Rewild Portland is seeking corporate and business sponsors for our monthly Free Skills Series.
What is Rewild Portland? Rewild Portland is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization serving Portland, Oregon and the surrounding wild and rural communities. Our mission is to foster resilience through place-based arts, traditions, and technologies. This mission comes to life in the form of community-building, ecological restoration, and education. Please help support our mission! Sponsor our Free Skills Series program today.
What is the Free Skills Series? Contemporary life finds us completely dependent on a very fragile network of global connections and technologies. We have become disassociated from the land where we live: our food comes from hundreds and thousands of miles away, we spend countless hours indoors, interacting with screens in human-created virtual worlds instead of the natural other-than-human reality that surrounds us. This has many negative effects on our physical and mental health, as well as making us less prepared for the potential failure of these systems. Yet access to learning any other way often comes with a high price.
Rewild Portland urgently works against this trend with our monthly Free Skills Series: a family-friendly monthly class that explores different aspects of rewilding and that is free and open to the public. We teach about things like friction fire making, local edible wild plants, alternatives to pesticides, basket weaving, and more. Our Free Skills Series has one core ethic behind it:
All people must have free and open access to creating more resilience in their lives.
We have hosted the Free Skills Series—our organization’s inaugural program—since 2007, and it continues to stand as the backbone of our organization. Sponsored by Portland Parks City Nature, it takes place in Portland-area parks, moving to a different neighborhood each month. Participants of all ages and levels of experience are introduced to various skills and knowledge. This is an inclusive, “safer” space for people of all abilities and backgrounds to learn and share with each other. We are queer-friendly, straight-friendly, race-friendly, gender-friendly, age-friendly, family-friendly: just plain friendly! All of the skills we practice come with a set of ethical principles for environmental sustainability through reverence and regeneration.
These free classes effectively build resilience on multiple levels. On the surface, they enhance each individual participant’s skills and knowledge, showing them how to acquire and create what they need from their own place rather than relying on fragile global systems. Our participants learn, for example, how to find, identify, sustainably harvest, and prepare wild foods that grow all around them; how to start and tend a fire by rubbing sticks together harvested from the trees in their own neighborhood; how to increase their physical and mental health through connecting to nature using their body and sensory awareness; and how to make medicines from plants that grow in their own backyard.
While the Free Skills Series may seem at first glance like a “skills” class, at its core it is a community-building program. When someone attends a Free Skills Series class, they are surrounding themselves with a community of people who are seeking the same skills and same connection to place. Here, people make friends and create and grow communities together. This leads to participants teaching and learning from one another outside the context of the Free Skills Series or any programming offered by Rewild Portland. Our ultimate goal is to create robust social connections that exist without need or input from us, that ultimately make the Free Skills Series obsolete. While skills are certainly important for resilience, these social connections are the most important and valuable aspect of our program.
You can read more about the Free Skills Series here.
What kinds of things do people learn about at the Free Skills Series?
Foraging ethics and practice, how to harvest and care for plants in a regenerative and ethical way
Animal processing and roadkill laws
Basic bicycle maintenance and repair
Friction fire making and its history
Making string, cord, and rope from natural fibers
Animal tracking and naturalist knowledge
Learning Chinuk Wawa (the local trade language) and Chinookan history past and present
Sandal making, foot care, and the benefits of going barefoot
Gardening tips for a warming planet
Wild nut harvesting
Basket weaving using invasive plant species
Testimonials
Thank you for this offering! I really appreciate how accessible, educational, and uplifting I am finding your events to be—for both my ten-year-old son and myself. It’s only a short time once a month, but it leaves a noticeable and lasting imprint. So positive. Thank you for sharing your time and knowledge with us. We appreciate this kindness! I feel like the programming you offer is really great medicine for the next-gen age group. Mine totally forgot to complain about missing his X-box while engaged in grabbing at dandelion bundles and trying to figure out a way to get to the roots. It’s a powerful and somewhat effortless redirection of focus, and I greatly appreciate your help with that. Not to mention the fact of how rare it is for both of us—mom and son—to be equally engaged in enjoying the same program. The fact that you put your hearts into it is really felt. You deserve the praise. It’s really a fantastic program. Well wishes, see you next time, and thanks again.
LB
My seven-year-old twins and myself attended the friction fire class. The instructor gave clear instructions and took time to answer any questions. They also told us the history of ancestry or skills which was very interesting. The class was engaging and hands-on, we thoroughly enjoyed it.
