Vegetarian Food Fair Manual Project

The Vegetarian Food Fair Manual Project

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Part IV

Section 28: Profiting from and expanding a vegetarian food fair

Because vegetarian food fairs are such successful outreach tools, many groups find that they are able to raise money for their organization by holding such an event in their communities. For many groups, one of the goals of holding a vegetarian food fair is to raise money for their organization. Often a food fair that began as a one-day event for community outreach evolves into a several-day or week-long fair that mixes outreach with fundraising. After the success of your first fair, you may want to consider expanding your fair or setting fundraising goals for the event.

Food fair fundraising

Almost any fundraising idea can be adapted to fit into the scheme of a vegetarian food fair. Bake sales, silent auctions, merchandise sales, or raffles are easy to organize and work easily into the format of a food fair. Another fundraising option is a featured lecture or speaker for which you sell tickets within the context of a free food fair. You might be able to get vendors involved, asking them to pay you a certain percentage of the profits they make at the fair. Another idea might be to have workshops or educational classes for which you charge a registration fee. If your fair focuses on health, you might consider kicking off the event with an early morning fun-run or walk to raise money for your organization.

Working a fundraising aspect into your food fair may require that you set up another committee and recruit a separate group of volunteers to cover the details of planning and the day-of responsibilities at the event. TOP

Expanding the event

After holding a successful one-day event, you may want to consider increasing the size and the duration of your event to increase awareness and boost turnout. After several annual events, you may find that the community itself expresses interest in a longer event. You will need to bear in mind the security constraints that come with increasing the duration of your fair. If you are holding the event outside, security becomes an issue if booths stay assembled overnight. You may find it impossible to quickly and easily breakdown the fair setup, and it may create difficulties for vendors. Therefore, you will need to budget for security to cover the fair after hours and overnight. A similar problem may occur with indoor fairs, but the general security of the location (locked doors and campus or local police coverage) may be adequate to protect booths and equipment. TOP

Multiple-day fairs

You may be able to organize a multiple-day or week-long fair by combining different activities in different locations. For example, you might schedule videos and lectures at the library on a Thursday evening, cooking demonstrations at the local high school on Friday evening, and a larger outdoor event for Saturday (or all weekend). By dividing the activities of the fair into different days, you can create a longer event without necessarily increasing the burden on your budget or on vendors and other participants. This arrangement might also increase your resources by providing additional opportunities for sponsorship and participation. Using multiple locations also increases awareness about the event and enables a greater segment of the community to participate in or attend the fair. You may even be able to recruit additional volunteers because the planning will take place in various locations, and volunteers have more flexibility about when they can help, and the work is divided over several days instead of being concentrated into one day or weekend.

Arranging a fair this way, however, will increase your flyer and postering needs and costs. You will also need to increase the number of sponsorship letters. Volunteer needs may also increase to check multiple locations and coordinate events at each place with the overall fair. Planning for publicity may also take longer because you will need to devise ads and publicity materials that indicate clearly for the public which events take place where and at what time. Given the space constraints and other limitations that often accompany publicity, you will need to plan carefully. TOP