How a volunteer-run fall festival welcomed 21,000 attendees in one weekend — and kept its small-town soul.
Pumpkin Daze is a two-day fall festival in Republic, Missouri — part hometown celebration, part agricultural competition, and part scholarship engine for local FFA students. It started in 1992 as a giant pumpkin weigh-off, where growers haul in massive pumpkins (often over 1,000 pounds), sunflowers, tomatoes, squash, and more to be officially weighed for prize money under strict competitive rules. Over time, that single contest grew into a whole festival weekend with food vendors, craft vendors, live community activity, and families traveling in from surrounding states to take part.
That growth came with absolute scale. This year, Pumpkin Daze brought more than 21,000 people through the gates — 16,000 on Saturday alone — and demand keeps rising. Attendance eventually outgrew its original home on Main Street, forcing a move to J.R. Martin Park so the team could safely handle crowds, expand vendor capacity, and manage on-site logistics like a larger event.
There’s one catch: Pumpkin Daze is still 100% volunteer-run. There’s no salaried operations team and no full-time event director. Everything is coordinated by community volunteers and student workers, who also become eligible for scholarships funded by the event.
Pumpkin Daze chose Brushfire to help them operate like a major festival — without losing the small-town fall festival feel everybody shows up for.
Before Brushfire, Pumpkin Daze was managing registrations and vendors through a basic website tool. That caused real friction for a festival of this size:
Pumpkin Daze needed a platform that behaved like “real festival infrastructure” — but was affordable, simple to run, and friendly to volunteers.
Pumpkin Daze partnered with Brushfire to modernize vendor management, attendee experience, and event operations.
Category-based vendor registration
Brushfire let Pumpkin Daze split registration into separate paths for food vendors vs. craft/non-food vendors, each with its own pricing, requirements, and questions. When food vendor spots filled, they could shut off just that category — while leaving the other vendor types open and selling. That eliminated a huge amount of refunding and manual back-and-forth.
Fast admin control
If a vendor needed “one more booth,” Ashley could pull up that vendor in Brushfire, add the additional space, and charge the same card — instantly. No spreadsheets. No rebuilding orders. No messy side payments.
Branded, professional storefront
Instead of sending vendors to something that felt like a generic form, Pumpkin Daze could present a branded, visual experience that actually looked like their event. That elevated how the festival was perceived by vendors, sponsors, city partners, and the community.
Nonprofit-friendly fee structure
Passing fees through at checkout — instead of absorbing them — was non-negotiable. Brushfire also worked with Pumpkin Daze to keep per-entry cost extremely low because the event is scholarship-driven and entirely volunteer-run. More of every dollar goes directly back to students.
Human, local-feeling support
During onboarding, Pumpkin Daze didn’t just get a help article. They got real people. Brushfire met with them on live calls, walked through setup, asked, “What do you want this to look like?” and tailored it around how the festival actually runs. That mattered for a first-year setup where volunteers are learning on the fly.
21,000 attendees served in two days
Pumpkin Daze successfully moved more than 21,000 people through the festival this year — with volunteers, students, and community help instead of a paid operations department.
Less chaos, fewer refunds
Because categories could be opened/closed independently, Pumpkin Daze stopped overselling high-demand vendor types and stopped spending hours issuing refunds and explaining capacity after the fact.
Faster “Can I add one more booth?” moments
Brushfire made it easy to upgrade or adjust a vendor’s order without rebuilding everything. That saved time during crunch moments and created a better relationship with vendors.
More dollars to students
With a fee structure built for nonprofits, more of the event’s revenue goes where Pumpkin Daze wants it to go: scholarships for local FFA students.
Run a bigger event without losing the small-town feel. Edit vendor types in real-time, add “one more booth” in seconds, and present an on-brand checkout that sponsors trust. You’ll spend less time refunding, more time welcoming attendees—and keep more dollars pointed at your mission.
Ready to get Pumpkin Daze–level results? Talk to a ticketing expert.
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