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Posted by Bill S on June 30, 2007 at 12:40:34 pm EDT
In reply to What are other people paid to teach rappelling? posted by Pam Gaddis on June 21, 2007 at 7:32:02 pm EDT

Pam -
I sent a longer answer off-line. But for the benefit of readers of Trailspace, I will add a couple of comments here.

First point, as noted in the previous posts, is that youth groups are dependent on and used to volunteers who donate time and money, and they push very hard on commercial companies and large corporations for donations. So to a large extent you are up against the expectation that you, too, will donate, or at least give a substantial discount. And if you, like me, do a lot of volunteering, well, gee, that just shows what a good person you are, and so just a bit more volunteering and donating will make you feel all that much better. It is hard to get a fair reimbursement against this attitude on their parts.

Second thing is that there are a number of professional guide services that do work with youth groups. They usually do give a price break to the youth groups, in a bow to the "volunteer" and donation expectations. But these are mostly large enough companies to get a tax break when they fill out the company income tax forms each year. I would suggest you contact some of the larger guide services to see what they do. I will send you another note with some suggested names (I don't think it is a good idea to do it on line, since some people might use the information to try to get unwarranted price breaks). But you could also ask some of the larger climbing equipment dealers and manufacturers what their policies are - REI and EMS often make arrangements for the climbers who work at their shops to help youth groups, and there is some fee arrangement. Some climbing gyms also do what you describe - taking youth groups out to outdoor climbing and rappelling sites. I know of several in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston areas that do so. So you might try contacting as many of those gyms as you can.

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