🎲💚📆 Thank you to the nine compassionate souls who joined us last night for not only our latest Vegan Game Night, but also our first-ever St. Louis Veganuary planning meeting.

Together, we enjoyed the delicious vegan options at Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe, played games to our heart’s content, and, most importantly, set the stage for a new wave of vegan awareness in our St. Louis community.

We prepared a preliminary, six-page campaign guide, complete with goals, success metrics, events, partners, and our overarching strategy for executing St. Louis’ first high-profile Veganuary campaign.

Our central goal? To reduce suffering and save animal lives by inspiring thousands of St. Louisans to embrace more compassionate, plant-based eating habits, ideally creating hundreds of new vegans in the process.

Specifically, we aim to:

• 🌱 Create a Veganuary landing page on VeganSTL.com to coordinate the campaign

• 🎨 Create graphic assets for social media to promote the challenge

• 📱 Partner with at least 10 local micro-influencers to spread the word on social media

• 🍽️ Partner with at least 5 local vegan restaurants to further advertise the challenge

• 🎉 Organize 10+ Veganuary events to build community and momentum

• ✅ Obtain at least 100 sign-ups to fill our vegan education program

• 🌎 Reach at least 100,000 St. Louisans to diffuse our impact more broadly

We believe we can achieve significantly more, but we wanted to establish some bare-minimum goals to help drive the campaign forward.

If you want to support this critical work, please consider joining our volunteer team and donating here.

We anticipate that this campaign will quickly become the second highest-reach, second highest-impact vegan initiative in St. Louis after STL Vegan Market.

So what are you waiting for? Join the campaign today!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we would like to give thanks to the phenomenal community members who help power our work. And what better way to do so than through a Vegan Award Ceremony!

From Project Animal Freedom’s Volunteer of the Year to St. Louis’ Vegan Mom of the Year, we recognize exceptional local activists who have contributed meaningfully toward our vision of a fully vegan Midwest by 2056.

Learn more about our awardees and the accolades they earned below!

Dear friends,

It is with enormous pride (and years of anticipation) that we finally announce that Project Animal Freedom has not only crossed the $100k annual revenue threshold, but thereby become one of the top 100 largest animal rights organizations in the world.

How do we know this? Per internal movement memoranda our team discovered at the world’s premier animal rights conference this May, all it takes is an annual revenue of $80,000-$90,000 or greater to qualify as one of the top 100 largest animal rights organizations in the world (at least as a matter of revenue).

This Monday at 6:14 p.m., our accounting firm confirmed we had reached the $100k threshold, a milestone we have been working diligently toward for the past few years. Further consultation and analysis have also revealed the following:

1. PAF is the fastest-growing animal rights organization in the US Midwest, with a lifetime compound annual growth rate of ~59.3% (and ~70.2% since 2020). The “Big Midwest Three”—the only three strictly animal rights/vegan advocacy organizations in the US Midwest with more revenue than PAF—have an average lifetime compound annual growth rate of ~11.9%, meaning PAF is growing nearly 5x faster than these high-performing, benchmark organizations are on average. In more practical terms, our annual revenue doubles roughly every 1-1/2 years, reflecting an astonishingly high rate of growth sustained over the past seven years.

2. PAF is projected to become the best-funded animal rights/vegan advocacy organization in the Midwest by 2029, even after accounting for the respective compound annual growth rates of the Big Midwest Three. What makes this fact so impressive is the fact that the Big Midwest Three have an average founding date of 1996, giving them a roughly 22-year head start on PAF. We are projected to become the third best-funded Midwestern animal rights/vegan advocacy organization by the end of 2026, the second best-funded by the end of 2028, and the best-funded by the end of 2029.

3. PAF is likely the highest-potential organization of the extended “Big Midwest Four,” and several metrics imply we are already the second-highest-impact animal rights/vegan advocacy organization in the US Midwest. We strive to emulate the Big Midwest Three, our movement and region partners, and become as impactful as we can possibly be over the next few years. They are now a huge source of inspiration for us as we undertake our “intensification revolution” in 2026 and beyond.

