2023 Annual Address

I’m going to be honest with you, I decided to write this paragraph last. There has just so much that has happened in this last year that I struggled to put my thoughts to words. But I did it. Six whole pages of facts, financials, and feelings, to the point that I’m figuratively blue in the face. Get Outside Alliance has rapidly become a “real” thing. It feels less and less like a small project to work on over the weekends. It feels like a rapidly growing machine, with an insatiable desire to make a bigger impact in supporting our state parks. What I hope you find over the next several pages are that I have articulated this feeling in ways that are tangible. I hope y’all feel the same excitement I feel in seeing this project grow legs. Most of all, I hope it makes you want to come join us at a Texas State Park.

By The Numbers

In 2023, our organization had the privilege of bringing 358 volunteers from around Texas to support our State Parks. With a career in finance, I’d be remised not to point out that we have over doubled our engagement of 122 volunteers from the year before. 2023 saw a total of 15 volunteer events from Estero Llano Grande State Park in The Valley to Daingerfield State Park in the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas, increasing our impact to a total of 14% of all Texas State Parks. While we only slightly grew our total events, the total engagement and impact, by volunteer hours logged, increased to 2,413 hours from just 772 hours the year before. According to agency estimates, our volunteers have contributed over $100,000 in economic impact to the state since we began this endeavor.

While there is no denying that this would be possible with our small team of dedicated individuals, this scale of impact would simply not be possible without the partnership, or alliance, with other like-minded organizations from around the state.

This year we saw our first dedicated event to a Texas high school. Stafford High School had 20 National Honor Society students make their way to Brazos Bend State Park for a day of education and volunteering. It was not only an incredible opportunity to get the next generation of stewards out to our parks, but this event paved the way for future school partnerships around the state.

We also had the great privilege of partnering with H-E-B, a major sponsor of this year’s Centennial, by organizing two separate events at Huntsville State Park. This alone brought over 100 volunteers in a dedicated event to restore a historic lodge at the park that was used by the Civilian Conservation Corp while they built what we know as Huntsville State Park today.

As this organization has grown in its ability to engage Texans in their state parks, so too has the financial need to supply these volunteers with fresh meals, beverages to stay hydrated, and gear to remove barriers to enjoy the outdoors. Thankfully, we’ve seen a massive increase in support to accomplish these goals.

Over 2023, we found ourselves receiving almost $40,000 in donations of funds and gear from major sponsors. Without a doubt, a major development has been with our partnership with H-E-B, who have helped provide the funds to acquire food and gear for our events. Additionally, REI has stepped in to provide us with gear to make our campouts in between more accessible and comfortable for everyone.

This type of support was somewhere in our 5–7-year projections, when we started this organization. In no way did we anticipate this level of engagement and support from major contributors. It has truly been a complete honor to witness the level of enthusiasm from individuals around the state who have come together to help us make the impact that this year has seen.

Moving Forward

I remember just one year ago, trying to write this section, and I struggled. I knew that we wanted to grow as an organization and had plenty of abstract ideas to pursue. Clearly articulately what was to come next was difficult. This year that is simply not the case.

Broadly speaking, we’ve just seen the passing of Proposition 14, creating a Centennial Parks Conservation Fund. With overwhelming support from voters, the state is now putting aside $1 billion for the development and improvement of new and existing state parks across Texas. What we haven’t seen is legislative action to meaningfully increase the competitiveness of agency salaries. Put differently, there will be a need for more hands to complete more projects to support more parks.

We’ve already begun setting up our 2024 event calendar with parks across Texas. As a team, we have also decided to focus this next year on supporting more Houston-area state parks. This will allow us time to absorb some of the new resources available to us, grow our brand in a major market, and organize the structure for further growth across Texas soon. We expect another 16 volunteer projects throughout the year but hope to see even more.

A core belief of ours has always been that volunteering your time at a state park creates a deeper, lasting memory and attachment to that park than a simple photograph. Because of this, we have always tried to enable our volunteers to camp out and enjoy the parks that they volunteer at. This has always had the limiting factor of assuming those volunteers had camping gear of their own. I’m happy to report that thanks to the assistance of H-E-B and REI, we’ve been able to acquire our own supply of tents, tables, chairs and sleeping bags.

Another core belief of ours has been that we want to avoid being a burden on the park staff while we volunteer. What this specifically relates to is that our rangers have so many tasks to worry about each day, and many of those require tools or resources that we sometimes need for our volunteers. While I have never met a ranger willing to admit that it has long been a concern of my own. To this extent, we’ll be purchasing a list of equipment from gloves, drills, augers, and spray guns, in an effort to depend less on the resources of the agency that we’re trying to support.

Our Goals

As mentioned before, our biggest goal is to ensure that we have at least another 16 volunteer projects throughout 2024. While our long-term goal is to see an event every weekend of the year somewhere in Texas, we want to ensure consistency and measured growth in these early years. With that said, we aim to double our volunteer engagement with those 16 events throughout the year. To achieve this growth, we’ll be looking to organize larger groups for each event that we host. Thanks to the financial support we’ve received over the year, we will have the ability to support a much higher turnout in the way of food, gear, and other supplies.

Additionally, we’re going to be focusing on a greater outreach to companies like H-E-B, REI, and Academy, among many others. It’s impossible to deny the impact of having dozens, if not hundreds, of volunteers that already know and work with each other come out to a park to help. We would like to see at least two business partnerships throughout the year, in addition to our 16 regular projects.

We will also be seeking more partnerships with high schools and universities across Texas. This year we hosted our first student event for Stafford High School in the Houston area, and it was a major success. While this wasn’t an original focus for us, we simply cannot deny the enthusiasm from both students and their parents to get outside. Since this group has many more considerations, as well as opportunities to engage in our parks from outside of those parks, we’ll be organizing a committee of teachers and parents to handle the rollout of future events.

The elephant in the room for us has been the difficulty in finding leaders for our volunteer groups, besides the original group all based out of Houston. This has greatly limited our ability to do more. At this time last year, I even included a section that mentioned how we wanted to have 2 group leaders based out of each major metropolitan area by April of 2023. To put it bluntly, that was a failure. However, this year did give us time to reflect, and realize that perhaps the opportunity isn’t to just find leaders but build them up.

I’m hesitant to put too much into writing today because I honestly don’t know what our next steps will look like. What I do know is that the goal is to have a complete structure to recognize, support and reward future leaders for GOA groups. It is my own personal goal to have a pilot program launched by the summer, in time for our fall volunteer schedule. Stay tuned for more.

Closing Thoughts

This last year has been just so transformative for this organization. What felt like a small idea gaining momentum a year ago feels like a real, meaningful entity to support our parks. As we sat around just two years ago, voting on potential organization names, working on something called by-laws, and figuring out tax filings, we also laid out a year-by-year blueprint for what we wished to accomplish. Corporate partnerships? Significant financial donations? Having a whole trailer filled with equipment and supplies? This was all in the 5+ year bucket. But here we are.

I am grateful. The complexity and time commitment for what we do seems to grow each month, but so too does the impact and the enthusiasm. Beyond any numbers I could provide you with, I’m perhaps proudest of the fact that I’ve seen strangers become friends both in and outside of our volunteering. I’ve watched individuals volunteer and then come back again with their whole families because they had so much fun. I have watched children arrive quiet and unsure, only to open up and be excited at the opportunity to work with others on a messy project outdoors. I am grateful.

Happy New Year to all our volunteers, state park staff, donors and supporters, friends, and family. Thank you all for what you do for us, for our parks, and for each other.

Sincerely,

Spencer Frith

President, Get Outside Alliance