At Gakona Lodge, we believe that treating others as we’d like to be treated and community are among the most important things in life. With our latest revision of our website, we wanted to add a page that would directly reflect and share with our guests and friends those things that are important to us. While we strive every day at the lodge to absolutely delight our guests and patrons, we have made it our mission to start thinking bigger, to start with our community and strive to be global. As such, starting in 2018, we are giving at least 10% of our revenues to mission and humanitarian organizations. We are also starting crowd funding campaigns in an effort to more quickly rehabilitate the Historic Gakona Lodge and Trading Post facilities. Please click on the buttons below (or scroll down) for specifics and ongoing projects, and we’ll keep you posted on our news and events page as well.
Our Expanded Mission
Missions & Humanitarian Giving
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
Giving is important, and in our few years as entrepreneurs, we’ve come to realize that when giving becomes your focus, everything you do has a purpose.
Project & Event Fundraising
Crowdfunding has become a big way to get folks involved in causes you hold dear. It feels like we’ve been running a million miles an hour trying to do repairs and restoration projects at the lodge and add new events for the community. If you want to help, click on the button below to learn more. If not, that’s ok too. You can still click below and learn more.
Charities And Missions We Work With...
The King's Ransom Foundation
The King’s Ransom Foundation is a charity that is sponsored by Destiny Global, a for profit company that covers virtually all of the overhead of the charity. As such, nearly 100% of funds donated to the King’s Ransom Foundation goes toward executing it’s mission. King’s Ransom works in a multitude of nations to provide clean water for those that don’t have it, to give food to orphaned children, to rescue children out of the disgusting sex trade, and to build homes for those that don’t have it.
The King’s Ransom Foundation does some amazing work! We believe in and give to their cause and would encourage you to learn more about them for yourself. Click on either of the emblems to the right to go to their page and learn more.
Living Hope for Honduras
The Living Hope for Honduras is a Church of Christ sponsored mission to help the poverty-stricken peoples of Honduras in a variety of ways. From building homes to putting children through school to providing food and clean water, this dedicated group does a lot of good for a lot of people. Click on the logo on the left to learn more about them.
Reaching Africa's Unreached
Reaching Africa’s Unreached is a non-denominational mission group that was founded by Jacob and Carol Lee. Jacob was one of Clif’s teachers when Clif was in middle school, and an excellent role model for Clif growing up. Despite dedicating themselves to being excellent parents, coaches, and teachers of their own children and others’ children, the Lee’s felt called to think even bigger and have more of an impact than most teachers may. Consequently, a few years back, they up and relocated to northern Uganda to help those that are truly in need.
Check out their site and consider giving. They are fantastic people doing amazing work for people located in very remote villages in northern Uganda. You won’t meet two nicer or more dedicated people.
Untold Promise
This charity is a new one. It is our homegrown effort at putting our own stamp on making the world a better place. We (Clif & Rebecca), like the Lees mentioned above, have felt a calling in our hearts to do something much, much bigger than ourselves and for those that have a lot less than we do. If you’ve had the good fortune of being born in the United States, or most countries in western society for that matter, then those less fortunate than you applies to most of the rest of the world.
We don’t have a website up for Untold Promise, and we’ll spend some money on branding and other functions in the coming months. We aren’t taking any donations or anything as of yet as we are still in the early stages of things and need to get everything completely set up and in compliance. We just wanted to go ahead and start getting the work out.
The Never Ending Story
Project & Event Fundraising
Remember that “deferred maintenance” that we mentioned folks working to catch up on in some of the sections of the site? Well, whether you do or not, that’s ok. We like to joke and say that we are catching up on about 80 years of deferred maintenance. That’s not easy to do. It definitely presents a good ol’ fashion chicken or egg scenario for us. Do we work on making things prettier and more comfortable for guests, or do we focus on behind the scenes repairs and modifications that are desperately needed for the long-term survivability and function of the place?
Well, we sort of have to do both. If you have stayed with us and appreciated our service-oriented nature or just thought the place was kind of magical like we do, consider donating to one of our fundraising campaigns. Campaigns are set up for specific purposes, so feel free to pick whichever one speaks to you the most: facilities, community events, etc. We thank you so much for your consideration and support, and we’ll keep you posted on what we’ve got going on through our newsletter and posts on our news and events page.
