From Orvis:
Orvis has awarded cash grants—to match its customers’ contributions up to equal amounts—to the following organizations:
- Trout Unlimited, to continue its multi-year collaboration on the Orvis/Trout Unlimited 1,000 Miles Campaign, which will reconnect 1,000 miles of stream passage for fish in watersheds throughout the United States over ten years. This project will open up waterways through the repair, modification and/or removal of culverts and other obstructions. With an Orvis matching grant up to $90,000, the campaign plans to raise $180,000 or more in 2014.
- The Petfinder Foundation, for its programs benefitting shelters and providing homes for rescued dogs across America. Another repeat, this program, whose goal is to ensure that no adoptable pet is euthanized for lack of a loving home, is so popular with Orvis customers that it more than doubled its goal in both 2012 and 2013. Orvis will match customers’ contributions to Petfinder Foundation up to $30,000 in 2014.
- The Chesapeake Bay Foundation campaign will benefit the Oyster Restoration Program, the goal of which is the restoration of native oyster reefs in Maryland and Virginia, and the subsequent improvement of water quality and fishing habitat in Chesapeake Bay. Orvis’ $30,000 matching grant aims to raise a total of $60,000 for this program in 2014.
- Rare, for its Fish Forever program in Belize. Fish Forever empowers local Belizean communities to sustainably manage their fisheries, thereby increasing food security, conserving important marine habitats and species, safeguarding local jobs and creating coastal climate resilience. The $30,000 grant from Orvis will match customer contributions up to the same amount, for a total of $60,000 support for this program.
- In the UK, we have made a non-matching grant to the Salmon & Trout Association to conduct essential water-quality research on the River Itchen, which will influence the preservation of Britain’s fabled chalk streams for generations to come.
Details of this and past year’s Orvis Customer Matching Grant projects can be seen at www.orvis.com/commitment. Throughout 2014, Orvis will feature each of the four grant programs in its catalogs, website, and retail stores, as well as in other print and online promotions, social media and its conservation blog. The in-kind value of this exposure exceeds $600,000 on top of the cash grants awarded. These promotional efforts, coupled with the matching funds from Orvis, provide a remarkable opportunity for customers, partner organization members and the general public to amplify their contribution to the protection of nature through these programs.
The customer matching grants are not all we will do this year. In all, Orvis will raise and contribute more than $1 million to conservation, community and canine initiatives in 2014. Over the past 20 years, Orvis has generated in excess of $15 million for a wide variety of conservation programs.