This is quite a motley of distinctions for PAF to have assembled, and we are so grateful to everyone who has helped propel us this far. Yes, we have dramatically farther to go, but it is so heartwarming to see the little nonprofit that could succeed at such a high level, success that is made all the more remarkable by just how much we've had to overcome to reach this point.

Please join us as we continue ramping up our impact and accelerating the timeline to a fully vegan Midwest!

🦃💚🤝 Thank you to the four phenomenal leafleters who joined us today at SLU!

Together, we distributed over 300 pieces of Thanksgiving literature, inspiring compassion in time for the holidays!

This event was once more coordinated by Troy, Project Animal Freedom’s Volunteer of the Year. Disgruntled by his high school’s turkey bowling competition, Troy decided to take action, channeling his shock and frustration into impactful animal advocacy.

It was a chilly, misty day, and most students had already left for the Thanksgiving holiday. But we still managed to distribute over 300 pieces of literature at a spontaneous gathering of PAF volunteers following our Vegan Thanksgiving Feast the night before.

This action shows not only the growing strength of our volunteer network, but also our ability to push vegan outreach in our community further than ever before. Our goal is to add a St. Louis Outreach Coordinator by spring 2026, enabling us to add dozens more outreach events to our calendar.

So far this semester, we have distributed over 5,800 leaflets as part of our College Outreach Program in the St. Louis area alone. We would like to push this number well past the 10,000 mark in 2026.

If you believe in powering our 2026 outreach, please consider joining our volunteer team and donating here.

What are you waiting for? Get active for animals today!

🦃💚😌 Thank you for the 91 grateful souls who joined us last night for our second annual Vegan Thanksgiving Feast!

Together, we savored Adina’s Vegan Cuisine’s superb cooking, enjoyed a Vegan Award Ceremony that recognized exceptional local changemakers, and helped build a new tradition free from Thanksgiving cruelty.

We are so proud of all our awardees who made the night so uplifting:

• ✊ PAF Volunteer of the Year: Troy Stoffey

• 💸 PAF Donor of the Year: Gabe Luzynski

• 🤲 PAF Member of the Year: Hera Gerber

• 🤝 St. Louis Leadership Award: Alex Ozbolt

• 🍦 St. Louis Business Impact Award: Bombay Food Junkies

• 🥗 STL Vegan Market Vendor of the Year: Seedz Cafe

• 👩‍🍼 Vegan Mom of the Year: Tiffany Scott

• 🌱 Excellence in Catering Award: Adina’s Vegan Cuisine

We also grateful to our honorable mentions: Mark Cook, Ketura Wash, Franchesca Petersen, Jaimie Siverling, Mighty Kind, Alessandra Nero, Zman the Vegan, Patricia Parker, Alan Gerber, Craig McCranie, Rachael Kuts, Vanya, and Paul Barlows and his son, Bently!

We commend each and every one of these inspiring changemakers and big-hearted businesses for their significant contributions toward our mission of building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056! They have all helped transform Project Animal Freedom into one of the top 100 largest animal rights organizations in the world, and for that, we could hardly be more grateful!

Congratulations, again, and thank you to all our supporters across the country and around the world who power our work. Please join us again at Vegmas 2025!

🦃💚😋 Thank you to the six spectacular vegan volunteers who joined us today at our Tofurky Roast Giveaway!

Together, we distributed 20 delicious vegan roasts, passed out over 50 pieces of vegan literature, and promoted a cruelty-free Thanksgiving to hundreds of passersby.

This action encouraged people to imagine a new way of celebrating Thanksgiving and a new way of living, one where 46 million turkeys and billions of other animals no longer die in the name of tradition, taste, and convenience.

At least half a dozen vegetarians and vegans excitedly approached us before selling out, expressing appreciation for our outreach, discussing ways to connect with our work, and showing the power of vegan visibility to inspire people to action.

