Animal Writings

We (Compassion for Animals) decided that "The Great American Vegan Bake Sale" or "The Great North American Vegan Bake Sale" sounded too much like "The Great American Bake Sale," which already existed, and besides, we didn't want to risk getting in trouble for imitating a trademarked name. Someone suggested renaming the event to "The Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale." We liked it. Not only was that name more expansive and more inclusive, but it was a more accurate description of what we were trying to do: The more we had talked about this project, the more we decided that we didn't want to leave anyone out.

We considered the possibility of a participating group using the proceeds of its bake sale for something that involved animal cruelty or that was otherwise at cross-purposes with veganism. We decided we would take that risk for now. On the off chance that a group participated in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale and used the proceeds from their bake sale for say, canned hunting, we figured a) the group would probably have raised that money some other way anyway, b) exposure to—not to mention promotion of—vegan baking and maybe veganism in general is a positive thing, c) the chances of this scenario were small but if it arose we could consider a change in policy.

When to hold the event? We figured we needed a few months to get ready and to give ample notice to prospective participants. It was late November...sometime in the summer sounded about right. We did a quick online check of animal rights and animal protection conferences to make sure there was no clash; our presumption was that groups attending these conferences were also likely participants in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale. Someone mentioned that in the U.S., around the Fourth of July people start thinking about pies. That holiday was going to be on a weekend in 2009, so we decided on the weekend before: June 27th and 28th.

We would discover about three months later that we made a couple of major blunders when coming up with that date. But for the moment, we had a name, a date, and general policies. Now we had to actually implement the project. We had our work cut out for us. We had to find possible participants and notify them. We had to build a web site. We had to promote the concept. Each of these activities partly depended on the other—so we sort of had to start on them all at once.

Labels: Compassion for Animals, Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale