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The Let Live Foundation has been putting on sorta monthly animal rights events for 2 years now and it is getting very discouraging seeing the same few people come. Especially considering the number of people I’ve met around the country who think Portland has a thriving community of activists.
Last year we figured the low turnouts might have been because our topics didn’t have a broad enough appeal. This year we tried very hard to broaden that appeal by doing bigger, better events but doesn’t seem to be helping.
Last month we had Lisa Shannon, who is a longtime vegan and human rights activist, speak about her experiences starting a super successful project from the ground up. She has a book coming out about her work, and was on Oprah recently. We were worried the room we’d rented was going to be too small as it only held 60 or so people. 5 to 10 people came. I assure you everyone in the room will tell you they were profoundly moved by her story. Hearing her speak left me very inspired and with a ton of information I didn’t have before.
Last night we showed the award winning Mercy For Animals documentary “Fowl Play” at the Hollywood Theater (we hoped to cover the cost of renting the theater with donations) and maybe 15 people showed up, outside of the organizers. The afternoon before we had Matt Rossell lead a discussion about how to discuss fur and the fur industry. Matt has more experience with fur, on the street, and working undercover on a fur farm, than anybody else I can think of. Outside of the organizers, I think there were 10 people there.
We started Let Live Foundation because we felt Portland had a lot of energetic people who just needed an entry point to get active. In a town with this many vegans/veggie people and the reputation it has as being the vegan capitol of the world, it felt like a safe bet that a lot of folks would be interested in events if we put them on.
We’ve been very deliberate in our language and choice of subject matter to be as inclusive as possible so new folks don’t feel intimidated and more seasoned activists feel that their experience and input is welcomed at events. We’ve tried to get across that we’re trying to build community, no matter where you are in your knowledge, activism, etc. We’ve tried to schedule events at different times and on different days to accommodate peoples schedules.
We’ve tried everything we can think of to expand the community of people here and attendance at our events is not going up.
So, what should we do? We need feedback desperately because we are using up our scant resources (money, time, enthusiasm) and don’t seem to be making any progress with our goals. This has been especially discouraging lately, for me personally, because I feel like the quality of the events we’re doing is really high. I’ve learned so much lately and gotten so much inspiration from the speakers and film we’ve shown.
We could really use some specific feedback about what is keeping people away from these events or how folks in other towns get people to show up for stuff. We’d also love suggestions for topics people might like us to put on events about.
We’re doing these events to try and help folks be better informed, feel some community, and feel more empowered. When people don’t come out for stuff we are left wondering what we can do differently, so any help would be appreciated.
