2020 Year In Review
This will certainly be repeated ad infinitum, but what a year 2020 has been! While a full accounting of what 2% and our members have done this year for conservation is too expansive to fit in an annual report, we’ve done our best to give you the highlights and just the highlights.
Every year, we release our “Year In Review” in two formats: Written and video.
We know not everyone wants to sit down and read a report and some folks only want to do that.
Here, you can find both.
Video Version
Written Version
BOARD ADDITIONS
Drew YoungeDyke - Communications: National Wildlife Federation’s “Manager of Sporting Communications”.
Dan Johnson - Communications/Small Business Owner: Founder of the 2% Certified Sportsmen’s Empire Outdoor Network
Connected 2% with Marcus Ewing of 2% Certified lifestyle clothing brand, The Average Conservationist. The podcast launched mid-summer of this year and is an outlet for positive and extraordinary conservation stories shared by ordinary people. New episodes land every Thursday.
Erin Wheat - Small Business Owner: Owner of Erin Wheat Co., a weddings and elopements photography business near Grand Teton National Park. Provides a unique perspective as the owner of a small non-outdoor-industry business.
Samantha (Sam) Dwinnell - Wildlife biologist and researcher based out of Wyoming, but moving to Norway’s island community of Svalbard at the end of December. Provides access for 2% Members to the larger wildlife academic/professionals community.
The entire 2% for Conservation board is viewable on the Team page.
NEW 2% WEBSITE
We rebuilt the 2% Website during shutdown to help present and prospective members in several ways - including localized and global search optimization around their certification. We wanted a site that would be mobile friendly in any country and that would translate well into any language - without burdening our small team with extensive proof reading or translation updating.
Since launch, our international traffic has gone up by over 400% and page visit length/click-through rate for business members have both increased dramatically, increasing value for our members.
ACTIONS TAKEN DUE TO COVID
#HelpTheEvents
In early February, we were notified that the Wild Sheep Society of BC might be cancelling their annual fundraiser. This was surely a sign of what was yet to come.
Immediately, we started developing programmatic solutions to empower our membership base to support their favorite conservation groups through what we began to internally call the “eventpocolypse”. We scheduled appearances on all 2% Certified podcasts (and a few that weren’t) to get the word out for supporting groups with cancelled fundraisers.
We are proud to say that, to the member, not a single 2% Business demanded refunds back from conservation groups that had to cancel or postpone.
Some went above and beyond in helping those organizations most affected, donating cash and product for covering costs and moving events/fundraising efforts online. The payroll for several career conservation professionals were covered by this generosity. We also know of at least two conservation groups that were able to avoid bankruptcy thanks to the generosity of 2% Members.
While we have the exact value of those donations recorded, it is not for us to share and we look forward to our many conservation partners sharing these stats with the public in the coming year. 2% Businesses and individuals stepped up mightily and deserve that recognition, when groups are ready to share.
Postponed Dues Payments until Q4
In the interest of helping our membership weather the economic turmoil this year brought, we elected to hold off on invoicing our business members until the end of the year so that they could focus on helping their businesses adapt and stabilize to the “COVID Economy”. We always endeavor to make giving back to conservation as painless as possible and this was a good-faith action taken to demonstrate that to our membership.
We made a few certification exceptions
Several 2% Brands made the difficult but understandable decision to pivot significant portions of their giving to humanities/community causes. Two long-time conservation supporting business members moved nearly their entire charitable giving to help at-risk and hurting members of their local communities this year. Because the pivots in giving were temporary (they’re re-adjusting for 2021 to once again meet our 1% gross sales requirement) and provided vital aid, we elected to make a 1-year exception for these two businesses in allowing them to retain their 2% Certification. To be clear, our focus and mission rest in wildlife conservation - not humanitarian work like converting part of your production to PPE and feeding children and families during shutdown - but we’re not going to remove long-standing conservation partners from our membership for responding quickly to the needs of their communities in a year like this.
COMMUNITY CONSERVATION DAY
When we heard from the local health department that we might need to cancel our annual event, the Bozeman Conservation Convention, we knew we had to keep and double down on the final day’s activities: the Community Conservation Day. On August 22nd, across the US and Canada, 2% Members partnered with local conservation projects to get habitat work done and dollars raised. During a challenging August, seeing fellow 2%’ers give back to wildlife was a huge morale booster across our membership!
CONSERVATION MEDIA AWARDS
It was our third year putting on our Conservation Media Awards, sponsored by 2% Founding Partner Sitka Gear. This year, we split the award into 3 categories: Film/Photo, Written/Audio, and Student. Because of the shutdown, we held off on awarding any entries in the student category but received dozens of incredible entries showcasing the passionate creative work by talented conservation storytellers. Winning and runner-up entries can all be viewed on the “Media Award” page.
We will be opening up entries for 2021 nominations in January.
MEMBERSHIP UPDATE
Despite the pandemic, this was our highest year of business membership growth yet!
