- oregonpublichouse.com
- Oregon Public House raises over $23,000 per year for charity
In the city that supports more craft beer and nonprofits, per capita, than anywhere else in the nation, it came as little surprise in 2010 when the first nonprofit public house—Oregon Public House (OPH)—opened in the Woodlawn neighborhood thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign. Co-founder Ryan Saari said, “Myself and all of our board members are all volunteers. We have no owners; there’s no salary being pulled on the back end. If we have a great month more money goes to charities which we call our nonprofit-margin.”
The nonprofit has just announced the launch of a new Kickstarter campaign, this time specifically for their new brewing company, Aletruism Brewing. The pub has, for about a year now, offered Do-Gooder IPA brewed at PINTS Brewing in Old Town under the Aletruism name. According to the Kickstarter video, the $36,400 ask will go to purchasing and installing a 20-barrel fermenter (presumably at PINTS) and 24 kegs including for off-premise accounts.
According to the OPH blog, “From the beginning, it was our desire and plan to, one day, brew our own beer…The next step is to purchase our own 20 barrel fermenter, allowing us to brew much more of our loved Do-Gooder, as well as several other beers, on an ongoing basis.”
While it’s impossible to deny the plaudits deserved for supporting community outreach through beer ’n’ burger sales in the manner achieved by the OPH, the new crowdfunding video states, “We give 100 percent of our profits to partner charities…Since opening our doors two years ago we’ve been able to give almost $50,000 to these partners.” It is accompanied by a photo denoting $46,913 has been donated since May 2013. The OPH is not without overhead and the servers rightly collect wages, but cheers to hoping that pledging over $36,000 will generate more pint-induced donations to local charities than the pint-sized pledges to the campaign designed to support them.