The Annual Treasure On The Mountain Is Saturday, Aug 5th, 2023 at Snowshoe Mountain
“This is our biggest fundraiser of the year by far.”
That’s Dave Black, Executive Director of the Snowshoe Foundation, speaking about the upcoming Treasure On the Mountain event scheduled for Saturday, August 5th at Snowshoe Mountain Resort.
“It is a giant raffle and we give away $350,000.00 worth of prizes,” said Black. “It raises a lot of money for us that we are able to put back into the community throughout the year.”
The Snowshoe Foundation is a non-profit that provides grants and other funding to local organizations in Pocahontas, Randolph and Webster counties in West Virginia. The event is expected to draw up to 3500 people to the top of the mountain on Saturday. The Foundation has been hosting this yearly event for over a decade.
Black says they work with vendors from around the area to secure a variety of prizes for the raffle to ensure a successful fundraiser.
“We do pay for them, but the local businesses are super generous, they give us the best price they can so that we max out the money for the Foundation.”
And there are some very nice prizes.
“We have four trucks and SUVs this year, we have a Side by Side and a Quad and then we have a whole array of tools and mowers and things of that nature,” said Black. “Some fun stuff – bikes and paddleboards – and everyone is always interested in the cash prizes, we have quite a few cash prizes that we give away; top cash prize that we give away is $30,000.00 this year.”
And while all these fun and fabulous giveaways are a great enticement to sell raffle tickets and to attend the event, the real incentive is what the Foundation is able to do with the money they raise.
“We receive a lot of good local support from Snowshoe Mountain who lets us throw these events and from our corporate sponsors and from a huge number of volunteers that we’re so thankful for,” he said. “And what that really does is minimize our administrative expense, so we have very low overhead for a foundation our size; therefore, virtually all of the profits from this fundraising go back into the community in terms of grants to our non-profits and local community organizations, scholarships to local students.”
“We have two grant cycles, one in the fall and one in the spring, and a student scholarship cycle in the spring and all of that is made possible primarily by this event.”
Black says the fall grant cycle will be starting up around Labor Day. Any organization within the three-county area is welcome to fill out an application at the Foundation website, snowshoefoundation.org. The application window will close sometime in October and grants will be awarded around the 1st of December.
Black says while Treasure On the Mountain is the largest event of the year, they do have some other smaller fundraisers planned as well.
“Out next event is going to be Octorber the 14th, a fall fundraising dinner,” he said. “That’ll be held here at Snowshoe and we try to highlight all the great things about fall and Appalachia. The dinner is called Autumn in the Alleghenies and we feature local chefs and local food. And then we’re looking to stage a couple of pop-up events over the winter. And then, of course, the thing that everyone looks forward to in the spring is our Foundation golf tournament which is always the first weekend of June and a huge success.”
Allegheny Mountain Radio staff and volunteers will also be at the Treasure on the Mountain, doing a live remote broadcast Saturday from 1 to 5pm. Please stop by and say hello.
The Snowshoe Foundation is a financial supporter of Allegheny Mountain Radio.
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