The dust has begun to settle just a bit here at “Vertical Challenge World Headquarters”, but the aroma of Icy Hot is undoubtedly stiff filling the air of living rooms throughout Colorado…must be time for a re-cap blog post.
As the founder of GOALS, I couldn’t be more proud of the people who made this year’s Vertical Challenge the best one we’ve ever hosted. Okay…it’s only our second one – but that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that was going to be easy to top the success we attained through last year’s first annual event. This unique GOALS fund raiser was designed to raise money for and awareness of the river programs for kids we offer, while also promoting healthy, active outdoor lifestyle choices. Last March, we felt that we had accomplished each of these objectives – the 2011 GOALS Vertical Challenge team raised $19,840 from 279 donors, and the 40 skiers/snowboarders who signed up logged a cumulative total of more than 655,000 vertical feet!
The community of skiers/snowboarders and donors who created this year’s team blew each of those figures away…it wasn’t even close. The 2012 “Get Up and Get Down to Get Kids Out” GOALS Vertical Challenge…
– raised $30,581 for GOALS (54% more than last year) from 401 donors (44% more than 2011).
– put 62 skiers/snowboarders on the mountain (55% more than 2011) who logged 1,092,598 vertical feet!!
I simply can’t offer enough thanks to everyone who made yesterday as successful as it was, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. Special recognition should go out to:
– The GOALS board of directors, who helped to design and market the event.
– Loveland Ski Area, without whom we’d have a tough time logging so many vertical feet. It takes a while to walk up the hill, after all.
– Tommyknocker Brewery, whose “Team Tommyknocker” did amazing things to raise both money and awareness.
– Rab outerwear, who kept the staff and volunteers warm and looking fancy in their incredible jackets.
– Mountain Gazette and Elevation Outdoors – for advertising the event throughout the inter-mountain west.
– Icelantic Skis and Never Summer Snowboards – both of whom provided prizes for top-tier fund raisers.
– Sheri Griffith Expeditions – for providing two of our top fund raisers each with a complementary Westwater Canyon trip.
Most of all, my hat goes off to the dedicated community of fund raisers who worked so hard to obtain pledges from their friends and family in support of the GOALS mission to “inspire exploration in youth through multi-day wilderness river programs.” Without their efforts, this event is just another good idea. In the end, it’s the individual contributions of many donors standing behind one team member…who is then standing among many other team members – that makes this an amazing community-oriented success. While it goes without saying that every team member’s contributions are valuable and more appreciated than they’ll ever know, these individuals also deserve special recognition:
– Kristin Hochmuth – for single-handedly raising $4,540 (15% of the event’s total fund raising!) and Zach Bass, whose fund raising total was just under $3,000.
– Jim & Jo Pustizzi (who recruited donations from 51 people) and Marty Saylor (who recruited from 32). The 83 donations that these folks obtained accounted for over 20% of the total donors who contributed.
– Kerry Athey – a former student and GOALS participant who recruited a team of 6 friends that together raised over $2000 for GOALS.
– The 11 people who made up the “$1000+ club” and 11 others who made up the “$500+ club” for their unbelievable fund raising success.
Finally, let’s also give three cheers to those who demonstrated incredible effort on the day of the event, including:
– Dale Drake – whose top-of-the-charts vertical feet skied total was 37,701 ft!
– 16 different skiers who each covered more than 40 linear miles throughout the day!
– Kyle Knaeble, whose top speed was 56.0 mph.
– All skiers and snowboarders, for covering over 1 million vertical feet without a single injury!!
I’m humbled by everyone’s contributions to the event and to the organization as a whole. It’s no easy task to run a business that doesn’t sell a product. The GOALS factory, however, is working overtime following yesterday’s success. The invaluable products we create, in the form of confident kids who appreciate time spent exploring the wonders that exist in the natural world around them, will be rolling off the assembly line in greater numbers as we move forward thanks to the “sales reps” and “marketing department” that put together a strong quarterly report which ended at Loveland Ski Area on Saturday, March 10th, 2012. If you had anything to do with this success, I’ll never be able to adequately express how thankful I am to you.
I won’t really need to in the end, though. The kids for whom you’re making a GOALS program possible will take care of that.
Check back right here in a few months for those thank-you’s, and cross every Saturday in March off of your availability calendar NOW for 2013. Somehow, we’re going to make the 3rd annual GOALS Vertical Challenge the best one – ever.
To view photos from the event, please click here.
The GOALS Blog 