Washington, DC’s DC VegFest (www.dcvegfest.com) will be an exciting outdoor festival in the US capital city to celebrate and learn about the enormous benefits of a vegan diet and lifestyle. Co-organized by the Vegetarian Society of DC (VSDC, www.vsdc.org) and Compassion Over Killing (COK, www.cok.net), the DC VegFest will be held on Sat, 12 September from 12-6 pm. The event will feature food preparation demos and food sampling, speakers, commercial and non-profit exhibitors, and other fun activities.

To share thoughts with other organizers of similar events in the future, here are some areas that VSDC strongly believes contribute to a successful event:

• making clear the desired outcomes of the event with quantifiable metrics to the greatest extent possible.
• planning the event (and budget) to make it free and open to the public, encouraging as many people as possible to attend.
• establishing the venue at a central, outdoor space with strong public transportation access. We were able to find a supportive university with an on-campus animal rights group that helped us reserve the space at a discounted rate.
• attracting one or two speakers who have name recognition outside of the veg circles. We are fortunate to have Rory Freedman (author of the best seller Skinny Bitch and other books) and Wendy Rieger (a TV news anchor), asking both to help promote the event too.
• utilizing online social networking and getting volunteers to promote it widely.
• spending advertising money on low-cost, high volume postcards and getting volunteers to leaflet at strategic locations to reach people near / around the venue.
• working personal contacts early in the process and being forthright to ask them to donate / sponsor the event or to ask specific people to help in whatever way needed.
• always ensuring the organizing team feels and projects positive, determined energy to instill confidence in others.

For more information, see our dedicated website, www.dcvegfest.com. Please feel free to share ideas about other possibilities to help make such an event a greater success by contacting VSDC President Saurabh Dalal at president@vsdc.org

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