MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES IN FISCAL YEAR 2013, NOLS BROUGHT IN
record revenues and awarded record scholarship support. We led Expedition Denali, the first predominantly African American attempt on North America’s highest peak. NOLS completed, opened, and paid for the Wyss Wilderness Medicine Campus. We had no fatalities and good field management of incidents and injuries. NOLS had record enrollment in fiscal year 2013, educating 19,264 students. We completed, within a few percentage points, our current strategic plan, laying a solid foundation for the current strategic planning process. I could go on. NOLS had a remarkable year. But it is at our organizational peril that we forget the incremental actions and decisions that transform the messy fodder of daily work and decision-making into 365 days that earn the label “remarkable” or “exceptional.” Every day, staff and faculty at all levels can choose to act in the smart, intentional, and ethical ways that build on earlier intentions, that take advantage of new opportunities, that transform good to great and great to remarkable. So even as we appropriately celebrate our success, we must remember that we only sustain this success through constant vigilance. Especially in our particular line of work, it’s absolutely crucial that we never assume that the diligence, care, vision, effort, and pure grit that got us to this point can be maintained with anything other than continued diligence, care, vision, effort, and pure grit. The challenge we face as NOLS becomes more mature and more solidly successful is that we have to stay hungry, we have to stay scrappy. NOLS comes from scrappy roots, but we’ve also
grown up. In just a couple of years we’ll be celebrating our 50th anniversary. We have made it into this fifth decade by consistent, hard, hungry, stubborn work. We have made it because we believe in the work we are doing and we have translated that belief into action. We have made it because even as the broader culture has hewed a path toward increased screen time, less physical activity, and greater urbanization, NOLS has had the gumption to carve a different path and demonstrate the value of time spent traveling in wild places. We have made it because we have been gritty. In the work that we do, however, grittiness must never become conflated with simple toughness. Our work is characterized by the sacred weight of responsibility granted to us when parents put their children into our care. Every single one of the individual students we teach is a son or daughter, a friend, a beloved, the hope, the future of a family, a community, a generation. Every student group grows from the most fragile web of new and tenuous relationships into a unique set of experiences shaped ever so carefully by our skilled instructors and the wilderness classrooms in which we operate. Looking ahead, our challenge is to keep alive the amazing blend of grit and love and craftsmanship that is our signature, even as we continue to grow up, expand our reach, hone our operations, and have remarkable years.
CONTENTS: Expedition Denali . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Team inspires diversity in the outdoors
The NOLS Report Card . . . . . . . . . .7 Student course quality survey is a powerful tool
NOLS, Archer Partner . . . . . . . . . .9 The two schools develop resilient female leaders
Gateway Partners . . . . . . . . . . . 11 NOLS is relevent to everyone and accessible
GIVING Annual fund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Planned giving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Campaign NOLS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
HIGHLIGHTS Risk Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 WMI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Financial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
NOLS SUPPORTERS . . . . . . . . . 25
Kate Gunness Williams Chair of the Board of Trustees
2013 STATE OF THE SCHOOL REPORT
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