We enjoyed sterling weather as we disseminated information about compassionate living to the community, and we could hardly be prouder of Troy, an up-and-coming PAF volunteer who organized today’s action.

At the age of just 17, Troy has dedicated a very significant portion of his life to the cause for animal freedom, and he cites Project Animal Freedom for giving him the community, support, and inspiration he needed to get involved in the animal freedom movement.

Please join us for our Vegan Thanksgiving Feast and our Levi’s Leather Protest as we continue championing compassion for all beings and building a world where no one ever suffers and dies for a meal again!

🥳🌱🐷 St. Louis Vegans turns seven years old yesterday!

In that time, it has grown quickly, becoming St. Louis’ largest online vegan community over two years ago!

In fact, St. Louis Vegans has grown at a rate of nearly two new members every day for the past seven years (that’s 2,555 days of consistent growth!)

Let's keep the momentum going by building an even larger, more resilient hub for vegan community-building, advocacy, outreach, and activism.

Please invite 10+ of your friends to join our growing community today; the more people we bring together, the more vibrant and impactful our community will be!

Why invite your friends? Because together, we can build a fully vegan St. Louis, and together, we will!

🐥💚🐷 Thank you to the three tenacious leafleters who joined us today as we leafleted at SIUE with Vegan Outreach!

Together, we distributed over 1,100 leaflets and 600 vegan cookies, helping inspire students to consume a more plant-based diet and thereby saving hundreds of animals from a lifetime of suffering.

Quite remarkably, as many as 3 in 4 SIUE students accepted our leaflets, the highest acceptance rate of any university we’ve ever visited. The students were so friendly, smiling and thanking us for the treats and information.

We had several positive conversations with passersby, and they were quite open to leading a more plant-based lifestyle. There were precisely zero hecklers, and we enjoyed a calm, peaceful day of changemaking for animals.

If you would like to get involved in our College Outreach Program, please apply here. We are looking for more volunteers, especially as we expand our outreach in 2026.

So far this year, our St. Louis chapter has hosted over 20 activism/outreach events, and we would love to double this number to 40 next year to deliver more compelling, high-impact vegan outreach than ever before in the St. Louis metro area.

What are you waiting for? Join our team and get active for animals today! Plus, don’t miss our upcoming Tofurky Roast Giveaway and our Levi’s Leather Protest!

🤓💚🧠 Thank you to the 61 trivia enthusiasts who joined us for our inaugural Vegan Trivia Night last month!

Together, we celebrated Project Animal Freedom’s seventh anniversary in style, advanced vegan culture with great gusto, and built a foundation for our next seven year’s worth of vegan outreach, advocacy, and activism.

Our first seven years have been a remarkable (and, at times, tumultuous) journey, and we are so grateful to the tens of thousands of local, statewide, regional, national, and international supporters who have facilitated our growth. We are just getting started, and we can hardly wait for all the impact we will generate in 2026 and beyond.

So far, we have launched over a dozen chapters, reached over 20 million people via social media outreach, and laid the groundwork for explosive future growth, all in pursuit of our vision of a fully vegan Midwest by 2056.

Together, we can not only build thriving vegan communities across the Midwest, but also unlock the potential of the Midwestern animal rights revolution, saving millions of animals from a lifetime of suffering in the process.

We will not stop fighting until every last animal lives safe, happy, and free, until every factory farm and slaughterhouse is no more, and until we can all dance among the trees, collectively free at long last.

Please join us at our Vegan Thanksgiving Feast as we express our gratitude to all the supporters who make our life-saving work possible, and never forget our collective power to reshape the world into one defined by justice, love, respect, and compassion for all.

Together, we can build a fully vegan world, and together, we will!

🥳💚🛒 Thank you to the nearly 500 guests and roughly 40 vendors who joined us last month at Vegtoberfest, our final vegan market of the season!

Altogether this market season, over 5,700 attendees joined us, and we conservatively reached over 730,000 St. Louisans, generating nearly 2.4 million views in the process. That’s right: STL Vegan Market reached over 1 in 4 St. Louisans an average of more than three times each this year alone!

