Sample Donation Request Letter printable pdf download

Sample Donation Request Letter

Dear Friends:

As purveyors of outdoor equipment and outdoor enthusiasts yourselves, you have

undoubtedly experienced the feeling of pure exhilaration produced by a positive outdoor

adventure. Not only do you feel strong and in control, but you are more willing to push

yourself, to test your limits and to ultimately achieve things you never imagined possible.

This is especially true for children from urban environments who are experiencing the

outdoors for the first time and at Vacamas Programs for Youth we endeavor to provide

these opportunities to our youngsters on a year-round basis.

Vacamas was founded in 1924 for the sole purpose of providing the children of immigrants

from Manhattan’s Lower east Side with the opportunity to spend a few weeks out of the city

each summer. During the last 81 years our programs and our population have expanded

greatly, however, we are still committed to introducing the disadvantaged urban youngsters

we serve to a challenging new outdoor environment.

One of the most challenging and most rewarding aspects of our outdoor education

curriculum is our ropes course/climbing program. When we first began to offer year-round,

drop-out prevention programs to inner city children in the mid-1980s, the cornerstone of

our on-camp programming was work on the ropes course. The low ropes course affords

excellent opportunities to build trust and to improve listening and communication skills

while the high ropes elements provide participants with the opportunity to challenge

themselves to achieve personal goals. Work on the ropes course also provides opportunities

for youngsters to practice effective problem-solving, critical-thinking and decision-making

skills, all of which are easily translatable to their work in school and as members of the

community.

In the early 1990s we constructed new gymnasium on our 560-acre site in West Milford, NJ

and expanded our ropes course/climbing program with the addition of an indoor climbing

wall. The indoor climbing wall is used by participants in our year-round programs which

include drop-out prevention for 900 New York City public school students, our Vacamas

Academy alternative education program for 100 educationally at-risk students from Newark,

NJ, and our New York City Shelter Program which provides week-long residential camping

experiences during school holidays to children residing in New York City homeless shelters.

The indoor climbing wall is also used by approximately 1,200 summer campers each season

and most recently was a key element in our newly created Healthy Lifestyles Camp Program

which was created to help children combat the negative effects of childhood obesity. The

climbing wall remains a favorite activity of our youngsters, and our staff members are still

awed by the positive changes in attitude and self-esteem that they see in campers as a direct

result of participation in the ropes course/climbing program.

Because our climbing wall and ropes course activities were so successful in helping our

youngsters to develop effective group work skills and to set and achieve personal and group

goals, we decided to also add a Rock Climbing program to our summer offerings. For many

years we had been offering our 13-16 year old campers adventure programs in backpacking,

Sample Donation Request Letter