Last year, 2023, was quite a year for most people and businesses. For us, it was a year of both quiet successes and challenges. In terms of running a business, 2023 put a lot of things into perspective for us. It also left us with one large lesson learned: previous years' success does not always equate to this year's success or future success. Nevertheless, we persisted and achieved some goals we set for ourselves the previous year, met so many customers at events throughout the year, and now, we're able to make another donation thanks to all of you!
Considering the challenges of 2023, one of the hardest pills to swallow was the state of the economy. In truth, last year sales were way down for so many businesses - not just ours. Because of this, we decided to group Q1+Q2 2023 donations together, and we will do the same in the coming weeks for Q3+Q4 2023. Although donating any amount of money is great, we wanted these to have more of an impact on the organizations we chose.
Now for the fun stuff! Do you remember a couple years ago, we donated to Indigenous-led environmental groups? Well, in searching for a new organization to make this donation to, we decided to circle back to the suggestions we were given by an Indigenous-woman, Janine Manning, who assisted us back in 2022. One of those organizations was the Native Conservancy a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, created "to empower Alaska Native peoples to permanently protect and preserve endangered habitats on their ancestral homelands."
Established in 2003, the Native Conservancy's mission is
