Attendees had the opportunity to tour Stateside Urbancraft Vodka at Federal Distilling in Northern Liberties on June 16 while also learning more about Golden Slipper Club and Charities.
How do you get young people in the giving spirit? Give them spirits.
Attendees had the opportunity to tour Stateside Urbancraft Vodka at Federal Distilling in Northern Liberties on June 16 while also learning more about Golden Slipper Club and Charities.
At the “Giving Spirit” event, they enjoyed a free vodka tasting, learned about making mixed drinks and mixology trends, networked with other young people and participated in a raffle.
Ten percent of the proceeds made from the sale of bottles went back to Golden Slipper. About 40 people attended.
Brian Horowitz, event co-chair and Golden Slipper leader, has been involved with the organization for most of his 25 years, as has his family before him. (His great-grandfather’s signature is on the original Golden Slipper charter, and his father was a past president.)
Horowitz was officially inducted into Golden Slipper last summer. He hopes to continue to help build the organization by getting his younger friends involved and showing them what Golden Slipper is all about.
“I’m just trying to show some of my friends — younger people in the city, in the Philadelphia area — how great Golden Slipper is and what they really do,” he said, and this Giving Spirit event was the perfect opportunity to raise awareness about it.
Lori Shuster, Golden Slipper director of operations and communications, echoed how they’re trying to engage a younger audience, and this night was a follow-up to their May 21 Broad City event at World Cafe Live. At that event, show stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer spoke about themselves, the show and their relationship to Golden Slipper.
She said they heard about Stateside Urbancraft Vodka and the community building they’ve done in the area.
“We really want to support Philadelphia, and community building to us means supporting Philadelphia,” she said. “They’re a young local distillery, and they were going to donate vodka to us for the [Broad City] event. We went to them and said, ‘You’re community building in a different way by sponsoring local events, let’s do something together for an event.’ So community building has all different types of angles.”
Shuster emphasized the desire to support local businesses.
“They’re really supportive of local philanthropy and partnering and building in the area, so I think it’s really important that we work with businesses and communities,” she added.
“I’ve been here for three months, and it’s something that gets in your blood; it’s a calling. It’s why we called this ‘Giving Spirit’ because we’re tasting spirits, but it’s also about giving back to the Philadelphia region.”
Golden Slipper has serviced a variety of people in the area in its 94 years, and “if people can’t come to us,” she said, “we’re going to bring philanthropy to them, and we can reach a really large community.”
“One of our past presidents has said that we’re the best-kept secret, and we don’t want to be the best-kept secret anymore. There’s so much to do in Philadelphia philanthropically, we want people to know we’re the intersection between fun and philanthropy — we call in fun-lanthropy 101.”
Golden Slipper’s next event will be on July 7 at Venturef0rth for their “Build It and We Will Connect” party, a twist on community outreach and partnerships, which are some of the ways Golden Slipper demonstrates philanthropy and building community.
“You’re supposed to want to give to your community,” Shuster said. “What I’ve learned from Golden Slipper is that building community is inspiring, and it’s a hands-on process. People in Golden Slipper really love Philadelphia, and they love building community.”
Contact: rkurland@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0737
