National Outdoor Leadership School - Index

National Outdoor Leadership School - Summer2008 - Index

8
THE
Leader
Q & A
Five Years at NOLS
and Counting
Q&A with Lindsay Nohl,
NOLS Annual Fund
Manager
BY DANIEL DUNNE, NOLS PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
LOGISTICS ASSISTANT
Rainbow Weinstock
NOLS Annual Fund Manager Lindsay Nohl tops out on a
climb at Southwest’s Cochise Stronghold.
QLindsay, you’ve been with NOLS for five years.
What about your first NOLS experience, a 2002
Fall Semester in the Rockies, made you want to stay
and work for the school?
AMy semester had a huge impact on me because it
was vastly different from anything else I had ever
done and it inspired me to dive into something totally
new afterwards. It really felt like home in the wilderness
and I knew a week into the course that NOLS was
where I wanted to be. Once my semester ended, I was
determined to get a job with the school in any way possible
and within four days I had applied for an internship
in the NOLS Alumni office. Three weeks later, I
had packed up my house in Virginia and moved all my
stuff out to Lander. It was really one of those times
where everything just clicked and fell right into place.
QThere’s a great article in this issue of The Leader
about interning for NOLS. How was your internship
a good start to your NOLS career and do you
think it prepared you for the other positions you’ve
had with the school?
AMy internship was instrumental in helping me
find a long-term career at NOLS. It gave me an opportunity
to meet other staff members and become
part of the NOLS community in Lander. Furthermore,
I learned some about the school as a larger organization.
This really got me intrigued to find out more about
how all the behind the scenes steps fit together into
making the running of a NOLS course successful. The
internship gave me more motivation to be a part of
NOLS both as a field instructor and as an intown staff
member. I would recommend a NOLS internship to
anyone who is interested in coming and working for
the school in the future.
QYou have moved around and done quite a bit in
your few years with NOLS, what accomplishment
are you most proud of?
ATwo things come to mind. First, I am proud of the
path I have taken and the experiences I have had
at the school in the span of five short years. Student,
intern, rations manager, instructor, outfitting manager,
operations coordinator, assistant branch director, annual
fund manager….it has been a fascinating journey. I
am also very proud of being a field instructor for
NOLS. The true spirit of the school is in the being
out there learning, teaching, and living in the wilderness.
Having real life experiences and connecting with
students and co-instructors is absolutely amazing. I
love the feeling of coming back from a course and feeling
like I had an impact and got students excited to go
and do something great with their lives after their
NOLS experience has ended.
QWhat are you looking forward to most about your
new position as manager of the NOLS Annual Fund?
AI am looking forward to interacting with alumni
and parents, hearing how NOLS has really impacted
their lives or their children’s lives. I am also excited
about getting the opportunity to say thank you to all
of our very generous NOLS donors who choose to
give back and support the school.
QWhat are some initiatives you will be heading up
on behalf of the Annual Fund?
AI will be focused on trying to increase our donor
retention rate and the amount of gifts being made
online through the NOLS website. Getting more people
to give online is a more sustainable practice; it’s
easy to do and uses less paper. Hopefully, it will someday
become our most prevalent way of giving. One of my
other goals is to increase the number of NOLS staff
that give to the fund. I’d like to get staff (and all NOLS
graduates, really) to understand what the Annual Fund
is, what programs it supports, and how any participation
really helps the cause. It’s not really about giving
thousands of dollars; it is about participating in some-
B U S I N E S S F O R S A L E
thing you believe in and supporting the school in any
way possible.
QWhat do you anticipate to be the biggest challenge
in your new position?
AFrom spending over five years in seven jobs, I feel
like I know the school, its organizational management,
and its initiatives pretty well. I think the challenge
for me is that I am new to fundraising. I have a
huge task of learning fundraising concepts and techniques
and what makes the most sense for this organization.
However, that is why the job intrigued me so
much in the first place. Learning more about how the
school runs and partaking in new ways to help the
school keeps me excited and motivated.
QNOLS was just voted one of Outside's Best Places
to Work. What do you find most rewarding about
working for NOLS?
AIt is very exciting that NOLS has received recognition
as being a stellar place to work. It is completely
true. I don’t think there has been one day in
my five years working for NOLS that I have woken
up and dreaded going to work. The most rewarding
aspect of working at NOLS is I get to work in a place
I believe in. I know that what I am doing is having
an impact and plays a part in a student having an
amazing experience in the wilderness. Also, I go to work
every day and interact with people I consider friends,
not just co-workers. The community of people that
makes up and surrounds NOLS is really remarkable.
It is second to none.
MEDICINE QUIZ
Answer (question on page 4): B
Alcohol is a poor choice for hydration and
doesn’t improve sweating. It does impair your
judgment, which is your most powerful tool
for staying healthy in the wilderness.
Hydration and resting during the heat of
the day are common sense precautions. Less
well known is the advice to give yourself
time, up to 10 days in some cases, to fully
acclimatize to exercising in the heat.
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