What is Get Comfortable?

After 10 years, Get Comfortable is today a vast cross-sector consortium working to channel the generosity of many toward consensus community priorities.

It is CONVENED by Creature Comforts,

CO-FUNDED by dozens of local businesses,

DIRECTED by an Advisory Council,

EVALUATED by UGA faculty,

and IMPLEMENTED by Books For Keeps and the Clarke County School District.

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The Stepping Stone collaboration

The long-time annual Get Comfortable beer release was elevated to a collaboration project in 2019, beginning with Sonoma County’s Russian River Brewing. Beyond simply locking arms with industry-respected breweries, this collaboration targets purpose-driven companies—those who share our aspirations of serving as a force for good in the world.

Since the Russian River collaboration, the Get Comfortable project has partnered with Allagash, Sierra Nevada, Bell’s Brewing, and most recently—and interestingly—the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences.

For the 2025 release, the collaborator will be Denmark-based Stepping Stone Brewing Co., which has quickly become a celebrated Scandinavian brewery. As importantly, they have long demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to their community.

Stepping Stone exists to create employment opportunities for Danish refugees. Quoting from their website: “Together with the Danish employment authorities, we’ve devised a program tailor-made to improve the conditions of refugees that seek to enter the Danish workforce.”

On September 4, there will be 2 events over the course of the evening:

• 5:00 PM – The first will be dedicated to the beer collaboration, and will feature a panel discussion about global refugee resettlement efforts with participants who are Rhodes Scholars, practitioners, and faculty from UGA’s Department of International Affairs.

• 6:30 PM – The second event will be a community-wide report out on the ongoing literacy intervention work, which the Get Comfortable beer sales are mobilized to advance.

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The Literacy Intervention impact

In 2021, the Get Comfortable Advisory Council—stakeholders from the Clarke County Manager’s Office, United Way of Northeast Georgia, our Community Foundation, and both our county’s comprehensive plan and needs-assessment database—determined that the next multi-year focus of this initiative would be to increase 3rd grade reading scores within the Clarke County School District (CCSD).

3rd grade reading success carries with it a host of other community benefits, including workforce development wins and demonstrable long-term reductions in required social services spending.

Following a year of R&D, the program was launched a 2-year pilot at 1 local school: H. B. Stroud Elementary. This pilot produced a pronounced treatment effect when comparing our mentor-matched Stroud cohort to 2 comparable CCSD control schools: Year 2 results, for instance, showed an increase in our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders who ended the academic year reading on grade level at a level 224% (or 3.9 times) higher than their control counterparts. What was especially noteworthy to our former Superintendent, Dr. Robbie Hooker, was the fact that we observed some of our greatest comparative efficacy in the performance band that is traditionally the most difficult to improve: i.e., our cohort members who began the term ‘2+ grade levels behind’ decreased by 84%—compared to a 52% reduction in the control group.

It is on the strength of these data that not only triggered an expansion into a second school during the 2024-2025 academic year, but also led to recognition as the 2023 Georgia City Solution by the Georgia Municipal Association; the 2023 Impact Program of the Year by the Deal Center for Early Language & Literacy; and the national award as the country’s Best Community Improvement Program in 2024 by the United States Chamber of Commerce.