Paying it Forward

Going on a True North Trek occurs at no cost to our participants. We are pumped to be able to say and do this. If someone is able and interested in paying their way we won't stop them, but there is zero expectation for this. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

We do have a program called our Pay it Forward Pledge that asks all of our participants to make a pledge to "pay it forward" to the next participant through their own grassroots fundraising efforts before/after their trek. On average our treks cost around $1600 for a long weekend mini-trek and $2500 for a week-long trek per person, and our pledge asks each participant to try to raise around half of these costs (e.g., $1200 for a week-long trek; $800 for a mini trek). We help participants in setting up a personalized fundraising website (see button below), and brain storming possible event ideas.

Due to some good questions we have received about the Pay it Forward Pledge, we wanted to provide some clarifying information. Please note that while we do ask our participants to make this pledge on behalf of a future participant, it is just a pledge and not a binding contractual agreement that holds any form of material consequence. We understand that some people, due to different life circumstances, are unable to fulfill it, either in part or in full. And that is OK. We get it. We just ask that people try their best (just as someone else did before them), whatever that looks like, on a case by case basis. We try to support participants and help them creatively brainstorm different ways to fulfill their pledge, and while we may check in early on to see how it's going, we do stop asking, and realize that it's not in the cards. Maybe it will be sometime in the future. Maybe not. Since the fulfilled pledge helps cover about half of the cost of one person, it is an incredibly helpful way for our organization to sustain what it does. In addition to helping pay for part of a participant's experience, the pledge also helps us get the word out about TNT to others who would have never heard about us before. We are tremendously grateful to everyone for trying and are happy to have a conversation if there are additional questions or concerns. If you do want to talk it through, please call David Victorson at 773-972-2367.

Finally, while we understand there are lots of fundraising sites available (e.g., Go Fund Me, Facebook), we greatly appreciate that you use the fundraising system we provide as it allows us to easily follow up with donors with a tax-exempt letter, keep track of donations, etc. whereas other systems make this much harder for us to track. In the event that you do use a different fundraising tool or platform, we request that you inform us of this and provide us with some type of receipt or proof of the donation.