Success Story: Renfrew County ATV Club uses skills development funding to keep the organization thriving
The Renfrew County ATV Club (RCATV) has made a commitment to supporting continuing education and skills development for its volunteers, and the Ontario’s Highlands Tourism Organization’s (OHTO) Tourism Recovery and Innovation Program – Skills Development stream is helping them to do that.
With 1000-kilometres of trails and 400-kilometres of connecting roads to manage for its members, the RCATV considers it a priority to ensure volunteers have the skills they need to keep the organization growing.
Treasurer Karen Mason is one volunteer who has been able to upgrade her skills as a result of the Skills Development funding, and is now up to speed on the mysteries of Quickbooks that will help when monitoring the books for the organization. Karen took an online Quickbooks course from a company offering eight hours of virtual instruction.
“I’m now able to do payroll, I’ve learned how to track grants we received, manage how the money is coming in, and how to give financial statements,” Karen said. “Now I’m 100 per cent able to provide what the club is looking for, in detail.”
Karen volunteered as treasurer knowing she would have some catching up to. As a former accountant more than 20 years ago, she acknowledged the accounting world has changed a little bit since she was last involved with it, and she had to learn how to manage transactions digitally.
“It definitely upgraded my skills from paper to computer,” Karen said. “This training helps our club, and we are a not-for-profit so we scrimp and save like everyone else.”
In total between four and five volunteers were able to take advantage of the opportunity to build their skills and support the RCATV club.
Accessing the Skills Development funding meant the RCATV club did not need to foot the bill to ensure its volunteers had the skills they needed and that would help serve the organization. With COVID-19 still having an impact on operations, these types of opportunities are more important now than ever.
“Everybody’s under stress with COVID-19, so we’ve really scoured the internet looking for grants we could qualify for, and as a not-for-profit we try to get the best bang for our buck,” said Karen.
“Now we have more money left for doing what we do, which is keep our ATV trails in Renfrew County up and running.”
About OHTO’s Tourism Recovery & Innovation Program – Skills Development Stream
The TRIP-Skills Development stream is designed for projects that directly support tourism businesses and their employees to enhance their knowledge and skills in tourism and business development. This program provides up to $2,500 per applicant to support workforce and skills training projects that are to be completed by March 31, 2022. To apply to one of the TRIP funding streams, please visit comewander.ca/trip.