One Percent For Conservation

Oak

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Big Fin, when are you going to tell us about this?

I help to run an affiliate group of one of the founding organizations and I had to hear about One Percent through a Facebook post. :confused::W:
 
Sorry for not putting it up here sooner. Just been gone too much. So, here goes.

One Percent for Conservation was founded by Jeff Sposito, a manager at Sitka Gear. He realized that in the hunting world we do a good job of generically talking about our conservation work, but we really don't give companies a way to demonstrate their support of conservation groups. From that came his idea of One Percent for Conservation.

It has been two years in the making. Jeff has put together an advisory board, of which I am one of them. He has a formal Board of Directors of which I am not one. He has a great business plan for his idea and it has received a lot of strong support. 1FC has its preliminary 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS and is now open for business.

The model works like this.

Companies agree that they will invest 1% of their annual sales in conservation groups. That can be outright donation to qualified organizations, cost of product and merchandise or services provided to qualified organizations, sponsorship of events hosted by qualified organizations, or direct investments to conservation projects. If a company meets the 1% of sales threshold, they will be provided use of the 1FC logo to use as their way of telling customers that they give back to hunting.

Qualified organizations are hunting-conservation groups who have been approved by the IRS as qualified non-profit organizations engaged in the charitable work of conservation. The two founding conservation groups who have stepped with great support at this time are Wild Sheep Foundation (first on board) and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (second on board).

Right now many companies in the hunting industry are being pitched on the idea. Sitka Gear has stepped up with the first commitment as a founding industry partner.

1FC does not want to touch any of the money these companies donate to conservation. 1FC is merely a sanctioning organization that has processes to verify that the companies using the 1FC brand are in fact invested more than 1% of sales back into the hunting-conservation community.

It has been very interesting to watch Jeff do this and the support he has received at Sitka Gear for his efforts. I am sure the crowd down at Western Cafe on East Main in Bozeman wonders what those four or five guys in the back room have been up to. It has been our unofficial meeting room.

I think Jeff and his Board of Directors will do some great things with this idea. Hunters and most companies we support have been very generous in giving back to our cause. Now, they have a way to show the commitment they have made.

Here is there website - http://www.onepercentforconservation.org/

If you are a Facebook person, please go to their FB page and give them a like. Thanks for bringing this up, Oak. Good news that I should have talked about earlier.

1fc_logo.png
 
Thanks for the explanation, Big Fin. That's a model that can work and has a lot of potential. Kudos to Jeff for taking this project on, and thanks to you and everyone else who have worked to make it a reality.
 
Thanks for the explanation, Big Fin. That's a model that can work and has a lot of potential. Kudos to Jeff for taking this project on, and thanks to you and everyone else who have worked to make it a reality.
Agreed! I think this is great in so many ways. It's a better twist, IMO, on Patagonia's 1% for the planet thing.
 
That's a very cool idea. It would be great to see a bunch of big-name companies get on board. For both the actual conservation that the hunting community is so often a leader in, and also for the PR hunting could use right now.
 
Neat idea Randy. This isn't a Green Decoy is it?:eek:

It will be very interesting to see the companies that show up on the list. I can tell you right now, I'm even happier that I've put my hard earned money into Sitka over the years.
 
Talked to Jeff about this earlier this week... It is going to take off...
Great Work Jeff.
 
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