RO
Learning about cordage and knot making not only taught me a useful skill but also helped me to connect to the natural world and my ancestral past more deeply and meaningfully. The instructors were thorough in giving a history and overview of cordage and knot making as well as in teaching the skill. The class was well prepared and thoughtfully designed. I hope classes like this can be so accessible to me and my community into the future!
DG
Rewild Portland is a necessity. Through education, and bringing awareness to our environment, it gives us the tools we need to exist in harmony with our planet. With so much going on in the world, we have to choose wisely how we spend our energy. I can’t think of a better use of our energy, than doing this work. And it’s fun!! Cheers.
MF
It was wonderful to be able to get out to a community event and interact with other folks in a safe way outdoors, as covid has made it harder to attend workshops like this. I’ve been able to integrate the cordage making skills I learned into my own weaving practices and basketmaking. It also helped provide a new way to understand and relate to the plants growing near me, when gardening and learning about the local environment has been a really essential part of my caring for my own mental wellbeing during the pandemic.
LW
Why sponsor Rewild Portland’s Free Skills Series?
We do not charge for the Free Skills Series but gratefully accept donations from those who have the means. Still, this program requires hours of coordination and teaching. In our effort to financially sustain this important program, we are seeking financial sponsorship only from businesses whose services and products are used regularly—and held in high regard—within the communities we bring together. Sponsorship will help us maintain this program, improve the quality of the programing, and increase our impact.
Help us change lives. Demonstrate your company’s dedication to promoting innovation and diverse paths in resilience. Partner with Rewild Portland to inspire positive change in the lives of people in your community. Rewild Portland creates opportunities for people to attain economic stability and build strong families and vibrant communities. Promote your company, products, and brand to a targeted audience by showing them your values.
Demographics
Average number of participants per year 360-600 (30-50 per month)
Social media 9.2k Facebook followers 11.5k Instagram followers
Mailing list 5,000- e-mail addresses
Who attends the Free Skills Series? Our target audience includes: • Outdoor enthusiasts and educators • Families • Gardeners and landscapers • Foragers • DIY folks • Permaculturists • Emergency preparedness enthusiasts, aka “preppers” • Bushcraft and survival skills fans
When Free Skills Series class themes are finalized, the full schedule is posted at https://www.rewildportland.com/educational-programs/rewildskillshare/.
Sponsorship Levels
Hearth
Kindling
Tinder
Spark
Benefits of Sponsorship
$500/month $6,000/year
$250/month $3,000/year
$100/month $1,200/year
$50/month $600.00/year
Logo on website
X
X
X
X
Verbally thanked at programs
X
X
X
X
Logo on marketing material
X
X
X
Logo on printed program
X
X
X
Branded Social Media Content
X
X
Small Banner Displayed at Event
X
Attendee privacy We respect the privacy of our attendees and have agreed to not provide lists of attendee names or email addresses to third parties. If you would like to collect email addresses from event attendees, you are encouraged to provide some way for them to opt in to your mailing list, such as a sign-up sheet.
Company logo Please submit a company logo and a description of your company or product (up to 50 words) to info@rewildportland.com. Logos should be in a scalable format such as .AI or .EPS with fonts outlined or TIFF/JPEG raster file (300 ppi). When shown on the conference website, logos will be displayed on a white background.
Payment Payment can be made by check or credit card. Payments made with a credit card are subject to a 4.5% processing fee. Please note that while the Free Skills Series is a volunteer- and community-driven event, we are registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Your contributions to Rewild Portland are tax deductible.
Contact info If you would like to sponsor the Free Skills Series, please send an email to info@rewildportland.com. One of our organizers will respond promptly.
Business Sponsorship
Rewild Portland is seeking corporate and business sponsors for our monthly Free Skills Series.
What is Rewild Portland?
Rewild Portland is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization serving Portland, Oregon and the surrounding wild and rural communities. Our mission is to foster resilience through place-based arts, traditions, and technologies. This mission comes to life in the form of community-building, ecological restoration, and education. Please help support our mission! Sponsor our Free Skills Series program today.
What is the Free Skills Series?
Contemporary life finds us completely dependent on a very fragile network of global connections and technologies. We have become disassociated from the land where we live: our food comes from hundreds and thousands of miles away, we spend countless hours indoors, interacting with screens in human-created virtual worlds instead of the natural other-than-human reality that surrounds us. This has many negative effects on our physical and mental health, as well as making us less prepared for the potential failure of these systems. Yet access to learning any other way often comes with a high price.
