On a spring afternoon in Portland, a crowd gathers for beer, music, and a shared sense of purpose. SheBrew is a craft beer festival that raises funds for the Human Rights Campaign while spotlighting female-identified brewers, LGBTQIA+ voices, and local entertainers. It’s a day-long event built on inclusion, celebration, and local pride. Its name lives online at a domain that says exactly what it is: shebrew.beer.
At the heart of the festival is a simple idea: create space for people to show up, be seen, and enjoy great beer.
“It’s an all-genders, all-ages fundraising event that supports LGBTQIA+ people here in Oregon and across the nation,” said co-founder Jenn McPoland.
The team behind SheBrew is made up of volunteers who believe in the power of gathering and in using beer as a way to bring people together. The event features local brewers and cider makers, live performances, small businesses, and nonprofit partners. It’s open to all ages and all genders, with proceeds going directly to support LGBTQIA+ advocacy.
After years of steady growth, SheBrew is now one of the Human Rights Campaign’s most successful fundraisers, a major honor for the team.
“We’ve been recognized as one of the most profitable fundraisers that the Human Rights Campaign puts on every year,” Jenn said, “and now have a real budget that is allowing us to grow into a bigger space.”
Still, visibility remains a challenge. “We’ve grown consistently every year,” she said, “but we still have lots of room to grow awareness.”
In recent years, the festival has moved into a larger venue and started planning further ahead, including earlier outreach to press and influencers. With more structure and visibility, SheBrew has continued gaining momentum.
A key part of that visibility is its online presence. When the team was choosing a domain name, they looked at traditional options. A .com address would have cost $6,000, which wasn’t feasible. But price wasn’t the only factor—they also wanted something that was catchy and memorable. So they chose something that also felt like a better match for the event: shebrew.beer.
The .beer top-level domain offered savings but, equally important, it provided SheBrew with a direct, memorable web address that reflects what the festival is about. The URL is easy to share and immediately meaningful. A .beer helps people find the event, remember it, and talk about it, something that wouldn’t be quite as easy to do with a .com.
Since choosing the domain, the SheBrew team has also seen how well it supports their broader goals. They’ve used it across posters, press releases, and digital campaigns and, each time, it’s helped people find the event more easily, while making the festival’s purpose clear from the first click. The name speaks directly to the community it serves and reflects the experience of attending: local, purposeful, and welcoming.
SheBrew has continued to grow in size and reach, with more people attending each year and stronger recognition across Oregon. For an event built on visibility, having a domain that people remember and understand has helped shape how the festival is seen and shared.