Barbara Banks Vision Fund-ATCF Adventure Travel

[2023 End-of-Year & Holiday Giving Season Update:] Thank you all for your wonderful support and attention to the Barbara Banks Vision Fund (BBVF)! It's been fun creating community, supporting a great cause, and celebrating a wonderful human being together - even with those just discovering Barbara for the first time.

Over the past year, we have raised nearly 2/3 of our fundraising goal of $150,000 by the end of January 2024! And more importantly, our sponsoring partner -- the Adventure Travel Conservation Fund (‘ATCF') -- recently announced the 2023 grant winners and they are amazing. Please take a moment to explore where some of the funds donated to BBVF have been utilized -- https://adventuretravelconservationfund.org/grant-winners!

ATCF 2023 Grant Winners

We are now in the final few months of fundraising for BBVF to support ATCF programs and grantees through 2024. Please consider investing again in important, innovative conservation work globally. If you have already donated — thank you so very much!!

Happy Holidays!

Love, Charlie Altekruse with Benjamin and Jeremy Banks-Altekruse

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[End-January 2023 Update:] Thank you all for your wonderful support and attention to the Barbara Banks Vision Fund (BBVF)! It's been fun creating community, supporting a great cause, and celebrating a wonderful human being together - even with those just discovering Barbara for the first time.

Over the past four months, we have raised over $80,000 online and through direct donations. This community of friends and family believes in Barbara's vision that travel and world travelers can be catalysts for positive, sustained change, locally and globally - and this means more to us than you could ever know.

We have all the confidence that the Adventure Travel Conservation Fund (‘ATCF', our nonprofit partner) will put this money to good work. Over the next several months, expect to hear from us with updates on how your donations are making a difference.

If you haven't already, please contribute today. If you have donated — thank you so very much!!

Love, Banks-Altekruse lads (Charlie, Benjamin, and Jeremy)

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[Original October 2022 BBVF Launch Materials]:

Greetings and love from the Banks-Altekruse family,

Our family is honored and delighted to announce the Barbara Banks Vision Fund, launched recently as a campaign of the non-profit ATCF (501(c)3 public charity EIN: 81-4195520). Below you can learn more about the reasons for and ways to donate to this fund that will help keep Barbara's spirit, work, and legacy alive.

Barbara created a global network of friends with whom she delighted in sharing her love of the world – both the natural and cultural worlds that infuse the places we visit and cherish. Her life was dedicated to celebrating and sharing this beautiful, fantastic planet with others, finding locations of natural beauty and then illuminating the people, food, art, and traditions that tell the deep story of the place. And Barbara was a master storyteller of the world.

In her final years at her beloved company, Wilderness Travel ('WT'), Barbara discovered a part of trip development that brought a new level of passion and purpose to her work and life: the idea that travel could mutually benefit tourists and tourist destinations. In other words, that travel and world travelers could be catalysts for positive, sustained change, locally and globally. And Barbara became a shooting star in this emerging “travel with purpose” field, championing sustainable travel and local conservation projects wherever possible within the adventure travel industry and pages of the WT catalog.

Few organizations are as well positioned to effect grassroots change through travel as ATCF which advances its Mission “to support, leverage and expand the travel community's environmental and cultural conservation efforts for maximum impact” through its extensive membership network of local operators and by funding innovative projects in adventure travel destinations globally. In 5 short years, ATCF has disbursed over $500,000 to 33 community conservation projects in 27 locales.

Though they continued to support projects throughout the pandemic, ATCF, like the entire travel and hospitality sector, was dramatically impacted by the Covid pandemic – and is now actively reconvening and reconfiguring to promote dialogue, invigorate communities, empower individuals, and protect environments worldwide. And they need your help to grow and diversify in the years beyond.

Our ambitious goal for the Barbara Banks Vision Fund is to raise around $150,000 by the end of January 2024. Most funds directly support projects with a portion dedicated to immediate, critical post-pandemic internal capacity-building.

Please help us invest in visionary individuals and communities, protect and preserve wildlife and wild places, and help build a lasting legacy of Barbara's beauty, grace, and love for our planet. Any contribution to the Barbara Banks Vision Fund would make Barbara, our family, and the ATCF global community very grateful and proud.

Thank you for your support and attention. Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions or suggestions.

With great admiration and respect…and in Barbara’s indomitable spirit,

Love,

Charlie Altekruse with Benjamin and Jeremy Banks-Altekruse

Ways to contribute and magnify your donation:

Donations can be made here below, on the ATCF website (adventuretravelconservationfund.org), or by check to Adventure Travel Conservation Fund, 14751 N Kelsey St, Suite 105, PMB 604, Monroe, WA, 98272. When giving, please reference "Barbara Banks Vision Fund" or "BBVF" in the memo]