Several local bands and artists will unite at The National this Saturday to help put on a music and arts festival which will benefit two Richmond non-profit organizations.
Several local bands and artists will unite at The National this Saturday to help put on a music and arts festival which will benefit two Richmond non-profit organizations.
Students Live! Benefit Concerts, an area 501(c)(3) organization that supports local community-focused non-profits through benefit concerts, will put on RVA Rock’n Art Fest, a benefit concert Sat., Sept. 5 with proceeds going toward Beds for Kids and Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN.)
“It’s basically a rock and roll art gallery,” said Eric Postow, CEO of Students Live Benefit Concerts.
Postow has booked seven bands for the benefit show including Against Grace, Big Mama Shakes, Brighter The Moon, Peter Kelly, Sunbox, Towers (T0W3RS), and Tristen. There will also be several local artists there including Nickolai Walko, a Richmond artist that’s spearheading the gallery portion of the festival.
“His art style is more rock and roll, edgier art,” Postow said. “All of our artists are Richmond based. He’s a recent graduate of VCU, so he’s really energized to get out there and make a name for himself.”
Other Richmond artists Keith Pfeiffer, Emily Patton and Ginny Rush will also be there for attendees to check out. Besides local artists selling their artwork at the concert, Postow said the festival will have jewelry, soap and photography vendors selling their work as well.
This will be the third benefit concert for Students Live! which officially became a 501(c)(3) organization this year. Postow, a 31-year-old grad student at the University of Richmond, had the idea for the startup two years prior along with business partners Charles Claton, another UR law student and Felipe Fernandez, who works for MeadWestvaco.
“Our whole mission is to act as a supporting establishment for non-profits,” Postow said. “We think that a lot of nonprofits are doing work that governments can’t or otherwise aren’t doing. We want to act as the fundraising, support organization that will work with all different community-focused nonprofits.”
Students Live! fronts the money out of pocket, and the money they make back from the concert they then given to the charities. They started out with the idea of an open mic then transitioned to benefit concerts.
“Each concert was more successful than the last and each one made a profit that we were able to turn over to the organization so we decided lets go for broke let’s see what we can do with this thing and if we become an official organization great,” Postow said.
They held their first concert in April 2014. The first event Postow put on cost them around $300, and they were able to raise $700. The second event cost $600 and the group was able raise $2,000 for the Virginia Wounded Warrior program.
Postow said for this benefit concert, he wanted charities that worked to help children.
“We wanted to focus on a general umbrella theme of children in RVA, children who are impacted by things in our community” he said.
Beds for Kids, is a local organization which launched in 2006 and provides free beds for children without them. For $250, the organization can buy one child a full bed set.
SCAN, the other organization, was launched in 1991 and works to prevent child abuse and neglect in the Greater Richmond area.
A $10 donation to them can help the organization cover a week of breakfasts and lunches for a child enrolled in SCAN’s Circle Preschool.
Postow said this concert is costing over $5,000 to put on. He didn’t have a set goal for this event, but said he hopes they raise as much as they can for the two groups.
“With the effort that’s gone in from the bands, The National, artists and our side it’s going to be the kind of thing that people want to come to year after year,” he said. “If it is successful we can start doing more regular concerts throughout the year.”
Now go out and support two great charities at the National for just $10 this Saturday. Get tickets here.
