Here's a small sliver of recent media mentions of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale:

Vegan bake sale coming to Boca Raton later this month

Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale coming to Vancouver, New West, and Victoria

Table Talk: McMinnville, Walla Walla among best food towns; vegan bake sale; Pizza Hut's abomination

Vegan Bake Sale Set for May 5 at F.C. Community Center

Here are some preview pictures from bake sales this past weekend in Oakland and Oakland and Phoenix, respectively.

Later in the year, we'll have highlights pages that contain or link to all the vegan bake sale pictures we know of.

   

• There's just over One Week left until the official start of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS)! But there are some awesome early vegan bake sales this weekend:
  
  Friday April 13 — Oakland, CA
  Saturday April 14 — Phoenix, AZ
  Saturday April 14 — Oakland, CA
  Saturday April 14 — Deland, FL
• Check out these amazing posters from vegan bake sales in the 2012 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale! (We'll also have a 2012 Posters page on the web site once most of the bake sales are completed.)

• Only Two Weeks left until the official start of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS)! But there are some fantastic early and late vegan bake sales. The full schedule is here.
• It's never too late to sign up for the WVBS! If holding an event during the oficial week-plus (April 21-29) is impractical, that's ok; we're lenient on the dates. Our vegan bake sale tips page may make things easier (and more successful), and the signup form is here.
• Reminder: For more frequent updates of the WVBS, you can follow our Facebook and/or twitter pages.

• New countries in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale this year (so far) are: Croatia, Germany, India, and Mexico. Welcome! What about your country?
• Why not team up to hold a vegan bake sale? Maybe your group is a little short on volunteers, but you know another group in the same situation, and the two groups together have enough of everything. The groups don't even have to be the same type—a vegan advocacy group could join with an environmental group; a church group and an animal rescue could team up. The two groups split the efforts and the proceeds. Team-ups can build community, attract more bakers and customers, and be a lot of fun. Compassion for Animals and some other groups have done this with great success; email us if you have questions.
• Less than three weeks before the official start of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale! Here's a great article if you waited until the last minute but want to join: How To Put Together a Bak Sale FAST.

• Shout-out to Germany, which has five Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale events (so far) planned:
  
  Freising, April 28
  Cologne, April 28
  Karlsruhe, April 28
  Potsdam, date not set yet
  Berlin, date not set yet
• In addition to the bake sale posters page that we put up each year after most of the bake sales are done. this year we also have a Facebook photo album of the posters, which is updated almost daily. Check out the diversity of creativity!

One of the unexpected bonuses of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale has been the great posters created by so many participating groups. Here are three of the early ones this year—from Tacoma, Washington, London, Ontario, and Appleton, Wisconsin.

Expect some more news about posters soon.

Also, the Peace To All Creatures online vegan bake sale is on (through Monday). Check it out...

The Peace to All Creatures online vegan bake sale, part of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale, starts tomorrow, March 18.

If you are in the continental United States, bid on baked goods presented on the Peace to All Creatures blog; items will be shipped to those who bid the highest for the items.

Proceeds are going to thre great charities.

Welcome to new (and returning) Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale participants in:
Alameda, California; Pula, Croatia; Freising, Germany;
Rochester, New York; Carrboro, North Carolina;
Vancouver, British Columbia; Moorhead, Minnesota;
Halifax, UK; Missoula, Montana; New York, New York;
Bristol, UK; Palatine, Illinois; Emeryville, California;
New Westminster, British Columbia; Rancho Cucamonga, California;
Appleton, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon;
Olympia, Washington...and online (starting this Sunday, March 18).

The full schedule (updated frequently) is here.

What about your group? Join the meaningful world party by organizing a vegan bake sale and signing up here (or emailing info@veganbakesale.org with the required fields or a link that has the required fields).

We finally got our Zazzle store ready; now you can buy shirts with winning designs from our Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale shirt design contest!

The store features designs by Jessi Van Pelt, Bonnie Goodman, and Amber Ford. We are selling all of the American Apparel (AA) styles offered by Zazzle. AA shirts cost a little more, but they are sweatshop-free. They also have a couple of organic options. Profits go to Compassion for Animals, to help support running and promoting the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale.

