I just finished up a t-shirt fundraising project for one of my homebrewclubs, CHAOS. A fellow-CHAOSite, Steven Lane, is a gifted designer and created the designs for these shirts, which we sold to both club members and others, via Facebook and homebrewtalk.com where I am on the moderating team.

Check out some of Steven’s other projects here or to contact him if you need some design work done. 

This was the second fundraiser I did for CHAOS this autumn, the first was an off-flavors in beer workshop I led with Kyle Nordquist at Lo Rez Brewing – you can read more about that here. Between the two projects, we netted more than $1,200 for the club. Steven also organized a fundraising event for the club, collaborating with a local cycling organization, which netted more than $400 – between the three projects, the club earned about $1,700 this autumn.  

CHAOS’ finances are both bigger and more complex than most homebrew clubs because we maintain a brewhouse for members. Over the course of a year, CHAOS spends about $50,000 – which is much more than a typical homebrew club and is a lot for any volunteer-run organization.  

When extra space became available in our building in 2015, we jumped on it and its been great. We have an education space or classroom now, a room for members to store their grain and other equipment, and storage room for the club to store all the stuff it needs for its quarterly parties.  

But the additional cost, coupled with a documented downturn in the homebrewing ‘industry’, has moved the club from running a modest but consistent surplus to being just break-even if everything goes well, with little room for error. Membership has been flat - we have new members join, but that is mostly offset by attrition as people move, have families, or lose interest in the hobby.   

Most of our income comes from brewers’ memberships – the fee we each pay in order to be full members of the club with access to the brewhouse 24/7. We also have apprentice memberships for new brewers and friend memberships, for non-brewers who attend the club’s quarterly parties. Another stream of income for the club comes from subleasing some of the new space we took over to a band for its rehearsal space.  

Fundraiser projects like the three this autumn will never be a core income stream for the club – but it helps relieve some budget pressure and provides resources for capital expenses and improvements for the club – like our new chiller or the much needed renovation of our fermentation room.