Read an Excerpt
Foreword: Why a Tools Conference?
Yvon Chouinard
Over the years, I’ve been influenced by many nature writers like Henry David
Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey. I pretty much got to know what the
problems were but it was lost on me what I, as one person, could do to fix them.
The first time I came to realize the power of an individual to effect major change
was in the early seventies. A group of us went to our local theater to watch a surf
movie. At the end, a young surfer asked the audience to attend a city council
meeting to speak out against the city’s plan to channel and develop the mouth
of the Ventura River, one of the best surf points in the area and only five hundred
yards from Patagonia’s office.
Several of us went to the meeting to protest the possible disruption of our surf
break. We knew vaguely that the Ventura River had once been a major spawning
creek for steelhead and chinook salmon. In fact, in the 1940s, the river had an annual
run of four to five thousand sea-run rainbows. Then two dams were built and the
water was diverted, killing the fish run and causing the bars at the mouth of the
river to be starved of sand. Except for winter rains, the only water left in the river
flowed from the one-stage sewage treatment plant. At the city council meeting,
several city-paid experts testified that the river was dead and that channeling would
have no effect on the birds and other wildlife at the estuary or on the surf break.
Then Mark Capelli, a young graduate student, gave a slide show of photos
he had taken along the river, of the birds that lived in the willows, the muskrats,
water snakes, and eels that spawned in the estuary. When he showed the slides of
steelhead smolt, everyone stood up and cheered. Yes, several dozen steelhead
still came to spawn in our “dead” river.
The development plan was defeated. We gave Mark office space, a mailbox,
and small contributions to help fight for the river. As more development
plans cropped up, the Friends of the Ventura River worked to defeat them and to
clean up the water and increase its flow. A second stage was added to the sewage
plant and then a third. Wildlife increased and a few more steelhead began to spawn.
Mark taught us three important lessons:
1) grassroots efforts can make a difference
2) degraded habitat can, with effort, be restored
3) the grassroots movement needs sustained and deep support to prevail
Inspired by his work, we began to make regular donations to small groups working to save or restore natural habitat, rather than give the money to large, nongovernmental organizations with big staff and overhead and corporate connections. I didn’t have the courage to be on the front lines, but I’d learned the power of activism and I wanted to support it. We held our first Tools Conference in 1994 at Chico Hot Springs, Montana. We knew we’d hit pay dirt when the local newspaper ran a front-page story about how we “greenies” asked the hotel we were staying in not to change the sheets every day to save water, a revolutionary idea at the time.
While I am often embarrassed to admit to being a businessman—I’ve been known to call them sleazeballs—I realize that many activists could benefit from the skills that businesspeople possess. When I told that first group of activists that they were businesspeople, there was some snickering in the group. They all thought business was the enemy. I told them that their organizations had budgets and expenses, had to summon leadership under crises, had to be creative and innovative or die - they had all the problems of business. I thought I would bring leaders from the organizations we fund through our grantmaking programs together with world-class trainers and thought leaders to help advance their work.
Now, almost thirty years later, the Tools Conference has really come into its own. Every two years we gather 100 activists at Stanford Sierra Camp on Fallen Leaf Lake near South Lake Tahoe and let them build community together, share best practices, and interact with some of the best trainers on a wide spectrum of topics, from grassroots organizing, lobbying, planning strategy and communications, to being more inclusive organizers and organizational leaders, shifting power in their communities, fundraising, and working with business. While our trainers consistently lead incredible sessions, some of the greatest wisdom and insight comes from the participants themselves.
We now have over 50 years’ experience supporting the grassroots environmental movement. And while we are proud of how far we’ve come as a funder, collaborator, and co-conspirator for these scrappy and focused organizations, we understand that the world has changed in untold ways since we started this journey.