We will probably be tweaking the store over the next couple of weeks, but it's open for business!


We hope you like the shirts! Send us a photo of you wearing one of the shirts (preferably at a vegan bake sale!) and we may feature it in our 2012 highlight pages!

Note: Zazzle is not limited to the United States. You can access the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale Zazzle store using any of these international links:

Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry for our tee shirt design contest!

The voting committee (which did not know the identity of any of the designers) deliberated and came up with not two winners (as originally planned), but three! The voting was very close among all winning designs. And here they are:

Jessi Van Pelt has helped organize two WVBS bake sales with Vegetarians of Central Florida, in 2009 and 2011. She is co-publisher of Peace to All Creatures, a quarterly zine about veganism, arts and crafts, animals, civil rights, the environment, health, recipes and more. Article submissions welcome! All profits go to animal-related charities. Jessi's Etsy store, The Ginger Card Company, sells vegan-themed jewelry and the aforementioned zine.

Bonnie Goodman participated in the WVBS last year and has an event planned for this year. She is a glass bead maker and jewelry designer whose work features vegan themes and nature scenes. Bonnie and her husband Parke run the Mordam Art Gallery and are the founders of Live and Let Livingston, which provides vegan meals to veterinarians and volunteers during free spay/neuter clinics, teaches cooking classes, and hosts popular vegan potlucks.

Amber Ford is a member of Vegans and Vegetarians of Alberta, which has participated in the WVBS from 2009 through 2011. She sells some of her designs on her Zazzle store.

Although the contest was open to anybody, most of the entrants (including the three winners) have participated in the WVBS one or more years or are affiliated with groups that have participated.

We hope to have the designs ready for sale soon, on shirts, and maybe aprons. We'll give all the details here and on our Facebook and twitter pages.

Thanks once again to everyone who sent in a design. We may do this every year!

We're proud to award the Certificate of Awesomeness and Appreciation to Denise Filippin and Juliani Lembi Way, who translated our invitation to participate in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale into Italian and Portuguese, respectively.

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Note: The tee shirt design contest ends at the end of today. We'll announce the winners this week, and soon afterward you'll be able to buy shirts with the winning designs! Watch this space for details...

This is the last week of the 2012 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale tee shirt contest! Be famous and help spread the love! Contest ends Sunday, February 19.

We're bringing back the Certificate of Awesomeness and Appreciation that we used in 2009. The first recipient of the award in 2012 is our intrepid volunteer Barb, who has worked tirelessly the last three years maintaining the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale email list and finding potential participants. Her efforts have played a huge role in the success of the WVBS.

Welcome to the most recent participants in the 2012 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale:

Omega Creations-Nadia Fresolone (Toronto, ON)
Sugar Lush (San Diego, CA)
Fettle Vegan (Fullerton, CA)
Nyamaeset Rejuvenation Centre (Ikot Ekpene, Nigeria)
Lisa Bohrer (Frostburg, MD)
The Chocolate Shoe Box (Seattle, WA)
Ms. Cupcake (London, UK)

The full schedule (updated frequently) is here.

Signing up is simple! Use the "easy as pie" signup form, or send us an email with the required fields or a link that has the required fields.

Reminder: The tee shirt design contest is still on! Details below...

Check out this cool poster for the Salzburg and Vienna vegan bake sales. It includes info about both bake sales, plus a recipe, plus a link to more recipes—and it looks great, too!

We're already getting some early signups for Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale 2012. Click here for the first cut of the 2012 schedule.

The tee shirt design contest is still on! Details below...

In 2010, The Herbivore Clothing Company created and sold an awesome Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS) tee shirt. Thank you, Herbivore! But that was a limited run, and the shirts are now collectors' items.

Since the Herbivore shirts were so popular, and tee shirts are cool ... we're holding a WVBS tee shirt design contest! Your design can be the next WVBS shirt, worn by people all over the planet!

