Impact Stories

Braided River author Lynda V. Mapes has traveled across the West Coast to give voice to the region’s orca whales, iconic to the Pacific Northwest’s beautiful—but ecologically imperiled—marine ecosystem. In this excerpt, she travels to OrcaLab in British Columbia, where passionate and determined volunteers are led by founder Paul Spong. Located on Cracroft Point, above Johnstone Strait in British Columbia, they have been documenting the daily lives of the more robust northern resident orca pods since 1970. Read more…

Today we extend big thanks to the 101 donors who contributed over $11,600 to help us reach our first matching challenge during this week’s #GiveBIG celebration. With your help we unlocked the $10,000 match, raising $21,600 toward our $30,000 spring fundraising goal. Thank you to the 28 new donors who answered the call to triple their donation and gave $2,250 towards our surprise matching challenge. It's not too late to help us reach our full match potential. We only need 10 more first time donors with a gift of $25 or more to release the full $2,500 opportunity!  Read more…

Each spring we gather our community to celebrate our collective achievements and support future efforts to transform lives and protect wild places. With the pandemic preventing us from gathering in person, we hosted our second (and hopefully final) virtual Gala. Read more…

Just in time for Earth Day, a new photo exhibit from Braided River is launching in celebration of the stunning Salish Sea. Read more…

A little over a year ago, a colleague and I ventured about an hour north of Seattle to the little seaside town of Anacortes. Although tempted by views of nearby Mount Erie State Park, we were on our way to pick up the newest addition to The Mountaineers: a 15-passenger van. The vehicle was fated to take Mountaineers youth to the lakes, trails, and mountains surrounding Puget Sound. Read more…

Sometimes a story asks to be told. As part of my role as Assistant Director of Development, I have the privilege of connecting with members to learn how Mountaineers philanthropy has positively impacted their lives. In last fall’s #GivingTuesday scholarship fundraising effort we introduced 18 year-old scholarship recipient Lily Walker, a five-year member of our year-round teen program, the Tacoma Mountaineers Adventure Club (MAC). Read more…

“Friluftsliv” is the Scandinavian word for the joys of open-air living, and few capture the heart of this spirit better than longtime Mountaineer and local alpine ski historian Lowell Skoog.  Read more…

Reflecting back on the last year, it’s fair to say that it’s been one of the most challenging years in Mountaineers history. In March 2020, COVID-19 related shutdowns caused nearly every aspect of Mountaineers operations to grind to a halt. Our program centers and lodges had to close their doors, we were unable to ship books to retailers and parks, volunteers had to postpone or cancel courses, trips, and events, and youth programs were put on pause. In addition to severely impacting our mission delivery, these program closures created a financial crisis that threatened our very existence. Without taking immediate and aggressive actions, we ran the risk of running out of operational cash reserves by the end of May.  Read more…

A decade ago, The Mountaineers undertook a radical endeavor: to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. This year, we’re celebrating the 10-year anniversary of this important accomplishment and giving thanks to the thousands of donors from all over the world who demonstrate to us every day how small gifts can add up to big change.   Read more…

As we begin 2021, I am humbled by the continued generosity of our Mountaineers community. So many of you choose to donate your time, talents, and treasure in honor of our shared outdoor experience. It’s because of you that we’re ringing in the new year with so much to celebrate! Read more…

The Mountaineers is an incredible community of adventurers, students, instructors, advocates, and leaders. As we close the door on 2020 and look ahead to 2021, we reflect on our core values and how they’ve guided us through the past nine months of this pandemic.  Read more…

As we look back at January 2020, The Mountaineers and Mountaineers Books teams were celebrating the new calendar year, a successful first quarter, and building momentum to deliver on the $9.28M approved operating budget for fiscal year 2020. A year ago today, we celebrated our most successful year-end appeal campaign and were getting ready to  open ticket sales for our 6th annual Gala, where we planned to welcome Sir Chris Bonington and 500 Mountaineers guests to Fremont Studios. The Mountaineers fundraising team was excited to see how the organization’s culture of philanthropy would continue to grow. Little did we know, a storm was blowing in. Read more…

As the year comes to a close, we’ve been reflecting on how grateful we are for the support we receive through The Mountaineers, and as volunteer leaders, we’re committed to the health, safety, and strength of the organization. Though both of us discovered The Mountaineers in different ways, it is a place where we found each other and a community to share our lives with. Here’s a glimpse into the paths that led us to The Mountaineers: Read more…

As the foremost outdoor recreation organization of the Pacific Northwest, The Mountaineers is dedicated to educating and inspiring people of all ages to explore the outdoors and conserve and steward our public lands and waters. When you take advantage of your employer’s Workplace Giving Program, you maximize the impact of your volunteer hours, membership dues and charitable donations, and can double, sometimes triple your impact! Read more…

This year, something incredible happened. Amidst the immense challenges facing our country, a polarized Congress came together to pass a bill called the Great American Outdoors Act. Some called this once-in-a-generation conservation funding bill a “unicorn” - a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation.  Read more…

