ABERDEEN, S.D.(Press Release)- The Aberdeen Downtown Association is changing the structure of beverage sales for the 2025 downtown Summer Concert Series concerts to be held on June 26th, July 10th, and July 24th. We are looking to partner with local 501(c)3 nonprofits to split the sales from our downtown concerts as a joint fundraiser for both our organizations.

The partnering nonprofit will get the funds from 50% of the sales from all beverages, plus all tips. The Downtown Association will handle all pre-concert logistics, like insurance coverage, lining up beverage distributors, and managing city permits, but the partnering organization just needs to provide a minimum of 12 volunteers who are 21+ that can manage pouring the beers during the event. For each concert, the gates open at 6:00PM, and the music is done promptly at 10:00PM. To be safe, I would say volunteers would need to arrive at 5:30PM, and expect to be there until 10:30PM. I know this can be a heavy lift for volunteering for a small nonprofit, but keep in mind that we wouldn’t oppose joint applications, say if two nonprofits wanted to join together to supply the volunteers and split their profits however they want. Sales can fluctuate, but even on a bad day, a nonprofit will walk away with a significant chunk of money for their nonprofit organization. We get between 1,500 to 3,000 people at our concerts, so it’s a great opportunity to piggyback this as a fundraiser. On that note, keep in mind that nonprofits who promote their own volunteering date will likely bring out even more folks to support the fundraising!

We will be accepting requests from local 501(c)3 nonprofits in the Aberdeen area who would like to be included in a lottery drawing to be one of our 3 partner nonprofits for the upcoming 2025 Summer Concert Series concerts. To apply, all you need to do is email [email protected] with your organization’s name and a good contact phone number and email address for reaching back out. Deadline to register is Friday, May 23rd.  We will host a Facebook Live drawing on our page the following week to find out who the three nonprofits will be for this year. Once an organization is drawn, they will be pulled out from the drawing until we cycle through all of the nonprofits who were entered. We want everyone to get one chance for this fundraising opportunity.

Our board and staff are looking forward to this new way of bringing our free concerts to our community while also supporting our local nonprofits. I know times have been tough for fundraising, so I hope this can help many of you with a nice boost in funds. This is a last-minute change so it might be a little bit of a learning curve for all of us as we navigate year one, but I have a good feeling that the community will show us grace and support this new nonprofit fundraising model. Please shoot me an email with any additional questions you may have.