Here's how it works:

• Send your design to info@veganbakesale.org by February 19, 2012.
• One week later, we'll announce two winners!
• We'll create tee shirts (and maybe other products down the road, such as aprons) emblazoned with the winning design, and sell them on the new WVBS Zazzle store (in progress). We'll proudly and enthusiastically mention the designer and link to their websites or portfolios in the product descriptions. Of course, the winners get free tee shirts.
• Profits from the sales will go to Compassion for Animals, to help with the cost of running and promoting the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale.

More Info:

• This design is for the front of the shirt. (The shirts won't have any design on the back.)
• Our plan is only to sell sweatshop-free shirts. Most of the shirts in this category are available in multiple colors, but the organic shirts are only available in "natural" (off-white)—so the design should look good against this background. If you click around on this link, you can get an idea of the various background colors.
• The size of the image should be either 14 inches by 12 inches OR 12 inches by 14 inches, as described here: http://www.zazzle.com/mk/custom/imageguidelines. There is no limit on the number of colors in the design. The design must include "Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale" (but no year; when we asked some WVBS participants, they overwhelmingly preferred no year on the shirts). Optionally, you can also include the WVBS URL—www.VeganBakeSale.org.
• For the contest, you can send a jpg, png, gif, or pdf file, or a link. (We'll want hi-res—300dpi—versions of the winning designs eventually.)
• The judges will be the Compassion for Animals Board of Directors and the WVBS Board of Advisors (which helps out with the WVBS in various ways).
• None of the judges or anyone in their families can enter the contest.

For more details on the contest, including licensing agreements and final image requirements, please click here.

If you have any questions about the contest, please ask us at info@veganbakesale.org and we'll get back to you quickly!

Let the excitement begin!

The "official" dates of the 2012 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale are Saturday April 21, 2012 through Sunday April 29, 2012.

Major thanks to author / chef Joni Marie Newman for pointing people to this website in her excellent book, The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet.

We're slowly getting ready for WVBS 2012.

Many thanks to Vegan Mainstream for the article and interview about the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale!

We added a bake sale checklist to help make sure that you don't forget anything at your bake sale. The list is a balance between only the most common items and every conceivable option. We hope it is useful!

This vegan bake sale in Seoul raised $1000—in three hours—for the UN's World Food Programme, “to help the famine-relief efforts in East Africa.” Check out the yummy baked goods in the link!

We added more new tips to our bake sale tips page.

A Book Worth Reading has a great review of Carla Kelly's Quick & Easy Vegan Bake Sale (scrumptious recipes and highly recommended) — and an awesome video of a 2010 vegan bake sale put on by the amazing SF Vegan Bake Sale crew. The video shows that vegan bake sales are fun, creative, exciting, invigorating, educational, community-building events.

Although participants in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS) are not required to reveal how much money their bake sales made, most do. Between that and conservative estimates of the the proceeds of the remainder of the partipating bake sales, we can say with a high degree of confidence that the WVBS raised $50,000 for charity this year, bring the three-year total to $120,000.

Yay and abundant apreciation to everyone who helped organize these bake sales, and everyone who bought stuff at them!

The final two pages of 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS) highights are now up!

If you have photos from a vegan bake sale that was part of the 2011 WVBS and would like them included in the highlights pages, please email us at info@veganbakesle.org.

Vegan bake sales go on all year, and they are just as awesome as during the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale. Here are two coming up, both being held by yoga centers.

On Sunday August 7, Open Heart Yoga School in Carrboro, North Carolina is holding a vegan bake sale to raise money so the school can adopt Ellen the pig, who was rescued from a factory farm and now lives at Farm Sanctuary.

On Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11, Flow Yoga Center in Washington, DC is holding a vegan bake sale vegan bake sale in support of One Common Unity, whose aim is “to nurture sustainable, caring communities & support socially responsible entrepreneurship through a variety of local and global arts initiatives, omni-media programming, and innovative peace education services.”

Three more pages of 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale highights are up! More on the way...

Better late than never! The first three 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale highights pages are up! Several more highlights pages will follow soon...

On our twitter page, we try to tweet about every vegan bake sale going on. We may not get every one, since there are more happening every year (a wonderful “problem” to have), but we try! If you're on twitter and we don't tweet about your vegan bake sale, please send a tweet to @wwveganbakesale and we'll re-tweet at a minimum!