The value of this salience is hard to overstate: the market has cemented itself as a vegan awareness-raising powerhouse, championing veganism across the St. Louis metro area more effectively than any other vegan event or initiative.

We are so grateful to the thousands of supporters who made this our most remarkable season yet, all the volunteers, donors, vendors, sponsors, attendees, and casual supporters who made the market several times more impactful than it was just last year.

One final, well-deserved thank you to our top sponsor, Carol House Furniture, alongside Bougie Bites, Bombay Food Junkies, Sun Solar, Harvest Shreds, Seedz Cafe, Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe, and Pearl’s Plant Kitchen, all of whom played a critical role in this year’s success.

We look forward to continuing this tradition into its fourth season in 2026, and we are so proud to serve our local vegan community, which continues to grow by leaps and bounds thanks, in part, to large, unifying events like the market.

Thank you for such an incredible year together; we can hardly wait for all the opportunities for growth and impact 2026 brings us!

🥳💚🌈 Thank you to the 28 karaoke enthusiasts who joined us last night at our Vegan Karaoke Night!

Together, we belted out our favorite tunes, delighted in each other’s company, and enjoyed vegan pizza from Pizza Head!

A special thank you to Alice for organizing this event, Pizza Head for donating pizza, and Hidden Gem STL for donating the space.

We had a positively riotous evening, dancing, singing, and laughing to our heart’s content. It was truly one of our most magical events yet!

Please join us at other fun community-building events, from our vegan game nights to our upcoming Vegan Thanksgiving Feast!

👻💚🎃 Thank you to the 74 Halloween lovers who joined us last night at our largest Vegan Halloween Party yet!

Together, we savored chili as part of St. Louis’ only 100%-vegan chili cook-off, dazzled each other with our costumes during our costume competition, and celebrated Halloween with candy, compassion, and community!

Now in its fifth year, this tradition dates back to 2021, and we are proud to have eclipsed our next largest Vegan Halloween Party by nearly 50%. Fortunately, there is room to keep growing, and we hope you join us at next year’s celebration!

We would like to specially thank the more than one dozen volunteers who powered this event. Whether you helped with setup, made chili, or brought candy for the trunk-or-treat, you helped make this the largest, most cheerful vegan Halloween celebration in St. Louis history.

Please join us at our Vegan Karaoke Night next Friday and our Vegan Thanksgiving Feast later this month as we give thanks to the sentient beings with whom we share the planet and the people who power our work!

✊🌎💚 Thank you to the six determined activists who joined us yesterday in the rain as we marched for a just, sustainable, plant-based food system!

Together, we exposed animal ag’s insidious role in the present ecological crisis, championed veganism as an environmental imperative, and demanded a plant-based, veganic food system. Perhaps most crucially, we called upon governments, businesses, and everyday citizens to embrace veganism, end subsidies to animal ag, and endorse the Plant Based Treaty.

Hundreds of people witnessed this powerful action, and over a dozen people stopped to speak with us, take pictures, and honk to show their support. There is not only a growing awareness of the profound environmental toll of animal agriculture, but a growing willingness to do something about it, a charge we helped lead on the Arch grounds in downtown St. Louis.

Our chants reverberated down the streets, and virtually no one heckled or laughed at us. Instead, dozens of passersby reacted positively, with several people grateful to see other vegans fighting for climate justice and one couple even asking us for vegan ice cream suggestions for their upcoming wedding.

It may have been cold, and it may have rained, especially early on during the march. But we persevered, because nothing will stop us from fighting for the future of all life on Earth. The stakes are simply too high to not take action and do what we can to avert climate catastrophe.

We hope you join us at future actions. Our voices are stronger together, and the opportunities before us too great to squander. Please join us at our Vegan Halloween Party + Vegan Chili Cook-Off next Saturday as well as we celebrate the end of our warm-month activism.

What are you waiting for? Connect with our local vegan community and join the burgeoning movement for animal freedom today!

