Isle Royale & Kewenew Parks Association

Programs: Interpretive products and services: helped staff and stocked four national park service (nps) visitor centers and a keweenaw heritage site sales area with educational materials for sale. Managed mail order sales from our website and phone orders. Wholesaled irkpa interpretive publications. Developed new custom sales items, including hats for each park, isle royale t-shirts printed locally, a new isle royale patch featuring the ranger iii and rock harbor lighthouse, and a quincy smelting works wood ornament from a regional small business. Took over responsibility for reordering hats and reprinting keweenaw national historical park stickers from the knhp advisory commission at their request. Selected other new items for the nps approval process, including isle royale retro posters from a startup family-owned business and other items celebrating the nps centennial. Continued training new sales manager to perform these vital functions and improve the physical year-end inventory process and file management system. Created an annual sales flyer with information about new sales items and how the organization supports our national parks. An irkpa publications committee member with professional experience edited an early draft of a new geoheritage guide to the shared geology and history of michigan's isle royale and keweenaw peninsula that irkpa will publish in 2017. Paid consultant for programming fixes to membership and shopping cart problems inherent in the magento ecommerce software. Contracted with exede to install satellite internet at the isle royale windigo and rock harbor visitor centers in may 2017; paid for two years' equipment rental. Expenses reported here do not include $68,687 cost of goods sold for acquiring sales item inventory and paying credit card fees for sales. Employed a student worker at the houghton visitor center during the summer and a part-time senior community service employment program (scsep) trainee at the calumet and houghton visitor centers, starting in november, primarily to help with sales and inventory management.

member and public programs: assisted visitors with trip planning and on-site questions. Staffed booths with volunteer help for the annual quiet water symposium at michigan state university (2,800+ attendees); canoecopia in madison, wi (isle royale national park's primary outreach event, three days with 20,000+ attendees, billed as the "world's largest paddlesports expo"); celebrate the up at keweenaw bay ojibwa community college; michigan tech home for the holidays; and copper country poor artists sale, where we sold irkpa publications, including the island within us: isle royale artists in residence 1991-1997, and displayed art donated to irkpa for sale by past isle royale artists in residence. Gave away more than 800 national park posters to incoming and returning michigan tech students at the "afternoon on the town" event in houghton. Awarded two $500 bob linn college scholarships to students studying forestry at michigan tech and biological sciences and natural resources at northland college. Conducted two 6-day isle royale botany workshops with five participants each, and two photography workshops with three participants. One irkpa member took three workshops, another took two. Held three board meetings and three to four committee meetings preceding each to review progress and plan future programs and events. Mailed or emailed a newsletter to 948 members. Organized volunteers to stuff about 700 membership renewal and rejoin letters with sales flyer inserts and about 630 summer mailings with board election ballots and mission-related sweepstakes tickets. Processed membership renewals, gift memberships, donations, and mailings of membership premiums. Shared daily posts to irkpa's facebook page. Organized a 3-hour calumet geoheritage tour that michigan tech geologists guided for irkpa's annual meeting, which had 19 participants.

direct financial aid to our national parks: helped edit and printed 42,000 newspapers for free distribution to visitors to our two parks. Helped keweenaw national historical park (knhp) acquire interpretive resources and historic materials for the archives and calumet visitor center and donated two books each, including one produced for the national park service centennial, to ten school libraries in support of the high school local history smackdown competition. Gave $2,000 financial support to the centennial seeds youth conservation corps that worked on summer projects for knhp and keweenaw heritage sites. Purchased two laptop computers to help connect 11 local high school interns with knhp staff and michigan technological university faculty and students in the grace (geographic resources and applications for career education) project. They produced keweenaw time traveler (www. Keweenawhistory. Com) esri storymaps and wayfinding aids for the park and its 21 keweenaw heritage sites. Paid for refreshments for national park service founder's day centennial, youth historian, and holiday open house public programs. Supported three volunteers who shingled four leaking shelter roofs.