We're excited to share our 2019-2020 Annual Report with our supporters.
2019-2020 Annual Report Letter from the Executive Director
At our youth Wild Skills Day Camps for girls we teach the basics for outdoor adventuring. This includes first aid, navigation, Leave No Trace, the 10 Essentials, and shelter building. It’s about preventing accidents but also being ready for them, so we like to make it as realistic as possible so everyone can learn to work with only what they have. Our shelter building kits at these camps are filled with things like forks, trash bags, a short rope, and perhaps a few swatches of duct tape. We encourage our participants to use all of these tools to build a shelter that will protect them in case of emergency. Learning to adapt to any situation at a young age is a critical tenet of our experiential learning and leadership development programs.
Like the rest of the world, in March 2020 we found ourselves in the equivalent situation of needing to build a shelter out of a few forks and duct tape. We were willing to do whatever we could to survive, using all of the tools at our disposal. More than survival, our focus and motivation became rooted in something more tactical than day-to-day operations. We found ourselves facing an opportunity to hit ‘pause’ on our programs, take a moment to breathe, and ask ourselves: from this destroyed canvas, what new vision can we paint?
When we made the decision to cease all in-person events on March 15, 2020, we knew it would be a big hit to our budget. SheJumps receives more than 60% of all income from program service fees and fundraising events, and we lost more than $100,000 in revenue from March to June. Even so, we are committed to continuing to to increase accessibility to our curriculum with free online events and expand scholarship programs.
This annual report illustrates our dynamic 2019-2020 fiscal year. As they say, “necessity is the mother of invention” and we’re proud of the new innovations introduced in the last few months of our 2019-2020 fiscal year, including Micro Ventures. The ‘work with what you’ve got’ mentality we teach in our programs has proven to be the key to survival, and we intend to carry these learnings into 2021 and beyond.
Like any great adventure, the trail we are on has its peaks and valleys. We’re grateful for our volunteers and donors who have helped us grow exponentially, specifically from 2016 to today. This report is a major chapter in how we can use obstacles to grow as an organization, as a team, and as humans. After all: We Dream. We Jump. We Grow.
Sincerely,
Claire Smallwood
*We run our fiscal year from July 1-June 30 because when we set this nonprofit up so many years ago, we couldn’t imagine wanting to deal with ‘year-end reports’ and taxes in the middle of ski season. Seeing as we (Vanessa, Lynsey, and myself) all are self-identified skiers—Lynsey being an actual professional (!), we thought it made sense. So - keep that in mind when you read the report.
Key 2019-2020 accomplishments
First Wild Skill Mountain Rescue camp at Crystal Mountain
First Women’s Surf Camp in Alaska
First Women’s MTB clinic in Alaska
First evo x SheJumps film festival
First Junior Ski Patrol events in Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, and New Mexico in addition to events in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, and Oregon.
2nd Annual Wild Skills Mountain Camp at Mount Rainier National Park teaching STEM curriculum & mountaineering
Launched our Alpine Development School in Canada and Washington with Arc’teryx
First Avalanche Companion Rescue clinics with the Gallatin National Forest Service in Montana
Continued expansion of avalanche education in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming through the Snowpack Scholarship with 35% of scholarship recipients identifying as women of color
Launched our first Ikon Pass Scholarship providing 8 Women of Color with Ikon Passes
We hosted our 5th annual outreach skiing event for Boys & Girls clubs of Anchorage using the Wild Skills curriculum
8th annual Get the Girls Out! event at Berkshire East in Massachusetts (biggest turnout yet!)
7th annual Get the Girls Out! event at Massanutten in Virginia — largest ever SheJumps ski/snowboard event in the Southeast
SheJumps joined 1% for the planet, a global movement inspiring businesses and individuals to support environmental solutions through memberships and everyday actions.
Launch of our new online curriculum series Micro Ventures: free outdoor-related activities for any age, ability, and geographic location