Welcome to the Sock Animal Abuse In the FaceTelethon!
We're raising money to fight injustice against animals. So call in to help save lives!
[ring]
Oh! Our first call.
[muffled 'hello']
Hello, I’d like to donate.
[unintelligible]
I’m sorry I can’t understand you. How do I donate?
[unintelligible]
Hello? Okay I guess I’ll give my money to the Bare Foot Foundation.
[shocked noise]
Okay sorry about that. Didn’t think things out too well but now...
...we're wireless! [ring]
Hello, you’re on the telethon!
[on phone]: Yes! I actually have a question before I donate. Are you or any of your staff
composed of wool or any other animal-derived textile?
[silence and lowers head]
Hi it's Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to a special vegan nugget.
First, I probably need to explain this.
Last May I held a fundraiser spurred by an anonymous donor who offered
a 1:1 match up to $1,000. This was the second fundraiser of its kind and for the first,
when we hit our goal, I did a victory dance and posted it on the channel.
For the second, I asked what you wanted to see and jokingly suggested a video with sock puppets.
Somehow this caught on in the comment section, but never materialized.
Until now.
You’re welcome.
So, the same anonymous donor has contacted me and seriously upped their game.
They're now offering a 1:1 match up to $5,000 over the next 2 months. Now if you’re like me,
you’re thinking “holy vegan nuggets, that’s a lot of money.” And wait till the end for
suggestions on what I should do if it’s met.
As you may or may not know, I work on Bite Size Vegan full time. Actually more than fulltime.
Usually around 90-100 hours a week. Some videos take over 100 hours to produce, like the
Vegans In the Renaissance: The History Of Veganism Part Three,
which took 103 hours over a 5-day period.
Not a lot of sleep happening.
Now I know talking about money isn’t fun. Or at least not for me, so I though I’d
let this little guy do the talking.
Just kidding. Now you’re so relieved that this will seem less painful by comparison!
So I will be talking about money a bit, because it’s only fair to explain what this fundraiser
would be applied to. But then I have other announcements towards the end about when you
can meet up with me and stuff!
With the growth of the channel, the upkeep expenses have also grown. This ridiculously
generous anonymous donor has opened an opportunity for some exciting possibilities.
I’m in a position I never dreamed I’d be in. I’m working on animal activism every
day of my life. And as much as I feel I never do enough, I have messages every single day
from people and whole families who have gone vegan because of my videos, and vegans who
have themselves started speaking up.
I’m still amazed that anyone watches.
Because I quit med school and any form of income to throw myself into Bite Size Vegan
activism fulltime, there’s still about a $2,500 hole left from the initial eight or
so months I totally winged it without any money coming in. I’ve been paying that down
little by little but this drive would get everything into the black.
With the ever-expanding data storage needs of Bite Size Vegan, I’ve invested in dropbox
and a cloud backup service and filled up some externals as well. I need to get some new
externals to ensure duplication and proper storage.
The video editing and storage burdens my computer, making it rather cumbersome. I currently have
several external drives and had 3 fail in one day a number of months ago. With this funding
drive, I could purchase a Western Digital My Book Pro to use as a working drive and
use the other externals as backups. This drive typical retails for around $900 and two portable
drives for travel backups would be around $350-$400 each.
Now the most exciting possibility this fundraiser well, raises, is that of speaking.
It's long been a dream of mine to follow in the footsteps of my friend
and mentor Gary Yourofsky and speak at schools.
I receive message all the time asking if I can travel to one place or another, even internationally,
to speak. Currently, I can only accept local events or ones where they can assist with
travel expenses. But, I never charge to speak.
If we raise the funds in this drive, I’ll be able to travel and speak in many areas.
For instance, I will be returning to Toronto in June to attend the March to End Slaughter
and a 24 hour vigil with Toronto Pig Save. I’d far prefer no organization having to
shell out their much-needed money for my expenses. I could travel there for around $375 to $400
for a week’s rental and gas, or fly for slightly more.
A typical speech trip, which ideally would include several classes if it’s at a University,
would average between $800-$1,000, or more if going oversees. This all depends on the
length of the trip, cost of flights, which varies by distance, and of course accommodations.
I tend to look for the shadiest of hotels to stay in, much to the horror of my mother.
The cheapest flights are in the $300-$400 range, cheap hotels can be even as low as
$30 or so a night, though in some areas, those are difficult to find,
with rental cars between $25 and $50 a day, and cost of food varying
but never exceeding $120 for a trip.
So if we take the average of all of this and say $900 per trip, and the remainder of the
drive funds ($5,800), I’d a fund available for between 6 and 7 trips,
each of which could have multiple talks.
Using my mentor Gary’s original method, I can also reach out to Universities and professors
and offer a free talk, which many are happy to have. It could be a Bite Size Tour!
Gary has always said speaking in classes is the way to go as when people put together
voluntary attendance events, only vegans tend to show up.
So, that would be my ideal, to speak in classes.
Now some exciting news is that before my upcoming Toronto trip, which will be from around
June 10th to about the 16th, I have two other talks.
On March 16th, I’ll be speaking in Lisbon, Portugal at an event delightfully titled
"How To Cook A Dog.” I’m including the website for the talk in the description below.
If you’re near Portugal, I’d love to meet you! If you're stateside, in May I'll be speaking at
Rowdy Girl Animal Sancutary in Texas for their annual fundraiser. Rowdy Girl is the sanctuary run by former
cattle rancher Renee King-Sonnen, who I interviewed on my channel here.
The info for that talk is also below, as well.
So, that’s all the numbers! If you’re still with me, you can suggest what you’d
like to see me do if we meet this astronomical number. I was thinking I could do one of those
10 Things You Don’t Know About me videos, but I’m open to any suggestions.
Don't be gross.
If you want to help reach this astounding goal to get Bite Size Vegan in the black and
on the road, check out the donation link here and below. If you can’t give, I still so
appreciate all of your support when you watch, comment, share and like the videos.
That does so much to help get the message out there.
Thanks for sticking with me through this video and this crazy journey.
I'm amazed how far I’ve come but I'm never satisfied or slowing down.
There is too much suffering and injustice to ever yield.
Let’s keep being an effective voice for the animals. Together, we can change the world.
If you want to know the kind of work you'd be supporting, check out some of my selected
videos linked here and in the video description below.
I still kind of wish I'd done the whole thing with the sock puppet.
One day...