How Humanitix’s Staff Giving supports the Colorado Trail Foundation

Welcome to the first edition of Humanitix Staff Giving Stories, a new series highlighting the charities close to our employees' hearts. It's giving, put directly in the hands of staff.

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The Colorado Trail stretches 567 miles between Denver and Durango, climbing through six wilderness areas and eight mountain ranges with 89,000 feet of total elevation gain. It’s one of the premier long-distance trails in the country and almost entirely built and maintained by volunteers.

That's where the Colorado Trail Foundation comes in.

(Photo courtesy of the Colorado Trail Foundation)

Meet the Colorado Trail Foundation

The Colorado Trail Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a small team and a big job. Four full-time staff, based out of a home office in Salida, Colorado, oversee more than 700 volunteers who keep the trail in shape year-round. Most of that happens through trail crews, teams who spend anywhere from a day to a week doing hands-on maintenance, and through the Adopt-A-Trail program, where individuals and groups take responsibility for a specific section.

The Foundation runs lean. It's funded almost entirely by individual donors rather than a handful of large grants, and roughly 87 cents of every dollar raised goes directly into trail operations. With federal land management partners facing budget pressure, this donor-funded model matters more than ever before.

What Staff Giving Means at Humanitix

Humanitix is a for-purpose ticketing platform, with 100% of profits from booking fees dedicated to high impact charities funding causes like children's education, healthcare, the environment and life’s basic necessities.

Staff Giving takes that model one step further, allowing employees to direct a portion of that funding towards causes they personally care about. It's a way of putting the giving back into the hands of the people doing the work.

(Humanitix x Colorado Trail Foundation)

Funding the Trail Crews Campaign

Partnerships Lead Mark Racchini, a passionate outdoor enthusiast, spearheaded the support for the Colorado Trail Foundation. He sees the Foundation's mission as a hallmark of what responsible stewardship of nature looks like, and Staff Giving gave him a direct way to put that belief behind funding. Through his nomination, the Colorado Trail Foundation became one of the beneficiaries of Humanitix's Staff Giving, with funding going toward the Foundation's Trail Crews Campaign, a $50,000 effort supporting the volunteers who go out and do the hands-on work of maintaining the trail.

(Photo courtesy of the Colorado Trail Foundation)

As Tim Cutter, the Foundation's Community Outreach Manager, put it, 93% of the Trail's funding comes from individual donors, which means the Trail truly belongs to the community that supports it. With federal partners facing steep budget cuts, that support covers the technical work that has to happen before a single volunteer picks up a tool: planning with land managers, trail design for erosion and rock work, and the trained field staff who keep volunteer crews safe in the backcountry.

"You provide the vital planning and tools; our community supplies the heart." — Tim Cutter

Curious to learn more about Staff Giving at Humanitix? Head here.