At least 1% of what we make goes to Bristol

We are owned by 1,500 people, and more than 80% of them have a Bristol postcode. This is where our money should do its work. We Back Bristol is how we make sure it does.

We started this with Bristol Beer Factory

One conversation, in November 2025.

Bristol Beer Factory had spent years giving away a share of everything they sold, through a scheme called Brewed to Give. It worked. We had our own fundraising running and wanted it to do more. We had worked alongside them for years and knew they would take the call, so in November 2025 we went to see Sam Burrows, Managing Director of Bristol Beer Factory, and asked whether the two of us could build something bigger than either of us could alone.

That conversation is the reason this exists. It ended somewhere more ambitious than it started: imagine if every business in this city gave 1%.

We Back Bristol came out of that room. Bristol Beer Factory could have kept their model to themselves and nobody would have thought less of them. They opened it up instead. We built the rest of it with them, then went looking for other Bristol businesses who saw it the same way. They are named further down this page, and this belongs to all of them now.

“After our conversation with BBF, we had our eyes opened to what local charities and CICs are dealing with, costs climbing faster than income, more people leaning on that safety net every week. It highlighted what a difference focussed support can make and made the case for us plainly. That is the kind of investment we want to be making in our city. We joined forces to create a direct way to put our support where it’s needed most, into the hands of the grassroots groups and community organisations doing the work.”

Bruce GrayFounder of Left Handed Giant
Small Bar on King Street in Bristol, where Left Handed Giant started

This city built us

So this is where the money goes back.

Left Handed Giant started in the back of Small Bar on King Street in 2014. When we needed a brewery worth the name, more than a thousand Bristol people put their own money in to build it. We have 1,500 shareholders in a small company and over 80% of them live under a BS postcode. 75% of what we produce goes straight to our own bars and into this city.

So we are not a national business with a local outreach programme. Our customers, our staff and our owners are largely the same people, and most of them live within a few miles of where we work. Bristol made us.

That decides where the money should go. A pound that stays here pays a Bristol wage, buys from a Bristol supplier, and funds the organisation that catches someone in this city when they fall. One in four people in Bristol use charity support every week, and the groups providing it are under real strain. In a survey of 40 Bristol charities commissioned for the We Back Bristol launch, 97% said their costs were rising faster than their income and 60% were at risk of cutting or suspending services.

We would rather put our effort somewhere direct and tangible, close to home, than spread it thin at a distance. Every pound of good we can afford to do, we want doing it here, where we can watch it land.

The Left Handed Giant brewpub on Bristol's harbourside at Finzels Reach

One per cent of revenue. Every year.

What Left Handed Giant has committed.

Our pledge is 1% of Left Handed Giant Ltd revenue. Top line, every year.

Revenue, not profit. That distinction is the whole point. Profit is a number a business can manage. Revenue is what came through the door. In a thin year the pledge still stands.

About We Back Bristol

Where it went

Percentages are easy to write down. These are the places it actually reached.

  • The Left Handed Giant bar at Spike Island Open Studios 2026

    Photo: Lisa Whiting Photography

    Spike Island

    We ran the bar at Open Studios 2026 and brewed a beer for the gallery's 50th, with labels by three studio artists. Across a weekend that drew 9,000 visitors, the bar raised £4,113.55 — shared between Spike Island and its artist community.

  • A rider at Shredfest, Ride Bristol's mountain bike festival

    Photo: Grace Alexander

    Ride Bristol

    Twelve cases and a full bar kit — gazebo, cooler, table — for the first Shredfest. The festival raised over £5,000 to maintain Bristol's mountain bike trails. The bar was more than 15% of it.

  • BaseKit, for Gympanzees

    Beer, soft drinks and pizza for a staff fundraiser that beat its £1,000 target, raising £1,077 plus £225 in Gift Aid for disabled children and their families.

  • The Wonky Line Cult

    Free space at Small Bar for a first event. It is now a regular fixture — unconventional life drawing, D&D one-shot nights, and a community that did not exist before.

  • Ad Astra Comedy

    Venue and seating at Small Bar, free of charge, for a bi-weekly comedy night.

  • ANiMiNSPO

    Free space and promotional support at Small Bar, which gave Bristol's animation community somewhere to be.

“Without Small Bar allowing us to use their space for free we would not be able to put on our shows.”

Toby Brooksco-founder, Ad Astra Comedy

“Their support and care for our artist community has been invaluable, and we are deeply grateful for their partnership.”

Lucy MacDonaldDevelopment Manager, Spike Island

And there is the collective side of it. What we give goes in alongside every other member's, and it is the collective that decides where it lands — no member on its own, us included. What We Back Bristol supports is published on their site.

See what We Back Bristol funds

We are not doing this on our own

The businesses that started We Back Bristol.

Two businesses started the conversation. It took all of these to build the thing.

Founding members include Bristol Beer Factory, Left Handed Giant, Enviral, Fanatic, Studio Kin, Bianchis Group, Emmeline, The Pony Family and Team Love. Between them they brew, cook, pour, design and put on shows. What they have in common is a postcode and the same view about what to do with it.

Every one of them signed the same commitment we did.

See every member
A crowd at a Left Handed Giant brewery event in Bristol

If you run a business in this city

This part is for you.

The maths is less frightening than it sounds. One per cent of revenue from your last financial year. For most businesses that is a smaller number than they fear, and a much bigger number than any Bristol charity is currently getting from them. There is no joining fee.

One business giving money away is a gesture. Enough of us doing it is infrastructure. That is the whole argument, and it only holds if more businesses take it up.

Go to the We Back Bristol site and ask to become a member. Someone will get in touch and work out a path that fits — including if the year ahead is already committed.

Talk to We Back Bristol

Back Bristol

Drink our beer, and the money stays in this city.

Every can we sell and every pint we pour carries a bit of this. That is the arrangement, and we are glad of it.

Join We Back BristolSee what it funds

Running something in Bristol?

You can ask us directly.

If you are a charity, CIC or community group in Bristol, come to us. We donate beer for you to sell at your own event and keep the takings. We give cases as raffle and auction prizes. We lend out tables, coolers and gazebos. And our rooms are free to community groups for meetings, fundraisers and events — it costs us very little and it is worth a great deal to organisations that cannot find affordable space.

Request event and bar support
Request a raffle or auction prize
The taproom at the Left Handed Giant brewpub, free to Bristol community groups