As business educator and coach Marshall Goldsmith said, “What got you here, won’t get you there.” We know that the strategies and leaders that got us to this point are not the ones who will lead us through our current, unfolding crises. Heck, that goes for me, too! The world we now occupy thinks, acts, and looks vastly different than it did 40, 20, or even 10 years ago. The pace of change is so dizzying – how could we expect to use the same playbook to solve the problems of tomorrow? We need to double down on the successful strategies of the past while also building in new approaches.
We also know that this is hard and often thankless work. If you’ve picked up this book you are already motivated and inspired to affect change. That is great, but it isn’t nearly enough. The crises before us demand that we take this work dead seriously.
The contributors to this book are working tirelessly for a wide variety of causes, from banning open net pen fish farms to protecting our right to vote. They are successful because they do the work, day in and day out, that needs to be done, like any business. They write (and rewrite) vision and mission statements, create campaigns, raise funds, and take legal action. They celebrate their successes and recalibrate after a setback. They keep at it, day after day, knowing that one day they will succeed, maybe not how they originally envisioned but in some way.
In these pages, you’ll find the best practices and tricks of the trade from those who are on the frontlines, fighting for the planet and for thriving communities. Learning from and being inspired by them is the best way I know to gain momentum in this fight for our lives.
Thank you and good luck.
Foreword: Why a Tools Book?
Ryan Gellert, CEO Patagonia
The news about climate is bad, with devastating effects throughout the world. Hurricanes and flooding, droughts and forest fires, ongoing extinctions and much more threaten sustainable life on this planet.
There is no disputing that this climate crisis is human caused, amplified by our dependence on fossil fuels and our emphasis on continual economic expansion. We created this climate and ecological crisis, an existential threat to all humans and everything we value, and we need to solve it.
As many of us learned at home and teach our children, if you make a mess, it is your responsibility to clean it up. That means that each of us must take action to combat climate chaos and its myriad detrimental effects, both environmental and social.
Yes, it can be overwhelming and depressing, easy to feel that one person can never do enough.
But, as our founder Yvon Chouinard often says, the antidote to depression is action.
This book was created for those who hear these words and commit to change and justice for all. It is meant to be a companion to your own activism journey. No matter where you are on that quest, we hope you find yourself and your aspirations in the essays from many contributors. These people are in the trenches making a difference. They are doing the difficult and taxing work that activism requires and experiencing the setbacks – and the wins —that the work entails. In these pages you will find inspirational moments and stories of success, but also more dense tactical essays. Our movement needs both. We hope that you will read both with seriousness and reflection and refer to them as often as your work requires.
For most of our 50-year history, Patagonia has supported grassroots groups working to find solutions to the environmental crisis. We have funded environmental organizations directly, never through aggregate organizations, and in the last few years we’ve expanded to environmental justice organizations as well. For many years we donated 1 percent of sales to these nonprofits, often contributing over $10 million a year.
In 2022, we restructured Patagonia so that going forward all of our company profits are donated to a collection of non-profits, The HoldFast Collective, that will disseminate the funds to groups that are working to protect the planet and mitigate climate change. The Holdfast Collective will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities, as quickly as possible. As Yvon Chouinard says, “Earth is now our only shareholder.”
We also go beyond cash and dedicate resources to expanding the capacity of environmental organizations through our Capacity Building programs and by connecting them with our wider community via Patagonia Action Works. Created in 2018, Action Works is a resource for anyone inspired to get involved but not sure the best way to start. Local grassroots organizations are looking for your voice, your talents and—most importantly—your passion.
What is your passion? Author and Patagonia board member Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson describes the sweet spot of activism, which sits at the intersection of three things:
What does the world need?
What am I good at?
What makes me happy and brings me joy?
Carefully consider the answers to these three questions for yourself. This is the area where you’re uniquely qualified to contribute, where you can thrive in giving back and protecting our home planet and the people who live on it.
We’re all dependent on the same living planet, and we need to unify to accelerate change now. As is often said, if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. We have far to go, and we don’t have time to go slowly, so we need as many people as possible leveraging their strengths and passions. We hope that this book will be a guide and a companion on whatever journey you and/or your organization are on.
