Convened by the Midwest Animal Rights Alliance
The MARS Summit: the Midwest Animal Rights Summit
The planned annual gathering of the Midwest Animal Rights Alliance, and the weekend the region stops being a mailing list and becomes a room full of people.
Twelve states, and almost nobody in the same room
The Midwest holds the country’s largest concentrations of hogs, egg-laying hens, and turkeys, and several Midwest states have been central to the history of ag-gag laws restricting undercover investigation of agricultural facilities. The movement working against all of that is spread across twelve states, and most of the people in it have never met each other.
Some of them are running a group alone in a metro where no other qualifying organization has yet been identified. Some have been doing this for ten years with nobody to hand it to. Some are two hours apart and scheduling competing actions on the same Saturday because there was no way to know.
That isolation is not just unpleasant, it is expensive. Faunalytics found that 85% of animal advocates surveyed in the U.S. and Canada had left at least one advocacy role, staying a median of roughly 2.3 years with each organization, with leadership problems named by about 40% and burnout by about 21%. Around 11% had left the animal protection movement altogether. Among unpaid advocates, satisfaction with leadership and identification with fellow advocates stood out as factors linked to staying.
Identification with fellow advocates is not something you can send someone by email.
That last finding is the one this summit is built on.
What MARS is
MARS is planned as MARA’s annual in-person summit for animal rights and vegan advocacy organizations across the twelve Midwestern states. Organizers who have only ever emailed each other meet. People who have been holding a city together alone spend a weekend with people who understand exactly what that is like.
It is not a trade show, and it is not a conference built around a keynote circuit. It is a working weekend for the people doing the organizing, plus the funders, researchers, students, and journalists who want to understand the region honestly.
MARS is also where the four things MARA exists to do converge for a weekend. MARA measures the movement, equips its organizations, connects its people, and sustains its capacity. The research gets presented here; practical tools get taught here; as MARA’s shared library comes online in the next phase, its materials can be taught here too; the retention work happens face to face here; and connecting stops being a word on a page.
When and where
The inaugural summit is planned for late September or early October 2027. The weekend will be announced publicly on October 19, 2026, at Project Animal Freedom’s Vegan Trivia Night, and the venue will be published as soon as it is signed.
We are being deliberately careful with this page until then. A date on a website is a promise, and we would rather post one date once than correct it three times.
What we can say now: it is a two-day weekend, held in or near the St. Louis region for the inaugural year, and the format under consideration is a retreat-style venue rather than a hotel ballroom. People remember the weekend they spent somewhere. Nobody remembers a conference center.
Why 2027 and not sooner: MARI’s first fieldwork runs from March to May 2027, and the summit is where its first findings are presented. A summit a year earlier would have an alliance too new to convene and no findings to bring to it. Building the room and building the research on the same schedule is deliberate.
What happens there
The first findings from MARI. The Midwest Animal Rights Index is MARA’s research program, conducted through the Animal Freedom Lab. The inaugural summit is where its first findings are presented: the baseline census, the coverage and gap analysis, and MARM, the Midwest Animal Rights Map. Full publication follows in October 2027, with the methodology and a public-use dataset, and no composite score in the first edition. The first full State of the Midwest Animal Rights Movement report launches at MARS II in 2028, and from then on the summit is that report’s yearly release point.
Coverage gaps become organizer leads. One of the most valuable things a regional summit can do is put a name next to a place where MARM has not yet identified a qualifying organization. The map says “no qualifying organization identified as of [date]” rather than asserting that nobody is there, and a room full of Midwestern organizers is the fastest correction that standard could ask for. Some of those corrections will be someone saying there is a group two counties over that we missed. Some will be someone deciding to start one.
Organizer training and practical sessions. At the inaugural summit, sessions can draw on Project Animal Freedom’s existing operational experience: protest and march planning, event playbooks, tabling kits, vendor agreements, volunteer onboarding, fundraising, and the parts of eight years of work that did not work. MARA’s shared toolkit library and citywide vegan hub website template are next-phase work. Once those exist, later summits are where their contents get taught rather than merely posted.
A retention and burnout track. Organizer turnover is one of the largest sources of lost capacity in this movement, and the summit treats it as a program track grounded in the existing research rather than in anecdote. The mental health and burnout material MARA points people to is curated and clearly sourced rather than clinically vetted, and the track is built on the same honesty about what it is and is not.
Funders in the room, as participants. Funder education at MARS uses the research as its evidence base and is aimed at growing the total resources available to the region rather than redividing them. Funders come to understand the region, not to be pitched in a hallway, and organizations get the rarer thing: a chance to be understood by someone who allocates money before the grant cycle opens.
Time that is not programmed. Relationships are the point. It is easier to ask for advice, share a contact, lend equipment, or coordinate an action when the person on the other end is someone you have eaten a meal with. Meals are shared, the food is entirely vegan, and the schedule leaves room to actually talk.
Who it is for
Anyone doing animal rights or vegan advocacy work in the Midwest, whether you have a staff of twelve or a mailing list of thirty. You do not have to be a MARA member to attend, and you do not have to be from the Midwest.
Attendance is open beyond the alliance: funders, researchers, students, journalists, and unaffiliated advocates are welcome. Everything MARA publishes is free to non-members, and the summit follows the same spirit. If you want to build a version of this for the Great Plains, the South, or Appalachia, come and take the whole model. That would be a success of this project, not competition with it.
Pricing and access
Ticket pricing, travel support, sponsorship, and any access fund are still being decided. They will be published together before registration opens. We will say plainly what a ticket costs, what it covers, and what help is available, rather than leaving people to guess and then quietly not come.
