HIKE for Mental Health Needs Your Talents
HIKE for Mental Health is growing rapidly. We are already 40% ahead of last year’s fundraising total, and it is only April! Every dollar raised means more grants for scientific research to prevent, treat, and cure mental illness. Every dollar raised helps protect and preserve wilderness trails.
As an all-volunteer organization, we are looking for a few more key people to help fuel our continued growth.
If you are passionate about hiking and the outdoors… If you want to help reduce the stigma associated with PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other major mental illnesses… If you want to be part of a small team of dedicated volunteers who are work hard to make a difference but don’t take themselves too seriously… here is your opportunity.
Talents needed
- Mental health news editor(s) for our website – work from your own computer to monitor mental health news and keep us and our followers apprised of the latest learnings and developments. 3-5 volunteers with interest in mental health issues needed for about 1 hour/week each. You can set your own schedule.
- Hiker feature writers – do your have a flair for telling a good story? Help us to highlight our remarkable hikers by writing feature stories about them. The stories will be posted to our website and sent as press releases to their local newspapers (with the hikers’ permission, of course). We will connect you with the hiker(s) so you can get to know them and understand their ‘story’ and reason for including HIKE for Mental Health on their journeys. Excellent writing skills required, with some journalistic background preferred. 1-2 volunteers needed to work from home about an hour per week.
- Corporate fundraiser – Okay, it’s not a fancy as it sounds. We are not looking for big bucks or big sponsors. Our operating expenses amount to about $2,000 a year, which the founders of HIKE for Mental Health pay. As we grow, self-funding the operations is going to get harder and harder. So we are looking for 15-25 businesses willing to donate $100-500 each to underwrite our operating costs. Our corporate fundraiser will work with us to identify potential businesses and then reach out to them via email, mail and/or phone to try to get them on board. Not a high pressure pitch; we want sponsors who genuinely believe in and are engaged with us in our mission. About 2 hrs per month, working from home, should be enough to keep the ball rolling. A solid understanding of and passion for HIKE Mental Health’s mission, a winning attitude and great communication skills needed.
- Hiking guru/editor – Do you love to hike, to write about hiking, and to learn about great hiking trails? To help us get the word out to hikers of all trails, short and long, we need to build up a library of trail- related content on our website. Building original trail content about the AT, PCT, Continental Divide Trail, and other great trails, will help us show up on search engines so we can be found by potential hikers. Photos and videos of hiking are great, too. If you like to hike, research, and write about hiking, we could use your help for about 1-2 hours a month.
- Hike directors – If you love hiking but writing isn’t your thing, maybe you want to plan and direct a hike for us? This year we have day hikes in New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey. We would love to add Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania to the schedule. Or anywhere else, for that matter! You must be knowledgeable about hiking, well organized, and willing to reach out to your network of friends and acquaintances to recruit hikers. We can help with checklists, timelines and materials to help you prepare and carry out the hike. Good physical health, knowledge of outdoor safety, and first aid training/experience required. About 20 hours spread over 3-4 months required.