$5,000 Donor
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Donors at this level are eligible for:
• Social media thank you package
• Diversity/equity/inclusivity (DEI) resource package
• 30 minute virtual consultation w/ Parker & Crystal
​
​Earlier this week we received our first multi-thousand dollar donation! However, it wasn't just the donation itself that impressed us, it's HOW they went about their donation and what Fat Tire did to take it to the next level that really got our attention. Since co-founder Crystal is an expert in Inclusive Marketing strategies, we'll let her tell you all about it.
Last week I was updating our website and working on launching our sticker sales when my husband came into the room with a sense of urgency. "Did you see your gofundme page...?" No, I hadn't checked in a few hours. "Someone gave you $5,000." Nope, that probably wasn't a thing. I checked. 

I'd figured that anyone donating hard cash like that would call us in advance, at the very least to clarify the terms of the donation packages we were offering. 
I checked our email. ​​Nothing in our inbox. I checked to see if I'd missed a call. I hadn't. Who donates 5 grand and doesn't call first??
​Fat Tire does, apparently. 

I sent Fat Tire a message via the gofundme app, thanking them and asking if there was anyone I could reach out to about the donation. Finally, an email hit our inbox, and I was expecting just about anything other than what I read. The email outlined a robust marketing strategy for a film they'd created as part of the Fat Tire film series "Headwinds", which is not even remotely about us, but is being promoted by Outside Magazine. They sent us an advance copy of it, and I was astonished to see that the call to action at the end of this beautiful film about two Black men from Ouray was to support... Inclusive Journeys. 
It's one thing for a beer company to make a film about the contemporary experiences of two Black men in rural Colorado. It's another thing to show beauty shots of Black men immersed in nature, allow them space to acknowledge that they don't speak for the entirety of the Black diaspora, and use Fat Tire's established platform and brand recognition to amplify Black voices and stories. It's a whole other level to make an extremely large donation in their name to a Black-female owned tech startup with a mission to help people like the subjects of the film identify safe spaces to travel and do business, do the work to draft a marketing strategy that includes a donation call to action, send us the draft and ask
if it's okay to promote our work. We didn't have to do anything, except say yes. It was also made clear that if we wanted to say no or make changes to the copy we could, without strings attached to the donation, because they had already given us the money. They did all the work for us, offered a huge shoutout, didn't ask us for a public thank-you, didn't ask us to repost their content, and didn't ask us for literally anything. 

Giving and amplifying without expectation of return is the ultimate form of corporate/organizational allyship. (Also: hiring more BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and people with disabilities in leadership and decision making roles!)
Fat Tire clearly did their homework on this one. Not only did they do a great job with the video and the call to action, they also have an amazing person working in their philanthropy section. Meghan Oleson hopped on a Zoom call with Parker and I, and at the 59 minute mark she broached a subject she admitted having some anxiety around. Meghan wanted to offer us some free beer and merch, but she also wanted to acknowledge that offering merch instead of payment for the time and energy of Black folx was inappropriate. I reminded her that we were an hour into our conversation and she still hadn't actually asked us for anything. We'd ask for the zoom call, we'd asked her 35 minutes of questions about personal and organizational values, we'd asked her to send us social content to repost. That was on us and it's something we want to do anyway. If they had once asked us for anything at all, even for the time we took to do the Zoom meeting, it would have been inappropriate, but they didn't.
They did all the work, they did it with careful thought and intent, and it was so, so, so helpful to us.

Fat Tire-- We will ABSOLUTELY take you up on your offer of free beer and merch. 
Thank you.
Watch the full video:
Darius Garvin has spent the better part of the last decade living in communities reliant on an outdoor recreation economy, from the Poconos in Pennsylvania, to the dramatic landscapes of Yellowstone. More recently, his cousin Kamron Odwin has joined Darius in pursuit of the outdoor opportunity provided by these communities. Darius and Kamron now call Ouray County home. With careers in the service industry, living and working within the homogeneity of a mountain community through a pandemic and a racial injustice movement fueled by ongoing tragedy for people of color, Darius and Kamron have firsthand perspectives on both.