Since Hood River
Three months ago we left Oregon with a tracker: forty-odd commitments, each with an owner and a date. This is that tracker, scored. I would rather you see the misses from me on a Tuesday than discover them in the meeting.
First — four things happened that were not on the list
These matter more than most of the checkboxes below, because they changed the shape of the year.
The money got easier, and more concentrated
Two gifts — $60k from TW, now in a professionally managed giving cycle, and $25k from Ashley Ryden — put us in a comfortable cash position for the first time. Both are one-time and unrestricted. That is exactly the circumstance a reserves policy exists for, which is why it is on Saturday's agenda.
Roxy left
Roxy Dawson's departure in July was the right outcome for the organization and a hard one personally. The operational consequence the board should know: the integrated comms and site overhaul due at the end of September was scoped as a joint piece of work with her.
The film is about to land
The LOWA film premieres in roughly three weeks at a significant venue and then goes to the festival circuit. Combined with this year's viral momentum, I am planning for 4,000–5,000 applications next cycle against 2,150 this year. Our application backend will not survive that unrebuilt.
I am more available than we planned
The Dreamland trip moved to 2028, so the ten-week absence we planned around next year is not happening. That is real capacity back — and it is also, as the June meta-analysis put it, more weight on one neck rather than less.
The scorecard
Landed
| June commitment | Status | Where it got to |
|---|---|---|
| Ashley Ryden — follow up with last year's $25K donor | Done | Renewed at $25k. Relationship needs active nurturing — see Chapter 6. |
| Partner portal live | Done | Live at partners.summitscholarship.org and self-updating from the blog, photo library and mailing list. |
| Poll the board on a date; confirm the fall meeting | Done | Saturday September 26. |
| Pre-board briefing, Alison and Sunny | Done | Held September 22. This brief is its output. |
| AI onboarding for Angie | Done | Angie is onboarded and working in the system. Partner updates and calendar production both measurably faster. |
Partly there
| June commitment | Status | Where it got to |
|---|---|---|
| GEA Alliance site live; DNS pointed to gea-alliance.org | Partial | Site is built and live on its staging domain. The custom domain is still not pointed, so the public address remains a .pages.dev URL. |
| Summit Scholarship brand rollout | Partial | New mark applied and in use across properties. Worth noting the board has still never formally adopted it — see the carried-over votes. |
| Move Rachel onto GEA payroll | Partial | She now has a GEA Alliance address and sits in the GEA workspace. Whether the payroll move itself completed is a confirm item. |
| Grow the board to six or seven | In flight | Two candidates in play. No target size agreed and no recruiting owners assigned — that is Saturday's call. |
Slipped
| June commitment | Status | Where it got to |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar — print 400–450; kill free international shipping | Slipped | Still not at the printer, with 80 pre-orders in hand and one buyer taking 50 at retail. This is the most time-critical item in the brief. |
| Year-end giving plan — finalize the six-campaign structure with Alison | Slipped | Not finalized. Chapter 6 is the proposal; Saturday is where it gets decided. |
| Full 2027 cash budget, ready for the fall board meeting | Moved | Moved to December by agreement — Saturday sets the targets the budget will be built against. |
| Integrated comms / site overhaul live, end September | At risk | Scoped jointly with Roxy before she left. Needs rescoping rather than rescheduling. |
| See Her Outside + Women of Mountaineering — standalone domains | Slipped | Neither standalone site has been built. See Her Outside has been elevated to a GEA-level property in principle but not in public. |
Not confirmed — I will close these before Saturday
Every item here has a real consequence if it did not happen. Several are governance exposures rather than to-dos.
| June commitment | Status | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| D&O insurance — quotes to the board | Confirm | We run group fundraisers and expedition programming. The June analysis called operating without this a fiduciary failure rather than a chore. |
| Legal transition closed — asset transfer, ending the SEE fiscal sponsorship, bylaws corrections | Confirm | Flagged in June as having no owner. Still the largest unresolved structural item. |
| LOWA commitments in writing | Confirm | A meaningful share of the 2027 revenue plan sits on this partnership. The film lands in three weeks. |
| GEA mark — trademark screening | Confirm | Was meant to clear before any public rollout. The site is public. |
| SheJumps — accept with terms or decline, by August 31 | Confirm | Date has passed. An unanswered partnership offer is its own answer, and not a good one. |
| Fractional development lead; Deputy/COO envelope by September 30 | Confirm | Seven days out. This is the single point of failure the board named in June. |
| Major-donor re-ask — top 20 lapsed lifetime donors | Confirm | Feeds directly into the year-end campaign in Chapter 6. |
| Books cleanup with Tana; move to cash basis | Confirm | December's budget approval depends on clean books. |
| Vision statement v-next, for September approval | Confirm | There is a vote scheduled for it on Saturday. |
| Grit Lit wind-down finalized | Confirm | A Q3 letter was drafted this summer, which does not look like a wind-down. The September 22 call referenced dissolution paperwork due by end of week; I want to confirm what entity that refers to before it goes in front of the board. |
| D&O aside — three AI guardrails shipped | Confirm | Kill-switch, dry-run mode, weekly reversibility audit. |
| /film landing page + UTM attribution | Confirm | Three weeks from premiere, this is the difference between festival reach and measurable funnel. |
Board-owned items from June
| June commitment (chair to drive) | Status |
|---|---|
| Shadow ED salary — board vote | Open |
| Board fundraising / donor-cultivation plan — yes, no, or scoped | Open |
| One written Q3 commitment per director | Confirm |
| Fall fundraising dinner with Marcia (TEW) | Confirm |
| Formal votes — vision statement, brand identity | Open |
| ED evaluation close-out and forward expectations | Open |
| TEW $30k renewal — settle whether Alison or Sunny owns it | Confirm |