🥳💚🍂 Thank you to the 18 volunteers who joined us at our PAF volunteer party despite the rain!

Together, we enjoyed delicious vegan Indonesian food, strengthened our bonds as fellow activists, and deepened our commitment to fighting for a world where all animals live safe, happy, and free.

Our team at Project Animal Freedom is proud to have coordinated this event, giving our volunteers a unique opportunity to mingle with fellow activists and celebrate their contributions to our mission of building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056.

We plan to continue enriching our fellowship through more volunteer-focused events, and we hope you will join us at future volunteer opportunities to qualify for our volunteer-only events.

If you are interested in volunteering with our local St. Louis chapter, please join us for our Vegan Climate March on Saturday, October 25th. Learn more about volunteering here.

What are you waiting for? Join the animal freedom movement today!

🌈💚🥳 Thank you to the four fantastic volunteers who joined us at GroveFest!

Together, we sold eight vegan-themed Pride t-shirts, distributed dozens of pieces of literature, and raised $120 to support our vegan outreach. 11 passionate vegans and vegetarians also joined our mailing list.

But most importantly, we represented veganism, our local vegan community, and the animals as the only explicitly vegan vendor at GroveFest. That’s correct; out of the 80 vendors at GroveFest, we were the only animal rights organization and explicitly pro-animal freedom booth at the festival.

With roughly 30,000 festivalgoers in attendance, GroveFest is one of the largest festivals in St. Louis. Thousands of passersby saw our booth, with dozens of nonvegans stopping to admire our t-shirts and their giggle-inducing slogans. A couple dozen people even snapped pictures to share with friends via text and on social media, spreading our reach ever further.

Vegans in attendance were especially excited to discover our booth, and we even had a productive conversation with a former cow farmer who wound up buying one of our “Eat 🍑, not Animals” t-shirts. A local student newspaper interviewed us for several minutes as well, asking genuinely curious questions about veganism, animal rights, and plant-based living.

Overall, this event was a success for vegan presence, representation, and visibility, ensuring our movement and the nonhuman animal victims we advocate for are represented at as many major community events as possible.

Please join us again at future outreach events, such as our St. Louis Vegan Climate March, and donate to support our Vegan Festivals Campaign today!

🏳️‍🌈💚🥳 Thank you to the five phenomenal activists who joined us as we tabled at Tower Grove Pride!

Together, we reached thousands of passersby, championed vegan living, and participated in the Pride & Joy Parade, reaching thousands of additional festivalgoers.

Throughout the festival, we enjoyed dozens of conversations with passersby, distributed over 100 pieces of vegan literature, collected photos of animal advocates holding pro-justice signs, and sold 16 vegan-themed Pride t-shirts, raising $301 to support our vegan outreach. 42 people also joined our mailing list, building momentum for future events.

As part of our Vegan Festivals Campaign, we also helped two vegan businesses participate in Tower Grove Pride: Sweet Treats of St. Louis, with whom we shared our booth, and Big Mama’s House, who served over 100 vegan meals to the community.

We are proud to have represented veganism and the animals at this event, fusing animal rights with the broader movement for social justice. By building coalitions with other social justice movements, we can build a larger, kinder, and more effective movement that champions freedom and justice for all.

Please join us again for Vegans at STL GroveFest, the St. Louis Vegan Climate March, and other outreach events!

🤘🎸💚 Thank you to the 39 vegan rockers who joined us for our second annual VegRock vegan rock show!

Together, we enjoyed music from local vegan artists, rejoiced in each other’s company, and advanced vegan culture in our community!

A special thank you to our musical guests: Zman the Vegan, West End Junction, Rich Reese of LOVE of Community Radio STL, and STL Vegan Punk of Banks and Cathedrals, as well as Sky Music Lounge for hosting us!

One of our subgoals at Project Animal Freedom is adding to the richness of vegan culture, which we accomplished at VegRock by supporting local vegan artists, creating a new distinctly vegan musical tradition, and being a trendsetter for other vegan groups across the country and around the world.