Just added! Check out these posters from 2011 vegan bake sales around the world!

We added even more tips to our bake sale tips page.

We've had quite a variety of bake sales in the 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale:

• Participating bake sales ranged from small lemonade stands to 50-baker extravaganzas.
• Bake sale organizers included vegan cookbook authors, farm sanctuaries, companion animal rescue organizations, retail stores, meetup chapters, restaurants, bakeries, tea houses, caterers, student animal advocacy groups, and much more.
• Some bake sales included raffles, bake-offs, book-signings, swap meets, pet adoptions, and Earth Day celebrations.

And it's not over yet! There are still bake sales scheduled in Missoula, San Francisco, and St. Louis!

Here's the Flickr album for 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale events that are not otherwise on the Internet. Most likely, we'll be adding more photos to the album. 2011 highlight pages, with lots of links to lots of bake sale pictures, are coming soon!

Although there are still fabulous vegan bake sales going on (some groups or individuals were unable to schedule their bake sales during the main week), we can already say that the 2011 Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS) has been a tremendous success!

Over 150 groups have participated, and we estimate that $50,000 will be raised from all the bake sales this year, bringing the cumulative three-year WVBS fundraising total to well over $100,000.

This success is due most of all to the wonderful bake sale organizers and volunteers who have shown the delicious diversity of vegan baked goods to people all over the world, while raising money for a wide variety of worthy causes. But we also owe a huge debt of gratifitude to everyone who reported on and promoted the WVBS, and everyone who helped out in any way. The WVBS has always been, and will always be, a group effort.

We'll have more details soon, including links to pictures and local write-ups. But we first wanted to say “Thank you for helping to change the world, one cruelty-free bite at a time!”

Thanks to CNN's Eatocracy.com web site, for this awesome story on the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale. It features dazzling recipes, interviews with authors and bake sale organizers, and more! Check it out!

Here are two of the many awesome posters of recently signed-up groups holding vegan bake sales in the next few days.

There are vegan bake sales going on around the world this week—some run all week long!

Next weekend there will be about 70 vegan bake sales happening worldwide—even more than last weekend!

The full schedule is here.

In addition to raising funds for a wide variety of worthy causes, vegan bake sales show that you don't have to be cruel to be kind, or to to have world-class tasty baked desserts and savory items. Check out the vegan bake sale nearest you to find out more. One bite is worth a thousand words!

Between now and Sunday, there will be 50 vegan bake sales, from Alaska to Australia, featuring a diversity of delicious delectables—with lots more coming after that! And these numbers will probably rise; we're getting new signups every day!

Check out the schedule for the bake sale nearest you. Help yourself to some tasty treats, or maybe even volunteer to bake something for the event. If you can bake, you can bake vegan. We've got links to over 1000 vegan baking recipes.

Here are some of the fabulous posters of vegan bake sales coming up in the next three weeks.

First row: Chicago, IL, Barboursville, WV
Second row: Minneapolis, MN, Dallas, TX
Third row: London, ON, Bristol, UK
Fourth row: Tacoma, WA, Tampa, FL

FIVE vegan bake sales for Japan this Saturday, April 2

Salt Spring Island (British Columbia), Winnipeg, Santa Cruz, Akron, and Sacramento!

(Note: the delectable concoction in the photo below is one of the renown vegan Nanaimo bars made by the host of the Salt Spring Island vegan bake sale.)

Starting at 6am U.S. Eastern time, March 29, the next person or group that signs up to do a bake sale and indicates in the "comments to us" section of the signup form (or in a follow-up email to info@veganbakesale.org) that they're interested in the cookbook offer, wins a FREE case—20 copies—of the superb cookbok, My Sweet Vegan, by Hannah Kaminsky—courtesy of our good friends at Go Dairy Free.

