A Letter of Gratitude
from Luck CEO and Founder Matt Bizer
Over the last thirteen or so years here at Luck, we’ve traveled through so many chapters together. There were the early days — each of us driving our own box trucks around the Hill Country, late nights spent waxing poetic over beers about legacies and ideals we believed in, and a whole different kind of spaghetti western made up of extension cords and overly ambitious ideas. These adventures and stories brought together the group of people we now call our Luck Family.
At the heart of that journey, it has always been about the people — those seen and unseen who worked long hours, gave emotionally and creatively, and poured their passion into pulling together these small but meaningful moments. And it’s in those people that our deepest gratitude should live. Because, at the end of the day, every community is only as powerful, moving, and impactful as the people who make it up.
This is a letter of thanks to those people — to the ones who bled with us in the early days, to those who’ve gone on to new paths, and to those who return each year to gather in the spirit of something both new and nostalgic — a true homecoming, which inspired the “Reunion” in our event’s namesake.
We are a community, and with that comes the responsibility to nurture and protect it. That belief feels more important than ever in a time when our culture and politics seem to push us further apart — when our increasingly digital lives can leave us more connected yet lonelier than ever. I often think back to something my grandfather used to say: “It all started going downhill when we traded front porches for privacy fences.”
Luck has always tried — not always perfectly — to be a good member of its community. That’s work we recommit to every day. It starts with intention, in the small things, and that intention is what led to the creation of the Luck Family Foundation. The Foundation was born from a persistent feeling that we needed to give back to the people who help make this all possible.
It isn’t really an organization in the traditional sense — it’s an idea: that we should give back as much as we gain. To make that possible, we partnered with the Austin Community Foundation, who graciously hold our donor-managed fund. Through that fund, we’ve been able to transform one-off donations into a growing mission that has distributed over $3 million in grants to projects and organizations across environmental, human, artistic, agricultural, and healthcare causes.
Together, as the Luck Family, we’ve weathered a global pandemic — even pivoting to online-only festivals and events for over a year. In those uncertain times, you showed up. Instead of giving up — and I’ll be honest, many of us considered it — we came together and found new ways to support artists and raise more funds for our community than we ever thought possible. From “’Til Further Notice” (in lieu of the Luck Reunion) to “A Night for Austin” with Paul Simon, to “Prime Cuts” supporting small food businesses — we didn’t just survive; we grew. Those moments revealed something vital: that Luck’s mission isn’t just about preservation, but celebration — of art, of community, of each other.
Since then, we’ve continued to build on that mission. Our Potluck events have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past decade for foodway partners like Farm Aid, The Texas Food and Wine Alliance, The Central Texas Food Bank, and Wholesome Wave. Our festivals have pioneered green initiatives with REVRB, and every year we work with organizations like HAAM, SIMS, and MusiCares to support our artist community.
And again this year, in the spirit of our ever-evolving mission, we gathered to help the communities of Kerrville and the Texas Hill Country after devastating floods.
We are a community — and the only way to preserve it is to keep working with intention, and to keep showing up.
If you’d like to learn more about volunteering, donating, or supporting our mission, please visit Luck Family Foundation to see what we're doing today.
As we enter this Thanksgiving season, I want to set aside pretense and focus on reflection and intention. While we can (and should) acknowledge the complex history and injustices tied to this holiday, I also believe there’s something deeply good in the original idea of “Thanks-Giving.” There’s still room for us to reclaim that spirit — to pause, to reflect, and to give thanks with open hearts.
So, with that intention, I want to say thank you — to you, our Luck Family — for more than a decade of support, patience, laughter, and love through the successes, the failures, the good times and the hard ones. Here’s to the next chapter, together.
With gratitude,
Matt Bizer
Luck Presents
