California Freethought Day combines the fun and atmosphere of a fair with the education and activism of a conference.

Help us grow with an end-of-year donation that we can put towards Secular Advocacy, scholarships, volunteer work, marketing, and more. We have a lot planned for 2025 and need your help to pull it off!

This Year's Accomplishments

This was a big year for California Freethought Day -- not only through our annual event that tackled Christian Nationalism, but with additional events and endeavors to help increase our exposure and dedication to the secular community.

🎓 Scholarships: Thanks to new support, we awarded $8,000 to students this year for excellent essays, videos, haikus, and speeches. You can find the winners on our website. In 2025, we hope to expand this to $10,000 with your support.

⚖️ Secular Advocacy: Our annual Secular Advocacy Day connected roughly two dozen constituents with their elected officials, speaking on several bills to expand healthcare, and one to prohibit underage marriage. We're thankful for the passing of SB-729, for which we advocated, which added additional treatment for infertility and fertility services.

🤝 Sponsorships: This year we sponsored Darwin Day and Sacramento Earth Day, and at Earth Day we invited other groups to join us creating a "big tent" of secular community in Sacramento. Events like these, that take place throughout the year, help us connect with more people and more often.

🎭 Special Events: We hosted two additional events this year: a screening of the Bad Faith documentary and a production of The Dover Panda Trial that starred over a dozen actors, including John de Lancie, in an incredible performance at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.

🧹 Secular Action Day: We launched our first volunteer day, encouraging regional secular groups to bring their membership to local lakes and waterways to pick up trash as part of California's annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Volunteers were rewarded with brunch that we reimbursed. Next year, we aim to have a dozen groups participating.

🎨 Art Committee: We formed a new committee that's focused on bringing art and expression to our event, and they delivered with an interactive art gallery that was a hit with our attendees. They also brought us to Chalk-It-up! with a stellar design that attracted new interest across all ages.

💸 Donor Management: Mid-year, we adopted Givebutter as our donor management platform to facilitate smaller events, communications (including texts and this letter), host auctions, and more. Next year, we hope to expand this relationship with additional features.

✉️ Fighting Project 2025: In July we launched a change.org petition that persuaded over 7,000 people to add their name to a letter we sent to 1,600 elected officials throughout our state. The letter asked those officials to publicly denounce Project 2025. We're thankful to the American Humanist Association for covering the postage for this campaign.

🦋 Social Media: We recently joined the Bluesky network (@freethoughtday.bsky.social) to build engagement, following the footsteps of many who have left X (Twitter). We already have over 350 followers!

🏦 Community Building: Speaking of those relationships, this year's event at the State Capitol hosted more community groups than any event in our twenty-three-year history. And connecting to those organizations has always been a highlight according to our post-event attendee survey.

🖼️ Freethinker Gallery: Thanks to a generous donation from our co-founder, Mynga Futrell, we redesigned and reprinted dozens of original Freethinker Inductee "posters" that have been on display since our second year. Every year we add more inductees to the display, helping attendees learn about the history of those who have helped shape our values. (This year's inductees were Isaac Asimov and Sinéad O'Connor.)

🏆 Recognition: We continued our tradition of awarding an elected official (this year, Sen. Susan Talamantes-Eggman) and volunteers within the community including James Underdown, of CFI, for his 25 years of service.

Thank You

That's a lot going on for an all-volunteer committee, but our team is dedicated, and your support helps make this happen.

Set up your monthly support or make a one-time donation before December 3 at 11:45 PM.

And check out our online auction with 10 "packs" so there's something for everyone. 🔗

We're a non-profit (501C3) organization, so your donation is likely tax deductible.

Giving Tuesday 2024