What appeared to be an April Fool’s Day joke about the creation of the Brewers Space Guild — “protecting breweries in the frontier without tiers” — was actually the announcement of the formation of the Association of Brewers Guild Professionals (ABGP), a trade organization for the employees of the nation’s state and local brewers guilds.
Brewers guilds aren’t preparing for liftoff, but they are linking up to form an association of their own, led by Arizona Craft Brewers Guild executive director Rob Fullmer with assistance from Ohio Craft Brewers Association executive director Mary MacDonald.
“The pandemic really exposed how isolated those that run state and regional guilds are,” Fullmer told Brewbound. “I say that even though the [Brewers Association] has been for several years now expending resources toward supporting and connecting us.
“We’re not breweries,” he continued. “Our operations are not very much like theirs. And we’re not the BA. We have a lot in common with the BA and breweries, but we also have our own interests as advocacy organizations and as professionals. I hope the ABGP can fill that void.”
The ABGP will support the staff of the nation’s roughly 65 brewers guilds through education and professional development. The role of a guild executive director can involve political advocacy, fundraising, marketing, and educational programming for breweries — often disparate tasks without guidebooks.
“Most of us have come up in the last 10 years, and those of us who have been around longer than five years at this point feel like seasoned professionals, because this is a baptism by fire kind of industry,” MacDonald told Brewbound. “Most of us have made up our jobs as we go along.”
When MacDonald started her role in 2013, she relied on more experienced peers leading guilds in other states for guidance. Through the ABGP, guild leaders will be able to pool their expertise to create a knowledge base for newcomers to the guild world.
“We just wanted to create something that is supportive of individuals getting into the industry, because I know when I started, I didn’t have a lot of experience in the craft brewing industry,” MacDonald said. “It was nonprofit management that I had experience in, but this is a whole different ball of wax because of all the regulations you face, and they’re different in every state, but we do tend to come up with some similar themes.”
The guild community is a tight-knit group and has been in close contact over the last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic made guild leaders information conduits between their brewery members and state and local governments’ ever-shifting health and safety regulations, MacDonald said.
“We rely on each other a ton and it intensified this year,” she said, adding the group got together virtually for happy hours and commiserating. “You have X number of breweries and employees and everyone’s relying on you — you can’t control what your state’s gonna do. You’re more or less a relayer of information and you just feel helpless.”
The bonds between guild leaders began forming several years ago, Fullmer said, under the tutelage of former BA brewers guilds manager Acacia Coast, who was laid off in a second round of BA job cuts in June 2020. The ABGP is a way to formalize those relationships in an independent organization.
Fullmer has been in his role for more than seven years and said he connected with fellow guild leaders through Coast and BA events such as the annual Craft Brewers Conference. That network buoyed him in his director role.
“Beyond that, you have your board of directors, a mission and the rest is on your shoulders,” he said.
Fundraising is ABGP’s first priority, which the fledgling organization is doing through selling cheeky Brewers Space Guild hats and T-shirts. Brewers Supply Group provided a seed grant to help the group get started.
“We’re starting this organization from scratch. I think most of the engagement is from directors with three to seven years,” Fullmer said. “We know what it’s like to learn the ropes on your own for the first couple of years. It’s rough.
“A huge focus is getting new guild employees the resources and personal support that they need,” he continued. “With the ABGP we can work on that together without having to take away from or be limited by our own organizations or the BA.”
The organization aims to host a conference for guild staff to learn from each other and spend time together. Guild leaders often gather during events such as Craft Brewers Conference, the Great American Beer Festival and the BA’s annual hill climb in Washington, D.C., but MacDonald said that an event free from other distractions would be more productive.
“We found that our most effective time is when we have time away from everything else, and we’re just focused on specifically guilds and their issues,” she said. “We do a really great job of teaching each other and learning from each other.”
Guilds vary in size and budget, and the ABGP hopes to lend financial support to members from guilds without funds to send them to events where they have the ability to learn from peers, MacDonald said.
“If somebody needs airfare or hotel room or whatever, we would help defray those costs, because it’s so important to come to these things and learn and just bond with the people who have the same job you have in a different state but you have a lot of the same challenges and opportunities,” she said.