Why are you doing this?
Back in February of 2017 we helped organize a nationwide cafe fundraiser for the American Civil Liberties Union. That effort helped raise around half a million dollars for the ACLU, and we were floored by the generosity and engagement of the coffee community, which has proven itself as a truly wonderful source of philanthropic giving. We want to engage with that wellspring of generosity more, and to help organize twice yearly efforts that show the world just how caring, generous and kind the worlds of coffee, beer and wine can be here in America.
Beyond that we will also say that our organization has supported and will continue to support a wide variety of coffee events around the world—it’s an important part of our publication— it feels like there’s such a need for events to be about more than just career building, more than just a good time. Coffee, beer, and wine people love to get together for parties and networking, and we want to try to encourage people to harness that energy for the greater good, and use these communities to raise money and fight back against some of the evil stuff going on in the world.
Last, Sprudge is an independent media company—a rare thing in 2018—and more and more each day, the site’s co-founders feel personally drawn to philanthropy and charitable efforts. This effort is a reflection of that.
How do you select your featured charities?
Every six months we’ll pick new charities to spotlight. There’s no equation by which we do this, but it’s likely that you’ll see us pick charities whose mission calls them to respond to recent disasters and injustices.
I’m an event organizer—where do I send the money?
You will send the money directly to the ACLU. Do not send Sprudge your fundraising money. Your organization will be making its own donation as part of Night of 1000 Pours. Please read the BBB’s Standards For Charity Accountability.
I’m reading this outside the United States, but I want to get involved. Is that possible?
Absolutely 100%. You can get involved the same way as anyone else—by following the 5 steps in our organizing process.
Who owns the rights to these posters?
Not Sprudge. Artists maintain their ownership of all art submitted to Sprudge for Night of 1000 Pours. We’ll feature your posters on the site in the advance of each event, and are happy to link to your work portfolio so folks can learn more about your work, and possibly hire you on the strength of your excellent poster submission. We want to thank in advance all the creatives who are going to donate their time to make posters for this effort.
How is Sprudge supporting these events?
In a couple of different ways, first and foremost by helping to organize the initial push for this event structure. From there we’ll keep an updated list of events and hosts online, and promote that out so that people know where events are in their area. We’ll run features that highlight our favorite posters to further promote the events. And in advance of event day, we’re going to make some items available to event partners to help promote these events in-store, including our logo and brand in the form of window stickers, t-shirts, and some other cool stuff up our sleeve.
I’m in the wine / beer / cocktail industry, can I help too?
One thousand times, yes. We chose the name for this event—”Night of 1000 Pours”—quite intentionally, in that it does not specify what exactly is being poured over the course of the night. Wine pros, beer bars, cocktail slingers, please get in touch with us immediately and we would love to have your support.
Why don’t you keep your politics off my internet and stick to coffee, Sprudge?
We sure wish we could! But here in 2018 the world is an increasingly dire and scary place. There are groups that are fighting to fix that, in ways big and small, and twice a year we want to organize some fundraisers for them. If you don’t like it, you’re free to ignore this small portion of our content flow and / or leave snarky comments on our Facebook. But we consider this to be the most important work we’ve done in 8 years of publishing Sprudge and we hope you’ll join us and help raise some money for good causes.