How Do We Promote Veganism?
At Project Animal Freedom, we are committed to using our resources as efficiently and effectively as possible to further our mission of building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056. We use our money to fund dozens of events every year, launch new chapters across the Midwest, and sustain these chapters. We believe in maintaining the highest levels of financial transparency with our supporters, so you can be confident that your donations are making the greatest possible impact for animals.
Our work
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We organize dozens of events every year to further our mission, and have hosted over 250 events since our inception. These events include: Marches and protests; Demonstrations and leafleting; Movie screenings and educational events; Tabling at community events; Online expos and webinars; Potlucks, restaurant meetups, and catered dinners.
Some of our landmark events include the Vegan Climate Summit, Gay Vegan Expo, Disabled Vegan Expo, Worldwide Vegan Climate March, and Worldwide Fur Protest. The large majority of our funding goes to sustaining these events and the dozens of other impactful programs we organize each year across the Midwest.
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At Project Animal Freedom, we are working to build a fully vegan Midwest by 2056 through a strategic, chapter-based system. We believe in establishing thriving animal rights communities in every major metro area across the region, and the chapter model is essential to realizing this vision.
As we launch new chapters and help them grow, we dedicate an increasing portion of our budget to sustaining their events, actions, campaigns, activism, and advocacy efforts. Building a strong, interconnected network of local chapters is crucial to driving the large-scale change needed to achieve animal liberation.
Your donations allow us to continue expanding our chapter system and providing the resources necessary for these communities to thrive. Together, we are building a just, compassionate, and fully vegan Midwest.
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Over the past three years, we have reached over 5 million people through our digital outreach efforts alone. Our local chapters have also made a significant impact in their communities, with our Springfield, IL chapter reaching 33,000 people - over 1 in 6 residents in the Springfield metro area - during their first year of operation.
Each of our chapters engages thousands of community members through their events, raising awareness about veganism and the plight of animals. Their outreach efforts, including leafleting, tabling, protesting, and marching, extend our message to hundreds or even thousands more.
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Every shirt you purchase is a pledge for compassion, a commitment to change, and a step towards animal liberation. At Project Animal Freedom, we channel every ounce of your support into action—action that reverberates across communities and ignites a revolution in animal rights.
Our first vegan climate march at the St. Louis Arch
Why the Midwest?
Because a disproportionate number of factory farms, slaughterhouses, and puppy mills are located in the Midwest. Because we are tied dead last with the South for the lowest percentage of the population that is vegetarian or vegan in the US (just 2.3%!) Because the Midwest is a heavily neglected for animal rights advocacy. Because the coasts have dominated vegan culture for too long.
Why is a chapter model more effective than a traditional campaign route?
Chapters form a cohesive network that maximizes our impact. With dozens of chapters across the Midwest, we can build powerful organizing hubs that can pursue common goals across the Midwest and beyond. We can build the mass movement and the pressure needed to generate transformational change In short, chapters build the grassroots movement we need to maximize our chances of success.
Chapters are critical to building thriving animal rights communities in every major metro area across the Midwest. They recruit, coordinate, and mobilize thousands of activists who otherwise would be as engaged in the struggle for human and nonhuman rights.
Chapters provide support in neglected areas. Roughly 2/3 of the major metro areas across the Midwest so much as a single local animal organization. That means there is a massive missed opportunity to mobilize activists and create change. This unrealized potential can make the difference life and death for millions of animals.
What are the long-term goals of creative vegan events?
We organize dozens of events every year, and they help us effect positive change for animals the across and beyond. We organize our Vegan Climate Summit and Worldwide Vegan Climate March to address the climate and ecological emergency all on Earth, thereby fusing the movement for environmental justice with the movement for animal rights. We organize our Gay Vegan Expo and our Disabled Vegan Expo to advance vegan culture by emphasizing the interconnections between veganism, anti-speciesism, and other oppressions. We organize a parade of food events to inject as many people into the movement as possible, and we host marches, protests, and demonstrations where mobilize these people.
Finally, we organize several worldwide days of action, including our Worldwide Fur Protest and the Worldwide Vegan Chalking Night, and we have even established one or two animal rights holidays, such as Animal Freedom Day, all to build a world where all animals live safe, happy, and free.
What is our theory of change?
A movement is only as strong as the people it mobilizes. That is why we focus so heavily on launching and growing chapters: to recruit, educate, and mobilize activists in pursuit of our shared vision—a fully vegan Midwest by 2056.
Thriving communities build thriving movements. Building community not only helps us recruit and train leaders, but it helps sustain the movement as a whole by energizing diverse stakeholders to take action.
Empowered chapters empower their communities. We empower our chapters to become thriving organizations in their own right. How? By teaching them how to market their chapter, raise money to support their efforts, and nurture current and future leaders.
Diverse tactics are needed to tackle diverse problems. At Project Animal Freedom, we take a Swiss Army knife approach to organizing. Why? Because animal freedom is a multidimensional issue that necessitates a wide variety of approaches. We therefore expect our chapters to excel in multiple areas rather than just one or two.
From community, all else follows. We cannot emphasize enough the foundational role community plays in all our efforts. Without people, you cannot recruit activists. You cannot recruit event attendees. You cannot have a large, lasting impact. But if we build community, a world of possibilities opens up to us.