Taking on the responsibility of Publisher at the start of a global pandemic has been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. But if our readers have taught me one thing this year, it’s that our independence and our nonprofit mission truly matters.  Read more…

Even though the days are shorter, I hope you are still finding ways to spend time outside and connect with nature. My kids and I have been spending time together on family adventures and enjoying the season's change. I also hope that you and your loved ones are staying healthy and doing as well as possible as we prepare for a long winter ahead. Read more…

This #GivingTuesday has blown us away. We’re incredibly grateful for the kindness, support, and generosity of our Mountaineers community. We set our goal for $15,000 and you helped us fly past it, reaching $22,000 by the end of last night. You not only helped us raise over twice as much as we did last year, you added 35 scholarships to the 75 we were hoping  to offer. We set our sights high, and you have once again outdone yourselves. Thank you.  Read more…

Scholarships do so much more than offer someone a single course. These outdoor experiences foster community, create future volunteers, and serve as an important bridge between recreation and conservation. Inspiring new conservationists to become advocates - especially those who may not have built those connections otherwise - is immeasurably valuable for our public lands. Read more…

As Mountaineers, we’re intimately connected with wild places. Some of us were introduced to the outdoors through The Mountaineers: a scrambling trip sparked a lifelong love for the North Cascades or a guidebook from Mountaineers Books introduced us to our first hike. Some of us join to deepen our love for the outdoors through new friendships and adventures. Regardless of what brought us here, we're united by our fierce love for the places we explore and our strong desire to protect them. Read more…

We're excited to be partnering with Climbers of Color in support of their mission to create more leaders of color in mountaineering. Established in 2017, Climbers of Color is a Washington State nonprofit that aims to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the climbing and mountaineering community by developing leaders of color. To accomplish its mission, Climbers of Color provides supportive mentorship, technical training from BIPOC professional guides, and access to key resources including gear and scholarships. Read more…

For nearly 20 years, our conservation imprint Braided River has published stunning multimedia books about the wildest places in North America. In particular, the western Arctic and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been a special focus. Award-winning books like We Are the Arctic and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land have been used by senators, grassroots groups, and Indigenous tribes to help people experience this remote corner of the world through images and stories, and be inspired to protect it. Read more…

It’s always a joy to visit with someone who speaks passionately about the things they love. For Helen Cherullo, her passion is books. Helen’s love is about more than a simple bound text; it’s about imagery and place-based storytelling, and how their subsequent ripple effects move communities to act. Read more…

At The Mountaineers, we believe a diverse and inclusive outdoors inspires unity, respect, and passion for the places we love. We also believe that the outdoors is for everyone. As part of our recurring Impact Giving blog series, this month we’re talking about one of our favorite donor-funded outreach efforts: Mountain Workshops. This program increases outdoor access for youth who may not easily have opportunities to enjoy positive experiences in our wild places.  Read more…

In previous years, it has been our tradition to gather our community each spring to celebrate our achievements and support future efforts to transform lives and protect wild places at our annual fundraising gala. This year, however, was a little different.  Read more…

Six months ago we began this Impact Giving series as a way to feature the many ways philanthropy makes a difference for The Mountaineers. This month, we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of Mountaineers Books and how philanthropy expands the impact one book can have on an individual, a classroom, a community, and the world.  Read more…

In a normal year, The Mountaineers would facilitate a month-long giving campaign in May to foster donations that leverage our mission and boost our programming. In light of COVID-19 and April’s organization-wide virtual Gala campaign, we are adjusting our traditional fundraising efforts and reducing regularly-planned electronic communications. The following is an excerpt of a letter from Tom Vogl mailed to longtime members and donors to provide an update on our organization and demonstrate a need for support. Read more…

We get it. Today your inbox will be flooded with messages from many of Washington’s nonprofits and beyond. Today is an important day because the need for philanthropy in the time of a global pandemic is more epic than ever before.  Read more…

We are halfway through The Mountaineers fiscal year and what a journey these last six months have been. When our Board of Directors approved an operating budget of $9.28M in October to support outdoor programs, places, and books, they never would have guessed that our plans would be disrupted by the catastrophic impacts of a global pandemic. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that relies on a combination of earned revenue and philanthropic support to sustain operations, we’ve been challenged to pivot and re-imagine how The Mountaineers can best serve our community as incoming revenue slows to a trickle. Unrestricted charitable support from individual donors is paramount to our ability to sustain core operations. In this May edition of our monthly Impact Giving blog series, we are shining light on the Peak Society and how these leadership-level donors support our organization in good times and in bad. Read more…

Welcome back to our monthly Impact Giving blog series where we shed light on how charitable donations support mission-enhancing programs of The Mountaineers, such as scholarships and conservation efforts,and the strategies we use to in our fundraising program. We’ve already previewed a few ways donors choose to elevate The Mountaineers with philanthropic support, and this month we’re excited to pull back the curtain on one of the most popular ways that donors and sponsors make a difference in our community: fundraising events! Read more…