After Anthrocon finished its closing ceremonies this year, it came in with 3 more than last year’s Midwest Furfest’s last year’s final tally. With 13,644 attending 2023’s anthrocon this July, Anthocon has shown a 40% gain from its 2022 count of 9,720.

Other larger furry conventions have also shown significant increases in attendance this year as well. Texas Furry Fiesta from earlier in the year had a 33.5% increase. Furry Weekend Atlanta has also shown significant growth for the year at 43.2%.

While the post-pandemic growth in fandom gatherings is hardly isolated to furry, it has shown the rhyming echo of the 1920s after their world war and influenza pandemic within our own 20s era a century later. The parties we are throwing are getting larger, and people are doing what they can to celebrate after surviving through the past three years.

In October 2021, I opened a survey about fursuits and fursuiting and called for furries (fursuiters and non-fursuiters alike) to take part. This was to provide information for the next video in my Facts About the Furry Fandom series, Facts About Fursuits & Fursuiting.

It's taken me over a year to wade through the data, write the essay, get it professionally reviewed, and create the next video in the series. However, after all that work, it's finally ready. The premiere is less than a week away; I look forward to seeing all of you there.

Facts About Fursuits & Fursuiting will premiere on YouTube on 1^st March at 5pm (GMT) / 12pm (EST) / 9am (PST)

Ursa, we may have a problem. Or at least so it may seem. Over the past few years the number of people voting in the furry fandom’s popular choice awards appears to be dwindling once again, despite continual growth and booming attendance at our conventions - COVID aside - revealing the growing audience and community beneath this stagnation.

But if less people in proportion are voting, is there a reason for this? One option may be that the system may be lead to some strange victors based on popularity of a franchise or personality rather than other considerations. But is this just a coincidence or could it be how the system was inadvertently crafted?

This article’s goal is to highlight why the current system is so sensitive to favoring artists who self-promote or whose fans rally on their behalf, at the expense of voters that weigh more toward judging the quality of the pieces nominated without authorship considerations. It will then propose a small change to make it more fair to both types of voters and creators, without stifling out those who show up with a passion for their artist.

Be wary, this gets long and technical. But if you’re reading this up to this point, I’m sure you knew that’s what you were in for.

Midwest Furfest 2019 had a pleasant surprise for its charity. An anonymous donor had decided to match the generosity of those that had gathered, which was $110,000. This doubling to $220,000 was a major push that had set up the fandom to make it past a milestone last year of raising over a million dollars to charitable causes cumulatively. The final total coming to $1,109,974.51.

The reference for this was not Wikifur as one might expect, but instead was released via a Youtube video, put together by Thabo Meerkat and Dixie Lioness. While it may seem to be a simple feature with just a bunch of numbers, these figures actually tell us a lot about the future of fundraising in the furry fandom.

The term "ghosting a convention" is when a person attends and hangs around, but has not paid the organizers to do so. It’s seen as a major faux pas in the furry fandom due to the amount of time, effort and money their fellow fans put forth in order to put on the events.

Those who support the festivities through their patronage, therefore, should be praised for putting their time and money forth to support their gathering of choice. For the relationship between convention and attendee is symbiotic.

Instead, certain events seem to have started to shun the precedent of sharing how many furs attended their celebrations. Like a tree falling in the forest, the con did occur; but if you look back years from now, there will be no hard evidence of how many gathered. In essence, it is the attendees who have been ghosted.

Which is why I am writing this piece today, concerning a worrisome trend that a handful of events seem to have taken - including some of the largest events in our fandom. Conventions, as of late, have been trying to push away from publicly putting forth their attendance counts.

Update 5/24: An updated tentative count was released by BLFC in the comments below.
Update 6/16: FWA has provided their counts with the video of closing ceremonies in comments below.
Update 6/16: AnthOhio, which took place in late May after the article was written, has as of today not released attendance numbers on any internet media platform. They did release charity numbers of $13,000 raised.

Flayrah has been around since 2001. It has had three editors-in-chief (Aureth, Frysco and GreenReaper) who between them have published 3529 stories from 279 unique contributors (plus another 341 anonymous contributors), including both news and opinion pieces. What follows is a statistical breakdown of Flayrah in various ways.

Furry fans have raised money for charity for over 15 years, totalling $1 million since the end of 2000. Donations fell in 2009, but rebounded to $243,000 in 2012 – 59% more than 2011.

In part, this increase is due to a rise in the number of events. Six new conventions were held in North America, and Australia's MiDFur brought in $24,184 over two events held this year. More significant, though, was increased fundraising at existing events, exemplified by MFF:

We were glad to make this an incredible year for our charity, Felines & Canines, Inc. They received a total of $8,500 including cash and checks in their donation jars (including $1,000 from a single donor!), the Charity Auction, and 2 & Kage's Saturday Performance. An additional $1,950 was raised by the Charity Poker Tournament. To this, Midwest FurFest was pleased to add an additional donation of $30,000, meaning that Felines & Canines took home a little over $40,500!

Felines & Canines, mired in a $100k construction debt, has since dedicated a room to MFF.

Want to know who gave what last year, and which were the most charitable events? Read on!

I've always been curious about what the variety of things for sale in the dealer's room at furry conventions are, so at FC 2010 I decided to get some rough numbers. I probably made some mistakes along the way, but I think it's generally reliable. It should not be assumed to apply for any other conventions except this one, this year.

Midwest Furry Fandom added $10000 to the $5193 raised for Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation by Midwest FurFest 2007 attendees

Furry philanthropy took a step back in 2009, as donations fell 15% in a tough economic climate. However, the fandom still has something to be proud of: $490,000 raised for charity at furry conventions in the past decade.

Over $112,000 was donated by Further Confusion, with Midwest FurFest ($92,000), Anthrocon ($87,000) and Mephit FurMeet ($71,000) not far behind — not counting MFM's donations to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

At first, the top three events covered the majority of annual donations, but now others give more than half of it. And while most money still comes from North America, international furs are joining in, including cons in the UK, Germany, Australia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Read on for a chart detailing the decade's charitable donations.
Update (24 May): Includes figures for RCFM 2007-9, WPAFW 2009, ConFuzzled 2008-9 and Conifur '01, '03, '04.
Read more: Furs raise $243,000 for charity in 2012; $1 mil. this century