VegRock will hopefully go on to help inspire other vegan musical experiences, and we are so grateful to everyone who joined us this year and last as we jump-started this new tradition.

Please join us again at our Vegan Halloween Party, Vegan Karaoke Night, and Vegan Thanksgiving Feast!

✊💚🐮 Thank you to the seven superb activists who joined us for our third annual March to Close All Slaughterhouses!

Together, we reached hundreds of passersby, championed a plant-based food system free from the atrocities of the abattoir, and built momentum for a slaughter-free St. Louis.

Slaughterhouses are indeed a strategic weak point for the animal abuse industry: the public already widely recognizes their cruelty, and support for phasing them out is growing.

By targeting slaughterhouses, we threaten the entire system of animal abuse. We weaken the economies of scale central to its success, making animal agriculture increasingly unprofitable and untenable as a business model.

But perhaps most importantly, we highlight the foundational cruelty of animal agriculture: the needless killing of innocents that drives animal commodification and consumption. The reality becomes inescapable; consumers can no longer deny the cruelty inherent to a system founded upon systemic violence.

And if we convince consumers that all slaughter is fundamentally unjustified, that slaughterhouses are moral abominations that must be ended through individual action paired with vigorous legal intervention, we can grind the system to a halt, ending the violent institution of the abattoir forever. And it all begins by spotlighting the undeniable violence, cruelty, and overall depravity inherent to the slaughterhouse model.

By opposing slaughterhouses, we therefore strike at the most foundational roots of animal oppression, challenging assumptions about human supremacy and demanding we properly value—and diligently protect—animal lives.

🥳💚🎶 Thank you to the over 400 people who joined us on Labor Day weekend for our first annual Vegan Block Party at Bougie Bites!

Together, we savored vegan takes on American classics, including burgers, pancakes, ice cream, nachos, and more. We relaxed, partied, and refueled our souls for challenges and opportunities to come. And we celebrated vegan community while uplifting St. Louis’ newest vegan restaurant.

We provided a vibrant, joy-filled alternative to a traditionally meat-centric holiday, reaching over 26,000 St. Louisans and generating over 35,000 views between Facebook and Instagram alone. Our KMOV article performed even better, generating over 400,000 views and achieving a 1.46% click-through rate.

Each view represents a seed of compassion being planted in the minds of over a quarter million St. Louisans. These gentle reminders, small nudges, and mini motivators increase the salience of veganism in our community, slowly but surely inspiring diet change as veganism becomes more relevant, accessible, and attractive to fellow St. Louisans.

A special thank you to Bougie Bites for hosting our event and accommodating all 400+ guests, alongside our wonderful vendors who helped make this event so exciting and rewarding to attend.

Please join us again next Saturday at STL Vegan Market - September 2025!

✊⚖️🌎 Thank you to the eight excellent activists who joined us as we demanded justice for all beings on World Day for the End of Speciesism!

Together, we reached roughly 12,000 passersby with our anti-speciesist, pro-justice message; raised awareness about the injustice of speciesism; and championed a future where all beings live safe, happy, and free.

Over 100 organizations participated in this worldwide day of action, united around five core demands:

• 1️⃣ Create a new legal category for animals that abolishes their property status

• 2️⃣ Launch global education campaigns against speciesism and for nonviolence

• 3️⃣ Build a nonviolent dietary culture free from fishing, slaughter, and other cruelty

• 4️⃣ Advance ethical research without animal exploitation or torture

• 5️⃣ Ensure all environmental decisions consider animals’ interests, including those of wildlife

With a giant banner that PETA loaned us, we made our position clear: end speciesism—and with it, all forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia.

At this political moment, a consistent anti-oppression message has never been more critical, urgent, or necessary. We are proud to have represented the cause for a united social justice movement that champions the rights of all beings, regardless of sex, sexuality, or species.

Please join us again at our March to Close All Slaughterhouses as we fight to build a #SlaughterFreeSTL!