Amy Cooper's background as a journalist inspired her to create Bars March. This UK-trained, Sydney-based journalist learned her craft in the days when a good bar was a newspaper’s other newsroom, and drinks and food have never been far from her work in a career editing national women’s magazines, writing features and regular opinion columns for national newspapers and covering Sydney’s party scene for almost a decade in her popular Party of the Week column in the Sun-Herald’s S section. These days you'll find her byline in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food, Traveller and other magazines, on stories that focus on celebrating life with a balanced mix of wellbeing, food and drink, entertainment and travel.

Before Bars March, all the popular charity months were about deprivation, raising funds via dry-month campaigns. While Amy applauded the results, she felt something crucial was missing from the equation: fun. And what better way of having fun than celebrating Australia's bar culture? Convinced that good times and good causes belonged together, and knowing that the hospitality industry has a heart as warm as a cosy pub hearth, she hit on the idea of Bars March, bringing together good friends, great drinks, tasty food and kindness around a simple concept: venues selling a special fundraising Bars March drink for a month each year.

Bars March helps neglected and abandoned dogs (and their fellow shelter critters in need- there’s no speciesism here) because these loyal, sociable and endlessly optimistic creatures embody the spirit of Bars March. "What’s kept us with the dogs - aside from our personal love for canines - is the fit with bar culture,” says Amy. “Nobody knows how to enjoy life better than a dog does. Imagine if your dog could shout you a drink - you’d never have to pay a bar tab again. To me, these companions who give so much and ask for so little symbolise the whole Bars March ethos of people joining together to celebrate and do good.”