By Dr. Randy Whetstone, Jr. • Photos by Matt Johnson
Many may not know about the collaborations that help to undergird the success of spirit brands around the nation. After speaking with two founders – who may have been birthed as industry siblings – organizational partnerships have been needed to combat societal issues such as homelessness. I met with the Founder of Bourbon Brotherhood, Bruce Corwin, and the Founder of Whisky Chicks, Linda Ruffenach to learn about their most recent milestone they accomplished collectively.
Most recently, you all have come together as organizations to raise some needed fundraising dollars in the city of Louisville. Collectively, if I’m not mistaken, Bourbon Brotherhood and Whisky Chicks together have raised $750,000 for the Coalition for the Homeless?
Linda
“Bruce and I got together to connect and see what the other one was up to. What became really apparent in our first meeting - and this was 10 years ago - was that we both had a commitment to giving back. Both of us were doing it as a labor of love and we wanted to be able to give back to the community. So, after a little brainstorming, we said ‘Well, why don’t we host a co-event together?’ We hosted our first event at Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. In that first year, we raised $10,000.”
Bruce
“Back then, there was only one bourbon experience downtown, which was the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. It was a brand new thing, and they agreed to let us host an event there. As Linda mentioned, we raised $10,000 that first year, and then we’ve grown over the years. Each year it’s gotten bigger and bigger and cumulatively over those 11 years we’ve raised three-quarters of a million dollars, which we never thought we’d hit a milestone like that.”
Tell us what it means to contribute and to give to the Coalition for the Homeless. What does it mean for your organization?
Linda
“I go back to the very first one (event) that we did. I was on the board of the Coalition for the Homeless at that time, and they were on a mission to end veteran homelessness. What was really cool was some of the work that we did over that year and following years, reduced veteran homelessness to a functional zero. This means that all identified homeless veterans have access to permanent housing, and there are dedicated resources to ensure that newly homeless veterans find housing within 30 days. So that’s probably one of the areas that’s been huge for me; and then these last couple years, it’s been around youth homelessness and other big topics like that.”
Bruce
“You see the homelessness at every intersection, it seems, off every ramp and downtown. You see a lot of that. It’s very heartbreaking to me. You always wonder what can you do? If I give $20 to that person, is that really helping them? You want to know that you can do something to help but, you’re not sure what would really help these folks. By working with the Coalition for the Homeless, they’ve got 30 different partner agencies that they work very closely with. These are food banks and shelters and all kinds of organizations that help in different ways the homeless community. They help to coordinate those efforts. They help to get grants from the state and from the federal government to help fight homelessness and it’s an ongoing challenge in our community. It’s something that I’m glad that there’s so many people out there that have helped Linda and me to raise these funds and fight against homelessness.”
Bruce and Linda, I’m a big fan of building synergy. There’s so much more we can do collectively as the sum of the parts, instead of as an individual. So, it makes me think about the importance of organizational partnerships. Can you all speak about how important it is to partner with other organizations to help tackle some of the challenges we see in our Community?
Linda
“I don’t think we could have pulled this off individually. I think it took both of us together. It wasn’t like one plus one equals two. It was one plus one equals four, because we were able to get more people involved and engaged. I think part of it also goes into the spirit of the bourbon industry and this whole idea of ‘all boats rise’, where, outside of marketing, they’re very collaborative within the industry.
“A great example of that is, as Bruce mentioned, Evan Williams was the first visitor center on Main Street. Angel’s Envy was the second one, and Evan Williams went out of their way to help Angel’s get their visitor center off the ground. They showed them best practices. They told them what worked (and what) didn’t work. One might think, ‘Well, aren’t you competing against each other?’ but the reality is they saw it as an opportunity to get visitors to come to Louisville to visit our bourbon centers. And if you’ve got a great bourbon experience, then it’s a chance that they’re going to come check out my bourbon experience as well. And so that kind of feeds into the whole culture around bourbon.