can rebuild and get something for the following year,” said Ryan. “If anybody has positive comments to send about experiences they had or anything like that, we’d love to hear them because it makes it nice to know that it impacted the community the way it did. If they want to reach out, whether it’s monetarily to try and build up the funds again or just with different thoughts and things they think might help us, we are very willing to listen.”