Even with nearly a dozen businesses leaving our membership due to closing their doors, sale, or completely pivoting their giving to humanities, our business membership grew by >85% this year… and that’s not counting a few dozen businesses with applications in-play that we anticipate getting through within the next month.
Connecting businesses to causes to support is one of our great privileges.
Growth outside the hunting/angling community was also at its highest, thanks in part to individual members with non-industry jobs taking their personal commitment and elevating it to one for their businesses - members like Mike Schmillen of River City Stone & Tile in Minnesota, Justin Wise of RPS Bancard in Oregon, and Sarah Day of Sarah Day Real Estate -- longtime supporters of conservation who have now made the commitment for their businesses.
We also gained 5 new international business members: 3 in Canada, 1 in Scotland and 1 in Australia — with a few more that will be announced in the coming month as well.
NEW MEMBERSHIP INCENTIVES
We launched a few business member incentive programs this year for repping certification and referring other companies to take on the 2% Standard. Essentially, for every qualifying use of the 2% Certified Logo, a business can take 2% off their already very affordable annual dues. In addition, if a business member refers a new business, the dues value of that new business is deducted from the referring business’ annual dues. As with all things 2% does, we made these programs public and they can be viewed in detail on the “Business Certification” page.
Keeping membership in reach for everyone, everywhere
For our international members, we elected to take a friendly flat-rate dues approach. Instead of paying their dues at the present exchange rate of their country’s currency vs. the USD, they may elect to pay the listed amount in their national currency with no exchange rate taken into account. This is against the norm for international membership/partnerships for businesses paying US-based organizations. But, with only a few small countries in the world possessing a stronger currency than the USD, this decision came easily.For our present international members, this saw an annual membership savings of between $50-$300 in their home country’s currency.
The 2% Standard is meant to be attainable for anyone, anywhere, and at any time - no matter how strong your nation’s currency is vs. the USD.
CONSERVATION TRIAGE
At the risk of sounding premonitory, we announced in last year’s EOY report that we were moving the bulk of our 2020 travel budget to an emergency “Conservation Triage” awareness campaign fund.
We blew through that fund in January, thanks to the Australian wildfire wildlife crisis and an emergency caribou birthing pen project in British Columbia. We’re proud to say that the caribou project was funded and largely by 2% Members!
While we had no idea that the rest of the year would see our inboxes flooding with similar emergency conservation funding needs, we could not be prouder of how our members stepped up. Another recent project that hit it’s very-tight-turnaround funding goal within one week is a pronghorn migration project with MT Fish Wildlife and Parks - 2%’ers dedicated over 1,500 volunteer hours and nearly $10k in less than a week!
This kind of conservation funding triage isn’t what we are built for, but we’re proud to do our part to help our members see vital conservation work completed.
NEEDS IN THE COMING YEAR
Growth and rampant altruism come at a cost.
While we were effective under the reactionary conditions this year brought us, our mission will be best accomplished with our team being able to help our members go on the offensive for conservation. Instead of scrambling to meet desperate needs in the present, we want an army of dedicated conservationists looking to and addressing the conservation needs of the future. This requires a full and dedicated team of conservation and business professionals on the 2% payroll.
We have that team (with qualified additions waiting in the wing), but at present, we do not have the funding to bring them on to their full capacity.
Our Exec. Dir. earns below median wage for an Exec. Dir. in Montana, but more importantly, we can only afford to keep our Member Coordinator at a very light part-time role.
Quality of life and liveable wage considerations aside, the workload to manage 2% at the level we presently are (much less, are growing towards) is not sustainable at our present funding. We easily have the workload for 3 full-time team members, but the funding for <1, if we are to give our team members a liveable wage. This isn’t sustainable.
That said, we are sticking to our commitment to not compete with other conservation groups for funding.
Instead, we are offering our internal referral program perks to the public, starting December 1st.
Those details will be up on the 2% Website and announced on that day, but here is the gist: If you refer a business to get 2% Certified, a portion of their dues go towards a conservation organization membership that you may either keep for yourself or gift to someone else. You’ll also get a credit to spend with a 2% Certified brand, or re-gift for someone else or a conservation cause of your choosing. Again, full details for that program will be available on December 1st.
TWO NEW PROGRAMS IN 2021
We’ll be releasing details of these two programs in January, but both are built to add value for our business members who really want to make their conservation dollars go further in the public marketplace and for tangible progress for the future. It is easy to get bogged down by a world that monetizes distraction and social angst - these two programs aim to lift our membership even further above that.
The first is called “2% PLUS”
Businesses that give above and beyond our baseline requirement of giving 1% of gross sales and 1% of one employee’s time to conservation will earn this extra badge of honor - at no extra charge. Different logo. Extra member perks on the 2% website and in our marketing. This program launches January 1st, with several 2% Businesses automatically getting rolled over to this prestigious certification. Details on the extra requirements for this certification will be released at launch.
The second, we are holding a little tighter to chest while we iron out the kinks, but will be launched in late fall for select business members.
Thank you for all your support for fish and wildlife conservation, despite what this year brought, and we look forward to what 2%’ers accomplish in the coming year!