I still remember the first time I walked into BabyFurCon and felt that rare kind of freedom. For a few days, adults who wear diapers and enjoy being babyfurs could simply be themselves without the usual worries. That experience changed me, and I know it changed many others who made it there. The convention was never perfect, and it did not need to be. Each year the staff learned from the last one, and it felt good to watch the event grow and improve.
Yet the way things are set up now puts clear limits on how much further it can go.
When more people attend and share how much fun they had, even more people want to come the next time. Between these big gatherings, plenty of regular furry conventions happen, and some offer room parties. None of them give babyfurs the same full freedom for several days straight. Those other events also do not face the same tight space problems. When BabyFurCon registration opens, getting a spot has become extremely hard. Even if you manage to register, you still have to enter a room lottery. You can secure a registration spot and still end up without a place to stay. Every year that follows will only make this harder.
I have been lucky enough to attend the past two years. Many of my friends who once wanted to go have looked at the rising barriers and simply decided not to try. They see that the entry gets tougher each time and choose to stay home. Because of that, the new faces I meet stay limited. The current system also lets people who already passed the checks in earlier years move through registration faster. Anyone new who has never been vetted often gets left behind.
A lot of these problems are not really the staff’s fault. Finding a hotel willing to close off the whole place for hundreds of people for nearly a week is tough. Finding one that will do it for adults in diapers who dress like big toddlers is even tougher. Once a hotel agrees, the staff must negotiate hard to make sure the hotel rules match the convention’s Code of Conduct. The two sides have to work as partners. As the event grows more popular, the pressure to take more people keeps rising, yet everyone knows they cannot fit everyone who wants to come. In that way, BabyFurCon has become a victim of its own success.
Still, the staff and the group behind them can do more. Partnership for Artists and Creative Individuals, or PACI, is the California non-profit that runs BabyFurCon. Their goal is to create safe spaces that support the LGBTQ+ community and its smaller groups through wellness, creativity, and learning. Right now PACI only has the energy to run two events a year, BabyFurCon and the virtual version. There is no public sign that they are testing new events inside California or teaming up with similar non-profits in other states. There is also no open call for people who want to help PACI grow its reach.
Volunteering stays mostly tied to the convention itself, and those spots are limited because volunteers often get free registration and a room. That part makes sense. What is missing is a wider plan for helpers who can work all year long. People could run donation drives, start peer-to-peer fundraisers, and build the support that could turn BabyFurCon into a model other places can copy. Without that, the event will hit a hard ceiling on how many people it can hold while demand keeps climbing. Once that happens, registration costs will rise and fewer people will want to fight for a place in an ever-smaller circle.
Other nonprofits facing the same kind of growth have found ways to stretch further without losing what makes their work special. They first lock down a clear, repeatable version of their main event so the quality stays high. Then they share that model with trusted partners in new cities or states who already know the local hotels and communities that are compatible with LGBTQ+ inclusive policies. The original group can focus on training and standards while the partners handle the local details. This kind of affiliate setup multiplies the number of safe spaces without forcing one small team to manage every hotel contract themselves.
Building stronger internal capacity helps too. Recruiting and training people for year-round roles, not just event week, frees up the core staff. Simple online systems can handle registration queues and room lotteries more fairly so the process does not feel like a scramble. Diversifying revenue sources beyond registration, through memberships, non-con exclusive sponsors who care about inclusion, and ongoing community campaigns, gives more stability and stabilize costs when demand rises. Smaller local gatherings and improved virtual options can also feed people into the main convention while lowering the barrier for those who cannot get a room yet.
Some groups create basic toolkits that other organizers can use to explore feasibility in their own regions. That turns knowledge into a resource and invites more people into the work instead of leaving them on the sidelines. The real choice is whether the highest-impact role is running every event or equipping a wider network to create more of them. Measuring what actually matters, how many people felt safer and how many new connections formed, keeps the focus on the mission rather than just the numbers.
Unless the organizers open a bigger conversation about creating more safe spaces for AB/DLs and take steps like these to expand the circle, this may be the last BabyFurCon I attend. I hope they choose to grow the opportunities instead of letting the space close.
Really good piece. I agree with most of it. The one thing I kept thinking about while reading is the assumption that scaling up through affiliates or partners would work smoothly. I think trust and safety are harder to copy than we might hope. You can’t just hand another group a toolkit and expect them to replicate the culture of consent, privacy, and care that took years to build. Who vets those partners? How do you make sure a hotel in another state really understands the Code of Conduct the same way? What happens when a local affiliate makes a mistake? Those are real questions, and I would have loved to see the article dig into them a bit more.
Not saying expansion is impossible or even a bad idea. I just think that kinda growth needs to be handled with a lot of care, and the piece kind of glides past that part. The staff have to negotiate everydetail with everyhotel because one misunderstanding can undo so much. That level of attention does not scale overnight, and naming that challenge openly would make the argument even stronger. So yes, let’s grow. But let’s also be honest about what weare protecting and how fragile that space can be.
When it comes to organizing anything, nothing goes smoothly.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. There are a lot of variables to consider. There are a lot of moving pieces to consider. Handing another group a toolkit that replicates years of work building the kind of consent, privacy and care that BFC is known to uphold is not possible without setting up a framework or a template that allows the culture to cultivate over time. Nothing is going to be achieved with a snap of the fingers. Heck, even if you were to start a franchise with a known brand like McDonalds, it’s still going to take time for the franchisee to make the adjustments they need to make to develop a business that’s reflective of their values and practices of the brand.
There’s a lot I could say to flesh out how BFC could scale, but it would be well over 1,000 words, and I’m not privy enough about their inner-workings to speculate any further than what I’ve put out there. Let’s see what they come up with.