Rewild Portland urgently works against this trend with our monthly Free Skills Series: a family-friendly monthly class that explores different aspects of rewilding and that is free and open to the public. We teach about things like friction fire making, local edible wild plants, alternatives to pesticides, basket weaving, and more. Our Free Skills Series has one core ethic behind it:
All people must have free and open access to creating more resilience in their lives.
We have hosted the Free Skills Series—our organization’s inaugural program—since 2007, and it continues to stand as the backbone of our organization. Sponsored by Portland Parks City Nature, it takes place in Portland-area parks, moving to a different neighborhood each month. Participants of all ages and levels of experience are introduced to various skills and knowledge. This is an inclusive, “safer” space for people of all abilities and backgrounds to learn and share with each other. We are queer-friendly, straight-friendly, race-friendly, gender-friendly, age-friendly, family-friendly: just plain friendly! All of the skills we practice come with a set of ethical principles for environmental sustainability through reverence and regeneration.
These free classes effectively build resilience on multiple levels. On the surface, they enhance each individual participant’s skills and knowledge, showing them how to acquire and create what they need from their own place rather than relying on fragile global systems. Our participants learn, for example, how to find, identify, sustainably harvest, and prepare wild foods that grow all around them; how to start and tend a fire by rubbing sticks together harvested from the trees in their own neighborhood; how to increase their physical and mental health through connecting to nature using their body and sensory awareness; and how to make medicines from plants that grow in their own backyard.
While the Free Skills Series may seem at first glance like a “skills” class, at its core it is a community-building program. When someone attends a Free Skills Series class, they are surrounding themselves with a community of people who are seeking the same skills and same connection to place. Here, people make friends and create and grow communities together. This leads to participants teaching and learning from one another outside the context of the Free Skills Series or any programming offered by Rewild Portland. Our ultimate goal is to create robust social connections that exist without need or input from us, that ultimately make the Free Skills Series obsolete. While skills are certainly important for resilience, these social connections are the most important and valuable aspect of our program.
You can read more about the Free Skills Series here.
You can read more about our Core Values here.
What kinds of things do people learn about at the Free Skills Series?
Testimonials
Why sponsor Rewild Portland’s Free Skills Series?
We do not charge for the Free Skills Series but gratefully accept donations from those who have the means. Still, this program requires hours of coordination and teaching. In our effort to financially sustain this important program, we are seeking financial sponsorship only from businesses whose services and products are used regularly—and held in high regard—within the communities we bring together. Sponsorship will help us maintain this program, improve the quality of the programing, and increase our impact.
Help us change lives. Demonstrate your company’s dedication to promoting innovation and diverse paths in resilience. Partner with Rewild Portland to inspire positive change in the lives of people in your community. Rewild Portland creates opportunities for people to attain economic stability and build strong families and vibrant communities. Promote your company, products, and brand to a targeted audience by showing them your values.
Demographics
Average number of participants per year
360-600 (30-50 per month)
Social media
9.2k Facebook followers
11.5k Instagram followers
Mailing list
5,000- e-mail addresses
Who attends the Free Skills Series?
Our target audience includes:
• Outdoor enthusiasts and educators
• Families
• Gardeners and landscapers
• Foragers
• DIY folks
• Permaculturists
• Emergency preparedness enthusiasts, aka “preppers”
• Bushcraft and survival skills fans
When Free Skills Series class themes are finalized, the full schedule is posted at https://www.rewildportland.com/educational-programs/rewildskillshare/.
Sponsorship Levels
$6,000/year
$3,000/year
$1,200/year
$600.00/year
Attendee privacy
We respect the privacy of our attendees and have agreed to not provide lists of attendee names or email addresses to third parties. If you would like to collect email addresses from event attendees, you are encouraged to provide some way for them to opt in to your mailing list, such as a sign-up sheet.
Company logo
Please submit a company logo and a description of your company or product (up to 50 words) to info@rewildportland.com. Logos should be in a scalable format such as .AI or .EPS with fonts outlined or TIFF/JPEG raster file (300 ppi). When shown on the conference website, logos will be displayed on a white background.
Payment
Payment can be made by check or credit card. Payments made with a credit card are subject to a 4.5% processing fee. Please note that while the Free Skills Series is a volunteer- and community-driven event, we are registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Your contributions to Rewild Portland are tax deductible.
Contact info
If you would like to sponsor the Free Skills Series, please send an email to info@rewildportland.com. One of our organizers will respond promptly.