Recap: SPL’s 2025 Trivia Night
On March 7, we hosted Secular Pro-Life’s 3rd annual trivia night outside St. Louis, Missouri. It was fantastic.
SPL’s primary mission is to advance secular arguments against abortion. But our mission includes two additional parts: make space for non-traditional (especially non-religious) pro-life people, and build interfaith coalitions (people of any faith or no faith) to work together toward the first two aims.
Our trivia night is all about making space and building bridges. It’s also, of course, a fundraising event. And this year’s trivia night scored well on all of these fronts.
We did, in fact, make money.
Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we were able to cover the costs of the event itself (for example, rental fees, drinks and snacks, printing costs, etc) and the costs of staff hours to put the event together, allowing every seat, silent auction bid, and raffle ticket purchase to go toward funding and furthering SPL’s mission. I would like to thank in particular our organizational sponsors:
We strengthened our coalition.
SPL’s trivia night is a wonderful bridge-building event. This year I was honored that we had in attendance representatives from major pro-life organizations, including friends and colleagues from:
- AAPLOG
- Choose Life Marketing
- Coalition Life
- Equal Rights Institute
- Leadership Institute
- Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising
- Respect Life Apostolate (St. Louis Archdiocese)
- Vitae Foundation
Most pro-life fundraisers are formal, somewhat serious events, often with specific political and religious themes. We designed SPL’s trivia night differently. It’s nonpartisan, nonsectarian, casual, lighthearted, and entertaining. Our MC creates the trivia questions to be funny and gimmicky, meant to be accessible to people who aren’t necessarily hardcore trivia buffs. He also runs mini-games in between rounds. Below you can see people playing (and ultimately winning) heads-tails.
People had a blast. Attendees variously cheered, laughed, and sang out loud (there’s always a music round). Many filled out our post-event survey with remarks such as these:
- “Utterly fantastic!!! Maybe the best fundraiser I’ve ever been to.”
- “The categories were excellent! You kept things moving!”
- “Loved some of the rounds! 2 truths and a lie and before/after were particularly fun”
- “The DJ/Host did a great job! Monica is always welcoming. The bartender has great specialty drinks.”
- “I love trivia nights and have worked multiple. This one is near the top!”
SPL’s trivia night not only gets pro-life activists and pro-life “civilians” in the same place at the same time, but does so in a context where we can relax and laugh together. We’re strengthening professional relationships, yes–and also friendships.
We plugged in more “alt” pro-lifers.
I’m delighted to tell you that SPL’s trivia night has become something of a reunion. This year we had supporters travel from Alabama, California, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wisconsin! This being our 3rd annual event, that’s enough of a pattern to establish some attendees as “regulars,” and some of these out-of-town regulars now split an Air BnB and make a weekend of it. Trivia Night is becoming a pivotal event for uplifting and strengthening the SPL community. We already have core volunteers who’ve never attended before planning to finally meet each other at SPL’s 2026 trivia night. This camaraderie is pivotal to the endurance and enthusiasm of pro-life activists.
I would like to say a special thank you to SPL volunteer Siel (pictured bottom right photo above). Siel single-handedly managed the entire silent auction for the event. This is no small feat. She sourced auction items at discounts or donated, coordinated other volunteers mailing their contributions to Missouri, created bid slips and specific descriptions for every item, and arrived early the day of the event to stage everything. (If you would to donate goods or services to future events, please fill out this form.) Siel saved us enormous time and energy, and we are very grateful.
Can’t wait until next year!
For those of you who joined us in person and those of you who supported us from afar, thank you, thank you. I’m already daydreaming of how we will set up 2026. It should again be in Wentzville, MO in March, so mark your calendars. Hope to see you there!
If you appreciate our work and would like to help, one of the most effective ways to do so is to become a monthly donor. You can also give a one time donation here or volunteer with us here.
