With your support, along with all of our other industry partners and individual contributors, the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund generated more than $21,000 to fund a full, diversity-focused scholarship to the 2022 online Master Brewers Certificate Program!

We can’t thank you enough, and now we need one final favor – your help in promoting the scholarship to potential applicants.

The application is live on our website, and the deadline is 11/30/21 (we know that’s coming up fast, but the online program starts in early 2022). The scholarship is available to students who:

• Are committed to diversity
• Have experience and/or understanding of the barriers traditionally faced by people from underrepresented populations (based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities…)
• Demonstrate a high potential for leadership in promoting cross-cultural understanding in the brewing industry

We’d love your help in sharing the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund scholarship opportunity with your friends, industry partners and followers, either by amplifying our social posts (we’re on  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) or creating your own.

Cheers, friends. Thanks for supporting diversity in brewing!

The UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund Team (Melissa, Glen, John, Phil, Angela and Samantha)

In 4 days the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund 2021 campaign ends. With your help, we're officially at 110% of our goal. Your generosity will fund a full scholarship to the 2022 UC Davis online Master Brewers Certificate Program, giving a life-changing opportunity to an aspiring brewer who, because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, a disability… has an experience and perspective that is underrepresented in brewing. 

Together we're making a difference but there's still a long road ahead. Which brings us to the Mark E. Ruedrich North Coast Brewing Diversity Scholarship. This endowment, established by North Coast Brewing Company and UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education, supports diversity, education and opportunity in the brewing industry in perpetuity. All UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund donations above our original $16,000 goal will be added to the endowment to help ensure ongoing diversity and accessibility in brewing.

Next Steps... Scholarship Applications!

We're working out the details on the scholarship now and hope to have the application live in early, early November. The deadline is tight (November 30) to ensure the winner can enter the 2022 program. If we can ask one final favor, we'll ask you to share the scholarship link with your networks (details to come). In the mean time, if you know a brewer who's looking for an amazing opportunity and has a passion for leading diversity in brewing, have them email jroneill@ucdavis.edu and we'll let them know when the scholarship is live.

Thanks again for all your help and support.

At its heart, the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund is about inclusion and opportunity - we want to help make sure that the brewing industry we are a part of is as dynamic, accessible and diverse as possible. 

But it's also about impact, so we want to share three stories about how professional education has transformed someone's life:

• Amanda Koeller is the head brewer at Bad Beat Brewing in Henderson, NV and, according to the Nevada Brewers Association, is the only female brewer in the state. She's also a graduate of the UC Davis Master Brewers Certificate Program (go Amanda!).
• Sean Owens was a professor and associate dean at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Now, after earning his Master Brewers Certificate, he's opening Common Language Brewing Company, a Spokane, WA brewery that promotes diversity and inclusion in the industry.
• David Lord Misuba isn't a brewer. But he donated to the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund  in honor of Nick Santos, an instructor in the UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education GIS Program. "I'm thankful to UC Davis and Nick Santos in particular for the GIS specialization course that also boosted my career."

Education creates opportunity, and by supporting the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund you have a tremendous, positive impact on the life of our scholarship winner and the brewing industry we love (so thank you!).

The Update

We're getting close! Driven by generous individual donors, amazing brewers and diversity-minded hops suppliers (looking affectionately at you, Yakima Chief and CLS Farms!), we've raised $14,425 - 90% of our original goal.

But even when we hit 100%, the impact doesn't stop - every dollar raised above $16,000 will be added to the Mark E. Ruedrich North Coast Brewing Diversity Scholarship, an endowment established by North Coast Brewing Company and UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education to support diversity, education and opportunity in the brewing industry in perpetuity. 

So tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your moms, tell anyone who loves beer (or just believes in inclusion, opportunity and impact) that they can make a difference.

We're so, so appreciative of all the support the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund has received in the past two weeks:

• Personal donations from around the corner (thanks, Jay in Davis!) to around the world (merci, Fabio in Paris!)
• Partners in the brewing industry who are seriously stepping up (raising a glass to Deschutes, El Segundo, North Coast, Sudwerk, Touchstone, Seismic and Common Language)
• A large, anonymous gift that reaffirmed my faith in humanity. Speaking candidly, not all the feedback for the campaign has been positive. Diversity is a sensitive and very personal, passionate issue, and the email responses we've received reflect that. Some have been thoughtful and respectful (and created opportunities for dialogue), others have been... less so. Anyway, waking up, checking the UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund dashboard and seeing that big donation in support of diversity was soul cleansing.

So thank you all - beer lovers, beer makers, people who believe in diversity, access and opportunity - for the support. Cheers.

The UC Davis Tapping Potential Fund 2021 campaign is officially off and running! After the first weekend we're at 17% of our goal, raising nearly $2,800 towards a $16,000 UC Davis Online Master Brewer's Program scholarship. A huge thanks to all of our early supporters, with major shout-outs to our friends at El Segundo Brewing and North Coast Brewing - we love you, we love your beer and we absolutely appreciate your commitment to increasing diversity in brewing.

17% is a great start, but as the song says, "we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there," so kick in if you can, share the campaign on social and let's work together to get this done!