I’m excited and honored to announce that the Outdoor Foundation has chosen our inaugural Thrive Outside Communities:
Atlanta, Georgia
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
San Diego, California
The Thrive Outside Community Initiative will award multi-year capacity-building grants to diverse communities in order to create or strengthen partnerships between existing local organizations such as schools, Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs and nonprofit conservation and outdoor organizations that create experiences of fun, joy and learning in the outdoors for kids and families of all backgrounds.
The core goal of the Thrive Outside Community investments is to fuel an outdoor movement by increasing the diversity of who is getting outside and creating healthy individuals, communities and economies through repeat and reinforcing outdoor experiences.
We didn’t become an indoor species overnight, and the decline of outdoor activity in the United States is a problem that requires collaboration, funding and scale. With these first grants, we are fueling an outdoor movement by supporting community and national partners collaborating to get everyone outside.
Over the next decade, the Outdoor Foundation will connect and engage a diverse constituency of participants, advocates and volunteers in at least 32 cities, with the goal of getting 3 million people outside.
The Outdoor Foundation’s Thrive Outside Communities would not be possible without the extremely generous support of The VF Foundation, REI, Patagonia, Thule and Wolverine World Wide, Inc.
If you are interested in helping the Thrive Outside Community Initiative grow, please reach out to me or my colleague Michaela Gold (mgold@outdoorfoundation.org).
Stay tuned for more updates on the growth and success of the inaugural Thrive Outside Communities.
