Hear ye Hear ye: Peter’s speech at the Clean Boating Foundation Benefit

April 17, 2013 | by Peter Schrappen

Maybe you know about the upcoming benefit for Clean Boating Foundation and our friends at Fish Northwest. Thanks to the leadership of Northwest Marine Trade Association and Elliott Bay Marina’s Dwight Jones, we are having a party (and fundraiser) thrown for us. It’s sold out.

As part of the festivities, I will deliver a pitch to the guests asking them to give (until it hurts). To say thank you to all of our readers, I want you to be the first ones to see it. (Note that it’s in draft form and I lean heavily on Seth Godin’s Ted Talk about the importance of tribes in connecting people together to change the world. Here it is:

I’ve been given a few minutes to share with you why we are here. Before I do that, though, I want to say thank you to the NMTA Board, NMTA’s President George Harris and the Gala Chair Dwight Jones.

So why are we here? Maybe it’s because of divinity, politics or science. I don’t know. But I do know that some serious rocking and rolling was going on millions of years ago that disrupted our solar system. All of those changes led to the creation of what I consider the most beautiful place on earth. Washington state. Puget Sound.

And that change and rocking the system has not stopped. If you think about Fish Northwest and Clean Boating Foundation, disruption, impact and profound change go to the heart of what we do.

You all get that. That’s why you are here. You know that it’s not enough to just cherish and celebrate our pristine waters, our salmon, our backyard. We need to serve as responsible stewards of creation. We want to leave this place better than we found it.

The interesting thing is that what we are selling isn’t for everyone. I do not see any of the gill-net producers here. I do not see the Copper Association.

Those of you who are here are those who realize that the status quo is no longer acceptable. We are heretics. We’ve looked at the rules, realized they didn’t make any sense and forged a new path. We’ve created a new way to navigate the system. We’ve competed with commercial fishing companies, state agencies, copper companies, the Legislature and we have won time and time again.

Look at just a few of our accomplishments.

                Fish Northwest

                                -Secured $66 million in last year’s Capital Budget to go towards hatchery production of salmon and improved access points

                                -Expanded fishing for families to spend more days on the water with their kids to catch crabs, shrimp and salmon

                                -We’ve got champions on the Fish and Wildlife Commission who will put us on their back. I’m thinking of Larry Carpenter in particular

               

Clean Boating Foundation:

                -Held the line on the number of boatyards going out of business and actually seen an increase

                -Become the go-to resource for boatyards, boaters and state agencies when it comes to non-copper paint, non-zinc anodes and clean boating practices

                -Cajoled boaters to improve their boating practices to give our boatyards a fighting chance to stay in business when it comes to their permit numbers

We’re not done folks. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The good news is that real change, the change we are talking about, occurs when a small group of people come together in a tribe. It’s always that way, whether it’s science, divinity or politics and it’s that way here.

At this point, I’d like you to do something. I’d like you to invest in what we are doing so we can continue this great work and scale up on our impact. Embrace the notion that our string of successes is just the beginning. Unleash your gratitude and let’s make some noise for our tribe.