The Mountaineers
The Mountaineers is an incredible community of outdoor enthusiasts, students, instructors, advocates, and leaders. We are inspired by our community’s dedication to fostering connections to the outdoors. As we close the door on 2022 and look ahead to 2023, we reflect on our core values and how they’ve guided us through this past fiscal year.
ADVENTURE
This year, we offered adventure in many ways. We introduced packrafting as an activity committee and added two new youth volunteer badges to support our growing Youth & Family Hiking and Backpacking programs. Together, we traveled 199,644 miles and climbed 45,556,803 feet!
We journeyed by foot and paddled across waters throughout the Pacific Northwest. From bikepacking to canyoning and scrambling to sailing, we offered 14 different types of activities. We also offered Global Adventures beyond the Pacific Northwest to places like the High Andes of Peru and the Lycian Way along Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Six hundred volunteer trip leaders led 3,033 participants on 2,720 trips, demonstrating our volunteers' commitment to safety and leadership in the outdoors.
Our community continues to be a model for equitable and sustainable programming. To further reduce barriers, our Gear Library upgraded the reservation-by-email system to a browsable online platform, allowing easier access to the outdoors and helping our members stay safely connected as a community.
We released more than 30 new book titles to help people learn new skills, find places to visit, and experience the outdoors through pages. We are proud to have three of our titles as 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition finalists. Luc Mehl’s The Packraft Handbook won the Guidebook category, Lauren DeLaunay Miller’s Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing won the Climbing Literature category, and Katie Ives’ Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams was the winner for one of the Special Jury Mention categories.
EDUCATION
Our engagement with thousands of members through new virtual and in-person programs provided exciting growth in our educational opportunities. We offered 327 seminars and clinics and 198 courses, altogether providing an impressive 10,782 educational experiences for our outdoor community!
During the summer, we debuted our two new eLearning Courses: Foundations of Leadership and Foundations of Instruction. We also offered an in-person version of these courses in December. The inaugural Foundations of Leadership & Instruction In-person Course was an interactive day of leadership development that supported multiple learning styles. Similar to past events like the Leadership Conference, this in-person experience provided a full day of collaboration, community building, and learning across branches.
We're particularly excited to continue our ongoing leadership development opportunities for Mountaineers volunteers through our Leadership Development Series. During the past fiscal year, most of our Leadership Development Series seminars were offered remotely to make it more accessible to members across our branches. Except for one in-person seminar, E.P.I.C Adventures with Kids, which was better suited for in-person learning due to the interactive nature of learning youth games and activities - our first youth volunteer-focused session of the series. We were thrilled to host 40 seminars for our volunteer leaders with a total of 304 registrations. Many of our webinars were recorded and can be viewed on our Leadership Development Series YouTube playlist.
By leveraging the creativity of our volunteers and staff we were able to continue the impact of our programming. Thank you to our dedicated volunteers for keeping our community engaged and learning through another year.
VOLUNTEERISM
Volunteerism remains at the core of our mission. As we often say, our volunteers are the heart and soul providing high-quality, community-focused outdoor programming. In almost every aspect of our work, volunteers are at the forefront, and we are extremely grateful for the 3,254 members who volunteered their time this past fiscal year and the many others who supported us from afar.
At the turn of every year, it's our tradition to recognize a handful of volunteers who have gone above and beyond to support our programs. While we were not able to gather for an in-person celebration, we were excited to host our first ever virtual Volunteer Appreciation Night in January 2022 to acknowledge our volunteers' immense service to our organization.
In the 2022 fiscal year, our community reported a whopping 154,237 volunteer hours! Despite that impressive number, we know it’s only a fraction of the real time our volunteers contributed to our programs and mission. Reporting volunteer hours is critical for our organization’s internal tracking, as well as our volunteer recognition, external grant applications, and other fundraising efforts. For a reminder of best practices when tracking volunteer time, check out our How To: Tracking Volunteer Hours blog.
ADVOCACY
Our community had a busy year advocating for our outdoor spaces, including a big win for public lands at the Washington state legislature in March. Last year we announced that The Mountaineers is leading Outdoor Alliance Washington (OA Washington). In December, Conservation & Advocacy Director Betsy Robblee joined OA partners from across the country in Washington, DC to advocate for the passage of two of our longtime priorities - the Wild Olympics bill and the SOAR Act.
We kicked off a Conservation 101 blog series that shared the many facets of conservation and advocacy in our organization, and invited new and seasoned advocates to get involved on behalf of public lands by joining The Mountaineers Conservation & Advocacy Committee. To share a deep dive into The Mountaineers conservation and advocacy work, we held our first-ever Conservation & Advocacy Town Hall in April.
Our members and volunteers have been busy supporting conservation and stewardship efforts as well. In the past fiscal year, we offered 136 stewardship activities, in which 876 participants volunteered 5,520 hours. We also awarded 754 Low Impact Recreation badges this year, compared to the 597 that we awarded last year.
As an organization, we took the first step toward better honoring Native lands and peoples and announced The Mountaineers Land Acknowledgment statement. We recognize that land acknowledgment is only a small piece of doing our part to help rectify historical wrongs and honor Native peoples and understand the importance of going beyond land acknowledgments.
COMMUNITY
As our five-year strategic plan, Vision 2022, came to a close, our staff, board, and volunteer leadership introduced an updated 10-year strategic plan to serve as our next guiding light for the coming decade. We invited you to share feedback, as your voice and involvement is key to an effective implementation plan.
We reflected on how The Mountaineers is working to make sure all people feel belonging within our organization. As a community, we strive to build a sense of belonging among all members and aim to provide outdoor opportunities for everyone. We acknowledged the need to talk about diversity in The Mountaineers to promote an equitable outdoor experience and a healthy future for our organization. A recent Equity & Inclusion update highlighted key trail markers in our work and announced that applications to join the Equity & Inclusion Committee in 2023.
Our outdoor community not only gives back as volunteers, they elevate our programs through a strong culture of philanthropy. This past fiscal year, more than 3,175 individual members and volunteers stepped up to keep our mission alive during these unprecedented times by raising nearly $1,069,814 in contributions. This incredible demonstration of support from our members and donors combined with the funds we received from our corporate and foundation supporters provided a grand total of $1,696,892 in philanthropic funds. Of those donations, $110,574 came from 1,821 outdoor enthusiasts making their first-ever gifts to The Mountaineers. 212 members leveraged employer benefits to match their donations and volunteer hours. These contributions totaled more than $230,000 from more than 50 companies.
Additionally, 10 new Summit Society members pledged a legacy gift in their estate plans to The Mountaineers, bringing our Summit Society to 77 members. We also saw a record-breaking 332 households (almost 500 members) make a Peak Society-level donation of $1,000 or above in 2022! As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, philanthropic revenue enhances our ability to deliver on our mission. These donor funds are what make mission-critical programs like our conservation efforts, youth outreach and access programs, publishing division, volunteer leadership development, scholarships, and more possible.
As we kick off our new fiscal year, we are overwhelmed with gratitude for the 623 members stepped up with gifts of all sizes during our year-end appeal. A testament to the commitment of The Mountaineers community for the year ahead. This will help ensure that our donor-funded programs will have the resources needed to get more people outside and provide stewardship for our favorite places.
THANK YOU
2022 was full of big adventures, learning opportunities, outstanding service, and inspiring commitment to our community. We begin 2023 on a high note, anticipating even greater opportunities and adventures ahead. Thanks to each and every member, volunteer, donor, and reader for your ongoing commitment to The Mountaineers mission and application of our core values. We look forward to seeing you in 2023!