There are some restrictions with this offer; here they are:

1. Due to costs, we have to limit this one offer to U.S. participants.
2. You can sell the books at any price you like, whenever you like, as long as the proceeds go to your bake sale nonprofit charity.
3. The offer only lasts one day. It ends at 6am US Eastern time on March 30.
4. You have to have a bake sale—vegan, of course. :)

About My Sweet Vegan: This book really hits the “sweet spot.” It's filled with recipes that are an inspired blend of classic and innovative—perfect for bake sales. Apricot Biscotti, Butterscotch Blondies, Chai “Cheese” Cake, Coconut Custard Pie...you can practically taste these wonderful dishes from the titles. But wait until you see the amazing photos; they're guaranteed to tempt you into making these divine creations, so you can totally indulge in their heavenly vegan goodness—and share them with others, of course. The book even has a special dog treat recipe, for our canine friends and bake sale customers.

Shout-out: Please check out Go Dairy Free! It is an awesomely informative web site and strong supporter of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale!

Cookbook Giveaway!

Starting at midnight (12am U.S. Eastern time), March 28, the next person or group that signs up to do a bake sale gets a free copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

If you're even thinking about vegan baking, you have to have this book! It is a tour de force of vegan baked goods: muffins, biscuits, cupcakes, pies, crips, pudding, breads—and much more. Lots of bake sale-worthy recipes! Wonderfully photographed.

Contest details: We'll ship the book to the winning group or person once they have their bake sale. If they cancel, the second group to sign up wins the book.

This year, vegan bake sales responding to the disaster in Japan are occurring just before the scheduled Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale, and overlapping with it, so we have all combined into a month-plus-long vegan bake sale powerhouse for peace.

Three of the bake sales for Japan happening very soon are in Honolulu on Friday March 25, Atlanta on Saturday March 26, and Las Vegas on Sunday March 27. Check them out!

If you scroll through the schedule, you can see all the bake sales for Japan, as well as all the other wonderful bake sales raising funds in a cruelty-free way for various worthy causes.

Calling all bakers! Vegan and non-vegan! And other people! All bake sales can always use more bakers and other helpers. Here's the full schedule, and the following bake sales are explicitly putting out the call for bakers:

• Chicago
• Akron
• Sacramento
• Boston
• Los Angeles (Santa Monica)
• Salt Spring Island, British Columbia

Participating in a bake sale is fun and builds community. Vegan bake sales combine fundraising, creativity, community spirit, and outreach.

If you can bake, you can bake vegan. This site has vegan bake sale tips and links to thousands of tried and true vegan baking recipes. Your vegan bake sale organizers will help, too.

Thinking about it, but don't consider yourself a good baker? Something easy like cookies without fancy toppings usually works well. Most baking books and many online sites have great "baking 101" sections, and many forums have super-friendly vegan bakers for support and advice. Read the recipe carefully (and read it through before you start), line up all your ingredients, make sure you use them all, perhaps buy an oven thermometer to calibrate your oven, etc. You'll be a pro in no time.

Besides bakers, bake sale organizers usually can use more people to fold boxes, make labels, contact venues, design and put up fliers, and do miscellaneous tasks. There are many ways to participate in the meaningful fun—including buying stuff at the bake sale!

Brody's Bakery in Shawnee Mission, Kansas has participated in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS) the last two years, with proceeds going to the Lee Ann Britain Infant Development Center, “dedicated to serving children with developmental disabilities from birth to six years of age” in a supportive, positive environment. Brody's Bakery is 100 percent vegan and gluten-free. The bakery held an early WVBS event this year which was a very successful fundraiser.

Congratulations to Toni Okamoto, organizing the Sacramento vegan bake sale for Japan on April 2nd, and winner of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World!

Cookbook Giveaway!

Starting at midnight (12am U.S. Eastern time), March 16, the next person or group that signs up to do a bake sale gets a free copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Vegan bake sales throughout the world have featured cupcakes from this masterpiece. Some of the creations in Vegan Cupcakes are now classics: Cookies 'n' Cream, Chai Latte, and the sublime Pistachio Rosewater. Even if you have the book, it makes a wonderful gift and it looks great on a bake sale table.

Contest details: We'll ship the book to the winning group or person once they have their bake sale. If they cancel, the second group to sign up wins the book.