Three things we can commit to now. The full price is published before registration opens. The ticket states exactly what it includes, meals and lodging included or excluded, with no discoveries at the door. And cost is treated as an access problem to be solved rather than a filter to be applied, because a summit that only the funded organizations can reach would measure the movement by exactly the wrong thing.
How MARS fits with everything else
MARA organizes the movement. MARI measures it. MARM maps it. MARS brings it together.
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| MARA | The Midwest Animal Rights Alliance. The free, non-exclusive membership and coordination body that organizations join. |
| MARI | The research program, run through the Animal Freedom Lab. MARA’s Measure pillar. |
| MARM | The Midwest Animal Rights Map, a MARI product. |
| MARS | The Midwest Animal Rights Summit, MARA’s planned annual gathering, where MARI findings are first presented. |
| MARGO | The Midwest Animal Rights Groups and Organizations: the annual Top Ten, voted by the alliance, and the only organization-level ranking MARI ever publishes. |
MARS is convened by MARA, which is a project of Project Animal Freedom. MARA is not an independent organization and is not on a path to becoming one: PAF founded it, funds it, staffs it, and stewards it, and PAF chairs its steering committee for as long as PAF operates while casting one vote like every other member. If PAF ever dissolves, stewardship passes to another organization or body so that MARA outlives it. We say that here rather than in the fine print, because you should know who is convening the room you are being invited into.
What that does not mean: MARA members are independent organizations that owe Project Animal Freedom nothing. They keep their names, their boards, their strategies, their campaigns, and every other affiliation they hold. Nothing about attending this summit changes any of that.
What MARS is not
- Not a St. Louis event. The inaugural summit is hosted in or near St. Louis because that is where the convening capacity currently sits, not because this is a St. Louis event that outsiders may attend. It is a regional gathering of a twelve-state alliance, and the program is built that way.
- Not members-only. Members, non-members, and organizations from outside the Midwest are all welcome. Membership buys no advantage here.
- Not a Project Animal Freedom chapter event. Project Animal Freedom chapters are part of PAF and operate under our name. MARS is convened by the alliance, whose members are independent organizations.
- Not a confirmed date yet. Late September or early October 2027 is a window, not a booking. Do not buy plane tickets against this page. Wait for the announcement, which is what the Midwest Movement Memo exists for.
- Not a trade show or a keynote circuit. There is no exhibit hall, and there is no headline speaker flown in to be admired. The people presenting are largely the people organizing.
- Not an established institution. The word annual describes the plan, not the track record. MARS becomes an annual summit by happening twice.
Stay informed
The fastest way to hear the date the moment it is set is the Midwest Movement Memo, MARA’s monthly update on what is happening across the twelve states, with a second issue in a month when events warrant one. It is free, and you do not need to be part of an organization to subscribe.
One thing to know before you sign up. Subscribing adds you to Project Animal Freedom’s mailing list and, depending on where you are, to the list for the nearest metro area we operate in. That is how our database works, a single list with geographic filtering rather than separate silos. It also means unsubscribing is all or nothing: there is no way to leave one list and stay on another, so unsubscribing from the Memo unsubscribes you from everything Project Animal Freedom sends. You can do that at any time, and we would rather you knew before you signed up than after.
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Frequently asked questions
Is MARS only for MARA members?
No. Members, non-members, and organizations outside the Midwest are all welcome.
When exactly is it?
Late September or early October 2027. The exact weekend is announced on October 19, 2026, and this page is updated the same day.
Where will it be held?
In or near the St. Louis region for the inaugural year, venue to be confirmed. The format under consideration is a two-day weekend at a retreat-style venue rather than a hotel.
What does it cost?
Not yet decided. Pricing, what the ticket covers, travel support, sponsorship, and any access fund are published together before registration opens.
Will there be a virtual option?
To be decided. If we can do it well we will, and we will say so on this page rather than leave it ambiguous.
Who speaks?
Organizers from across the region, plus the Animal Freedom Lab presenting the MARI findings. The speaker list opens after the date is confirmed.
What is the difference between MARS and MARI?
MARI is the research program that measures the Midwest movement. MARS is the weekend that movement spends in one place. The first MARI findings are presented at the inaugural summit, and MARI 2027 publishes that October.
Does the annual report launch here?
Eventually, yes. The inaugural summit presents MARI’s first findings, and the first full State of the Midwest Animal Rights Movement report launches at MARS II in 2028. From then on, the summit is its yearly release point.
Do I have to be from the Midwest?
No. The focus area is the Midwest; the door is not.
Can my organization sponsor MARS?
Sponsorship is being designed alongside pricing and will be published with the rest of the pricing-and-access package before registration opens. If you are interested now, tell us and we can send the details once the terms are set. There will not be a traditional exhibit hall.
Is this the same as a Project Animal Freedom chapter event?
No. MARS is a regional gathering convened by the alliance. MARA members are independent organizations that owe Project Animal Freedom nothing.
Sources
- Faunalytics, The State of Animal Advocacy in the U.S. & Canada: Experiences & Turnover (2020). faunalytics.org/advocate-retention
- USDA NASS, Census of Agriculture and livestock and poultry production summaries, for hog, egg-layer, and turkey concentration by state.
- Ceryes, C. A. & Heaney, C. D. (2019), “Ag-Gag” Laws: Evolution, Resurgence, and Public Health Implications, New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. The Animal Legal Defense Fund ag-gag tracker works as a second, advocacy-side reference.
A Project Animal Freedom initiative, convened by the Midwest Animal Rights Alliance. Last updated September 2026.
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