5th annual Blankets for Bourbon starts November 22!
Blankets for Bourbon 2024 is live at https://blanketsbourbon.givesmart.com!!!
From our friends at Beverage King:
Five years ago, when we at Beverage King first launched what has now become “Blankets for Bourbon,” our goal was to take our customers’ passion for whiskey and marry it up with a cause that would benefit our local community here in Norwalk and the surrounding area. We chose Open Doors as our partner for all the same reasons that you gravitated to their organization. Simply put, their goal to improve our community aligns perfectly with what we wanted to achieve. Their approach for achieving that goal benefits members of our community that underpin our collective success and have simply fallen on difficult times and need a hand to get back on their feet.
What began as a last-minute idea among employees and friends in the basement of our Main Street store has evolved into a significant annual event that our customers and distribution partners eagerly anticipate every year. “Blankets for Bourbon” has transformed from a humble beginning, where we were piecing together ideas and just scratching the surface of the impact we could have, to last year’s event, where, with the help of our customers and distributors, we were able to raise over $55,000 in clothing and monetary donations, bringing our four-year total to over $100,000 raised.
Over the years, we’ve refined Blankets for Bourbon into a few different parts.
• Part 1 is our “Amazon Wish List”, where community members purchase clothing and daily necessities identified by Erin and her team at Open Doors through an established Amazon “Wish List”. In return, participants can elect to receive a raffle ticket which gives them a chance to purchase highly sought-after allocated whiskey at a retail price (which can be very hard to find for those that are not familiar).
• Part 2 was introduced in our third year, and it provides community members with the chance to donate bottles to Open Doors, which can then be won by individuals who make cash donations directly with the organization. This extension of Blankets for Bourbon allows another avenue of donation from our customers who pull coveted bottles from their personal collections to build up the “pool” of bottles that can be won for free by those who make monetary donations.
• Part 3 was introduced last year, and helped propel our donations to their highest level yet. In this Part, members of our distribution community donate some of the highest tier bottles of whiskey for auction. Last year, Brescome Barton generously donated a bottle of Michter’s 20-Year bourbon which was signed by their master distiller Dan McKee, which alone raised $7,000. While another partner donated a vertical of 2XO Whiskey bottles signed by founder and master distiller, Dixon Dedman, generating an additional $1,000.
As we enter year five of “Blankets for Bourbon” and celebrate Open Doors’ 40th anniversary, we’re reaching out to our community to help make this year’s event another tremendous success. We aren’t focused on beating last year, but we are focused on promoting the event as broadly as we can to allow any interested members of our community to marry up their love of whiskey and helping others. Every contribution matters.