BOT Report, October 2023
NOLS Employee Association Board Report – October 2023
NOLS Employee Association Board Members:
Mike Titzer - NEA President, Field Faculty, HQ Employee
Sarah Acuff - Wilderness Medicine Faculty, HQ Employee
Elena Chin - Field Faculty
Ron Rash - Field Faculty, In-Town Staff
Mission: The mission of the NOLS Employee Association is to communicate and advocate employee views and to work within the NOLS community to promote the school's mission and values.
Who We Represent: We represent the interests of current NOLS employees in four categories: Location Staff, HQ Employees, Wilderness Medicine Faculty, and Field Instructors. We represent the interests of employees below the “Community Leadership Group” level. We give voice to employees who are working every day to bag rations, repair gear, enroll students, process payments, and teach around the world in classrooms and the field.
Number of Members: 213
Community Gratitudes
· We have wrapped up another successful summer season. NOLS employees came together around the world as work colleagues, support networks, and most importantly, as lifelong friends, as we worked at NOLS locations, classrooms, headquarters, and the field to facilitate life-changing transformative experiences for students. Seeing old friends and making new ones each year are highlights of the summer for many NOLS employees. We especially appreciate all the NOLS locations for building supportive and inclusive communities that welcome annual seasonal NOLS workers every year. That support shows up in evacuations on courses, care concerning mental health issues, counseling provided as needed, and coming together as a community in times of injury or loss. The supportive (and fun!) communities found in these “NOLS islands” spread across the world are what keep many NOLS employees coming back year after year in the summers.
· We want to thank Rachael Price and Drew Leemon for their many years of service to NOLS as they move on to their next chapters in life. They have shaped NOLS for the better through their tenure, and we appreciate all that they have done for the school. The next generation of NOLS employees are excited to follow the example they have set and take up the mantle to help NOLS grow into the future!
Updates
Finances – At the beginning of FY23, the NEA was running significantly in the red. With a legacy website costing us thousands a year and low advancement numbers, we only had about three years of cash left to fund our organization. We are happy to announce that at the end of FY23, we have successfully plugged our annual cash deficit, and are now comfortably in the black, and growing our assets. We achieved this by converting our legacy website to a new domain (www.nolsemployeeassociation.com), focusing on increasing donations (https://www.nolsemployeeassociation.com/join-us/p/make-a-donation), and creating an endowment by purchasing a fixed-rate CD to spin off enough annual cash to cover our most of our fixed costs.
We have concentrated on increasing our donations to projects around the school to support NOLS employees. Below is a list of projects that we have funded with our Flamingo Fund in FY23:
NOLS PNW - Bouldering Wall
NOLS Alaska – Instructor Memorial Garden, Pool Table
NOLS Teton Valley – Sauna
NOLS Noble – Pizza-Making Party
If you’d like to be a part of funding these projects that directly support NOLS employees, please consider making a donation to the Flamingo Fund today!
Requests and Ideas from Employees
New Employee On-Ramp: NOLS attracts many talented individuals due to its reputation as a leader in the outdoor industry. Fortunately, NOLS no longer needs to rely on former field instructors to fill all the roles at its HQ/locations. However, as we bring in outside expertise, we need to introduce NOLS culture to these new HQ/location employees.
NOLS is an organization that values connections and culture, and newer employees can often feel on the outside of that culture. We would like NOLS to have a more formalized “On-Ramp” program for new HQ and location employees. This On-Ramp program should include a “New Employee NOLS Seminar,” allowing new employees to get into the field to learn NOLS culture, build connections with one another, and feel a part of something larger than themselves, especially in an increasingly digital world.
New wilderness medicine faculty and field instructors already receive a similar introduction to NOLS culture with their respective Instructor Courses. It’s time we introduce NOLS culture to new HQ/location employees as well with a biannual “New Employee Seminar” that will help these employees create connections while teaching them the NOLS culture that makes this organization so special!
Increase Revenue with Targeted Bonuses for Key Staff: We want to see NOLS achieve and exceed its yearly revenue targets by financially incentivizing people to work hard-to-staff, high-demand, and high-margin courses. We see targeted Bold Bonuses for key staff (such as Hiking Course Leaders for Adventure Courses) willing to work high-demand, high-margin courses as a win-win for both employees with opportunities for increased pay and NOLS as an organization with increased revenue.
In the summers, many field instructors would rather work a 4-week hiking course in Alaska or the Winds as opposed to a 2-3 week adventure course in the Northeast or the Winds. Not only do instructors make less money in a 3-week course contract, but working with 14-17 year olds is generally harder work! Understandably, each year, NOLS finds these courses difficult to staff, leading to extremely large waitlists of students who cannot sign up for a course. At one point before this summer, the number of 14-17 year olds on waitlists for NOLS courses rose to over 150, which translates to approximately $1 million of unrealized revenue! We propose paying key staff a Bold Bonus to work high-margin, high-demand courses, which would help NOLS capture this additional revenue.
We do not believe that the small, marginal bonuses that NOLS has offered in the past will incentivize staff to work these shorter adventure courses. Instead, NOLS can offer a Bold Bonus of double contract pay for Hike CLs willing to work these high-demand, high-margin courses. Paying a Hike CL double what they normally make to work these courses would only increase the variable cost of each course by approximately $4k in staff pay (approximate pay of Hike CL for 3 weeks), while NOLS captures an additional $75k in revenue per course (12 students at $6250/student).
NOLS’ contract employees, and particularly Course Leaders, have many work options outside of NOLS in the summer, and we believe that a Bold Bonus program targeted for those willing to work NOLS’ high-demand, high-margin adventure courses will incentivize people to sign up for more of that kind of work, allowing NOLS to capture significantly more revenue. Hopefully we can work together financially, resulting in a win-win for not only NOLS’ bottom line, but for experienced instructors as well!