Since 2017, nearly 800 organizations have benefited from the partnership of matching skilled volunteers with environmental nonprofit organizations.
When we launched the Patagonia Action Works platform in early 2018, things looked bleak.
“If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that things aren’t going very well for the planet,” Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard says in the video accompanying the launch. “It’s easy to get depressed about it. I’ve always known that the cure for depression is action.”
Launching Patagonia Action Works in 2017 was our way of helping connect our passionate (and multi-talented) community with grassroots organizations working to save our home planet. Partnering with Catchafire, who specializes in matching skilled volunteers with nonprofits, allowed us to activate volunteers and the organizations we support at scale.
We are grateful to announce that partnership just surpassed a milestone: Over the course of our nine-year partnership, more than 6,000 volunteers connected with more than 770 groups to provide $20 million (and counting) worth of professional services and support to grassroots environmental organizations. That’s $20 million worth of projects like translation, graphic design, marketing, strategic planning, video editing, finance projects and everything in between.
"Hitting $20 million in impact with Patagonia Action Works is a meaningful moment — not because of the number itself, but because of what it represents," said Alexa Rivadeneria, chief partnerships officer at Catchafire. "When nonprofit capacity is treated as essential infrastructure, not a 'nice to have,' the work becomes more sustainable — for organizations and for the planet."
The grassroots organizations with whom volunteers are connected often operate with big ideas, but they’re also staffed by small teams and have limited resources. And if we thought things were bad in 2017-18, nothing could have prepared us for what we’re seeing now. The groups Action Works and Catchafire support are on the front lines working to ensure all of us have clean air and water and are working to protect the planet from reckless extraction and pollution. For organizations like Minnesota’s Clean River Partners, the support has been invaluable.
“One of the things I most value about Catchafire is that often in the non-profit world you go seeking help and you instead get advice,” said executive director Jennifer Tonko. "Catchafire doesn't do that. They actually help while building our skills at the same time.”
It’s clear that environmental public policy is under threat. In recent weeks, we’ve seen attempts to roll back the mining ban in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the restart of a pipeline off California’s coast that was responsible for spilling more than 400,000 gallons of oil in 2015. Connecting skilled volunteers with environmental groups doing the work to save the planet is as urgent as it’s ever been.
“Skilled volunteering is one of the best ways we know how to help our nonprofit partners save money so their budgets can go directly to the work protecting our home planet,” said Corley Kenna, Patagonia’s chief impact and communications officer. “We are so thankful to our community for donating their talents, skills and time to organizations around the world working on solving the climate and ecological crisis."
We’re grateful for our partnership with Catchafire these past nine years. We still have so much work to do, and the stakes couldn’t be higher, but we couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
To get involved and to volunteer with a grassroots environmental organization near you, visit patagonia.com/actionworks.
Originally published by Patagonia on LinkedIn