Anti-HB2 beer has raised more than $42,000 for equality organizations

The beer is flowing and so is the money for “Don’t Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison”— a beer campaign created in response to House Bill 2.

Erik Myers, founder of Mystery Brewing in Hillsborough, and Keil Jansen, brewmaster of Ponysaurus Brewing Company in Durham, brewed a beer that raises money to support the organizations Equality NC and Queer Oriented Radical Days of Summer — a summer camp for children ages 12 to 17 who are LGBTQ or come from LGBTQ families.

Fundraising has exceeded expectations, Myers said. Their Generosity.com campaign received contributions totaling $42,196 in four months.

The beer started brewing in April, and beer sales at the 43 participating breweries are still contributing to the amount to be donated to the two organizations.

“It has gotten a lot of nationwide attention,” Myers said. “It’s been a lot more work than we anticipated.”

Matt Hirschy, director of advancement at Equality NC, said Myers and the people at Mystery Brewing reached out to Equality NC to let them know about the project shortly after it launched.

“Equality NC is the state’s largest and country’s oldest state-based equality group,” Hirschy said.

Hirschy said the funds donated from the Don’t Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison beer campaign will go to the hiring of a senior staff member who can focus specifically on transgender policy.

“This is a substantial gift to Equality NC,” Hirschy said. “We only have eight full-time staff members. Those staff are charged with representing around 200,000 North Carolinians and work across 100 counties.”

Apart from donating to the chosen charities, Jansen and Myers also used some of the money to pay the breweries who supplied resources to help brew and package the beer.

“Locally, the reaction to the beer has been fantastic,” Jansen said. “Way more people are asking to carry the beer than we can supply.”

Jansen said they will continue brewing the beer until the November election, but after that, they will stop production.

“We’d like to focus a little bit on our own companies,” Myers said. “We are looking for a way to use the Don’t Be Mean to People brand in a different way. We have things in the works but are not at liberty to talk about them just yet.”

Myers and Jansen have received some opposition to the beer.

“Occasionally we’ve run across one or two people who, I guess, aren’t big fans of being nice to people, but they’ve been really sparse,” Myers said.

The campaign has raised so much money that they are considering donating to a third organization, Myers said, though they’re still deciding what organization that would be.

“We know that we’re giving Queer Oriented Radical Days of Summer a lot more money than they’re accustomed to dealing with,” he said.

“We’re wondering if we could find a third charity to help spread the love.”

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