For the Love of Trails: How SORCA leverages Your Support

For the Love of Trails: How SORCA Leverages Your Support

As many of you have seen by now, the ‘For the Love of Trails’ campaign has been live since early June.  This campaign is a partnership between Tourism Squamish and SORCA, two Squamish non-profits working together to close the gap in trail maintenance funding. Tourism Squamish is funding the campaign and matching donations up to $10,000 this summer, while all donations go back to SORCA for trail maintenance, trail construction and stewardship of our community's trails.

‘For the Love of Trails’ is focused on one thing: helping fund trail maintenance and stewardship in Squamish through visitor contributions. SORCA's broader finances are separate from the campaign; however, we'd like to take this opportunity to remind you how your membership, sponsorship and donation dollars directly fund trail maintenance and stewardship each year. Our financial statements are always publicly available (see link below), but we know they are not everyone's favourite trail-side reading. The chart below shows the four general expense categories for our non-profit.

*83% of SORCA’s expenses (trail work + trails revenue-generating investments + SNYMTBP) go directly to programs and trails 

**Because two staff roles span multiple functions, payroll costs are allocated across categories based on time spent on trail work, revenue-generating programs, and administration 

As Squamish has grown, and continues to grow, the context in which the trail system exists has become increasingly complex. For many years, trail builders built with little or no coordination with the Squamish Nation, District of Squamish, SLRD, the Provincial Government, forestry companies or private landowners. 

Times have changed. SORCA’s mission in its 34th year of existence includes being responsive to Squamish Nation, maintaining relationships with private landowners and maintaining agreements with government agencies, organizing and supporting volunteers, leveraging grants towards trail infrastructure, coordinating paid trail crews, organizing 30+ fun and inclusive events per year, contracting private trail builders and supporting volunteer builders, and prioritizing maintenance across hundreds of trails. 

A shared public resource like Squamish’s trail network requires governance, funding, planning, risk management, land access, technical standards, volunteer coordination, advocacy and long-term stewardship to thrive in today’s climate. Volunteer trail builders are indispensable, but so are the staff and volunteers who create the conditions under which volunteer trail building and maintenance efforts are legal, coordinated and endure for the next generations of riders. 

Many of these functions are largely invisible. They don't make for dramatic photographs, but they are precisely what transforms thousands of volunteer trail building hours into a sustainable public asset. At its core, SORCA is and always will be a volunteer organization. It is run by a volunteer Board of Directors, and our events and trail days are successful thanks to the volunteer support we receive from our community. Without the support of every single volunteer in the community, we wouldn’t be able to achieve our mission. 

We remain incredibly grateful for the support of Tourism Squamish, our countless other supporters, our members, volunteers, and this amazing community. If you have any questions, please contact Uzi Valiante (Director of Advocacy) at uzi@sorca.ca, Brennan Williams (President) at brennan@sorca.ca, or Ian Lowe (Executive Director) at ian.lowe@sorca.ca. Our FY2026 financial statements will be presented at our next AGM in late November. 

Thank you for building, riding, and caring for these trails alongside us — see you on the trails.

As a reminder, our current (FY2025) financial statements are available for anyone to view on our website - here (see screenshot of expenses and additional context below).  Additionally, all Annual General Meeting presentations and historical financials are available via the same link. All of SORCA's financial statements are prepared in accordance with the B.C. Societies Act.  

FY2025 Expenses

Notes/ Additional Context re expenses:

• ‘Operational expenses’ include all board of directors, committee and staff meeting costs, website costs and over $8,000 of donations to other local not-for-profit organizations.

• ‘Operations payroll’ includes 2 FTE salaries and related benefits supporting trail work, advocacy, events, fundraising, programs, memberships, sponsorship, communications and general association administration.

• ‘Events and raffles’ includes all expenses to host races and social rides, and costs associated with all fundraising raffles.

• ‘Program expenses’ includes all operating costs of the Squamish Nation Youth MTB team.

• ‘Trail work contractors’ are contracts awarded for select trail projects (largely funded by grants). In FY2025, these included Lower and mid sections of Stl'lhalem Sintl'm climb trail, Pamplemousse Extension, Mad Hatter & Ed's Bypass, Lumberjacks bridge, safety re-alignments on the Ring Creek North FSR Trail Exits, Meadow of the Grizzly, and Lower Miki's Magic refurbishment.

• ‘Trail crew wages and expenses’ includes 1 year-round staff and 4-5 full- and part-time seasonal staff (and all related expenses) exclusively dedicated to trail work. Additionally, SORCA helps to offset volunteer builder-approved expenses of approximately $6,000 per year, per our Volunteer Trail Maintenance and Builder Support Policy (here).