We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Danielle Kowal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Danielle, thanks for joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?
Shortly after our 2020 flagship fundraising event, the Bleeding Hearts Ball, our home club, the Lizard Lounge, had the land it was on sold during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had worked with the owners of the Goth Night known as The Church for years both for that event and our annual KrampusNacht themed toy drive.
On top of it all, we were losing members and interest as there wasn’t much nightlife as the lockdowns ensued. Our meetings had to go virtual, and it would take over two years before we returned to form, renting out a ballroom in April of 2023 in order to revive our Bleeding Hearts Ball with a Changeling Masquerade Ball theme.
Now we have our meetings in person again and our next Bleeding Hearts Ball will be back in February in 2024 as we’ve found another amazing ballroom to secure in downtown Dallas, and are soliciting more donations from local businesses while doing outreach into new areas and subcultures as this year’s ball is a Vampire Regency Era Ball theme.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The Vampire Court of Dallas / Fort Worth ® (“VCD”) is a federally certified 501(c)3 charitable organization that seeks to empower the various local alternative subcultures and perform actions that directly impact the local area. We do this by partnering with local clubs and venues throughout the DFW metroplex, as well as many local businesses, with the goal of simply doing some good in the city that we love. Through these efforts we have raised over $50,000 over the past seven years for many local charities, supporting various causes including: Children with Medical Needs, Heart Research, Children’s Advocacy, Exotic Animal Shelters, Veterans, and Domestic Abuse Treatment/Prevention, and many more to come. Additionally, we are one of the few charities that is also 100% donor supported, with every cent raised going to support these important causes.
At the same time, we are a fully-democratic, member-driven group that gives our membership a direct voice in the day-to-day business and future actions of our organization. While our goal is steadily growing in the metropolitan landscape of Dallas, we seek to not only make a positive impact locally, but also nationally, through our example of acceptance, inclusion, and diversity.
We truly are a group of supportive friends and family that uplift each other as we strive to do good for those around us. We simply support each other as well as supporting those that need it the most.
The initial ideas of the organization were conceived in December of 2015, between the founders and several friends that would later join us as our corps of officers. Around that time, the emphasis was primarily on being social and developing a supportive community for the many local members of the Dallas/Fort Worth vampire/other-kin subcultures along with creating a safe space with diversity and inclusion at its heart. At that point, we began to lay the groundwork for what would become our charter and overall mission. While we did have ideas in regards to building a charity infrastructure, there really was no long term plan to implement at that point instead choosing on building internally while continuing to look for an overall direction.
The biggest breakthrough in this avenue was in March of 2016, where the initial meetings took place at Anvil Pub Deep Ellum with several of our future members and interested parties. This pivotal meeting began the first of several ideas and the ultimate push to pursue charity work as a primary outlet for our volunteers, developing what would soon become our well-known charity aspect. This move was largely inspired by our Friends at the Vampire Court of Austin, and the New Orleans Vampire Association, two other major subcultural organizations nationally known for their work with the homeless and animal charities in their local area.
By September 2016, a formal meeting was called at Oak Cliff’s Wild Detectives, in which our working charter was presented to a meeting of what would become our first voting members, the initial signers of the document approving our articles of incorporation and leading the push for full charity status and working towards full federal non-profit recognition. The VCD officially incorporated in October of 2016 during a trip to the Austin Capitol, with state non-profit status granted soon after.
Full federal 501(c)3 exemption status was granted in February of 2017, just weeks before our first major charity event: The Bleeding Hearts Ball at the Church Dallas. Despite bitter cold, this event was attended by over 800 people giving more than $1200.00 to The Texas Heart Institute. This event has turned into our flagship yearly fundraiser, the Sunday before Valentine’s Day, with multiple performers and a large raffle of prizes donated by local businesses throughout Dallas / Fort Worth. Each member of the VCD looks forward to this event every year, both for the feeling of giving back and the opportunity to come together as an organization in order to work for a common goal.
We now have our monthly meetings on the first Sunday of the month, where we coordinate 2-3 fundraising events a year, as well as multiple other volunteer and digital awareness campaigns, all while appreciating and supporting our local subcultures by holding social functions and giving folks an opportunity to give back by supporting the local community with an annual Krampus themed toy drive in December, SemiFang annual anti-suicide awareness digital campaign in September, and our annual Bleeding Hearts Ball in the Spring.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2019, I was personally voted to be the event lead for our 2019 toy drive and decided to shift the name from KrampusNacht to Holiday Horror, and had a whole storybook idea similar to a certain Disney Holiday movie where the creepy and spooky creatures save the holidays as Santa was gone. Our next toy drive was done on a much smaller level due to the pandemic, and Holiday Horror 2 didn’t have as much impact and we were asked if we’d bring back the ‘Krampus event’, not realizing that the event was still around under a different name now.
So, upon seeing what worked, we as a court decided to strengthen our branding and name recognition by keeping the names of our main fundraising events – KrampusNacht, Rainbow in the Dark, SemiFang, and the Bleeding Hearts Ball.
We’re building up Angel Stakes as our take on Lucifer’s Lux club meets James Bond’s high-stakes poker movie Casino Royale as a casino night fundraiser, having learned the importance of maintaining our name and image for community recognition and involvement.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Our founding Vice Director (Rayne Coull) along with our founding Director (Michael Coull) were the tip of the spear in laying the groundwork for the organization, however the Vampire Court of Dallas (“VCD”) has been built on the cumulative ideas and the considerable efforts of all of our membership. Labeling anyone as the founder really doesn’t give credit where credit is due in our opinion; from the beginning, we have made a point to crowdsource ideas and projects from our membership as much as possible, making this a collaborative effort so that everyone within the organization can be part of it. Some of our most pivotal ideas and innovations have come from new members or visitors that felt encouraged to speak up during our meetings and struck a chord with our leadership and voting members.
The idea itself came really from a collective desire to serve the local community and build an organization of like-minded folks that wanted to lift each other up through the ups and downs we experience on a day-to-day basis. From there, we examined several other subcultural communities like ours that already were active nationally in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Austin – and wanted something similar to what they are doing (through celebrating the culture, history, and archetypes of the vampire as well other types of archetypal identification) while putting the emphasis on being a positive influence not only for our members but for the
landscape of Dallas / Fort Worth as a whole. We wanted to be fully member controlled/driven as much as possible, while applying for – and maintaining – a nationally recognized charity status via our 501(c)3 certification.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.VCDallasCharities.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/vampirecourtdfw/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/VampireCourtDallas
- Twitter: VC_DFW
- TikTok: @vcdallascharities