Rollin’ in Place Finish Line

On Sunday, November 15, 2020, the Tour des Trees: Rollin’ in Place to Benefit TREE Fund campaign concluded with $156,002 (exceeding it’s $150,000 fundraising goal)! These dollars will go a long way in furthering tree research and education in urban forestry and arboriculture, and we are truly grateful to all our participants and partners for making this achievement possible. Congratulations and thank you!

For the first time ever, the Tour des Trees campaign took place in an entirely virtual format. When the difficult decision was made to postpone the in-person 2020 Tour and pivot to a virtual event, we were entering unknown territory. With the announcement of this new format we expected disappointment, but instead we were flooded by support, enthusiasm, and immediate growth. Our participation reached a total of 86 individuals who collectively covered 46,149 virtual miles. The distance and fundraising leaderboards remained competitive throughout the entire campaign, and we are eager to announce and celebrate our winners below!

Top Individual Fundraisers James Urban, $14,369 Dick Rideout, $12,548 Randy Miller, $6,475 Tom Ordway, $5,600 Joe Lentz, $5,500 Ray Henning, $5,144 Sam Van Maanen, $4,609 Jeff Iles, $4,084 Phil Graham, $3,847 Pete Smith, $3,501 Top Distance Individuals John Harthoorn, 5,000 mi Doreen Crenshaw, 3,293 mi Doug Schoch, 2,650 mi Paul Wood, 2,360 mi Laurie Skul, 2,328 mi Gordon Matassa, 2,156 mi Dave Staats, 1,752 mi Randy Miller, 1,473 mi Kristina Bezanson, 1,416 mi Jeff McMullen, 1,312 mi

Top Fundraising Teams Team Ohio, $15,615 Team ASLA, 15,294 Team Wisconsin, $14,686 Team Southern, $12,148 Team Canada, $10,514 Team Rocky Mountain, $9,917 Team Indiana, $6,613 Team Midwestern, $3,501 Team New England, $3,201 Team Mid-Atlantic, $2,805 Top Distance Teams Team Ohio, 7,546 mi Team Hungry Wolves, 5,998 mi Team Rocky Mountain, 3,165 mi Team New England, 2,818 mi Team Southern, 2,454 mi Team Schwab Roppolo, 2,181 mi Team Penn Del, 1,008 mi Team Canada, 886 mi Team Texas, 725 mi Team ASLA, 681 mi

Tour des Trees has traditionally been TREE Fund’s main community engagement event. Traditionally community engagement was a simple concept: engage with local communities along the Tour des Trees route to share our mission and love of trees. A new virtual campaign made this goal slightly challenging, and this challenge was met with several generous individuals who shared with us their time and gifts to create engagement opportunities during livestream virtual sessions. At various points throughout the campaign we met with Hallie Dozier who led us through multiple guided meditation sessions, Lisa Meranti who instructed multiple yoga sessions, Professor Elwood Pricklethorn (managed by Warren Hoselton) who met with us to talk about the importance of trees and his new book True Tree Crimes, Tour Director Paul Wood, Tour Mechanic Billy Volchko, and Mindfully Mixed’s Renee Volchko who all met with our participants to discuss training, nutrition, and bike tune-up tips, and ACRT’s Renee Bissett and Kevin Jones who hosted our participants for a Halloween themed Trivia Night! Thank you to Hallie, Lisa, Professor Pricklethorn, Paul, Billy, Renee V., Renee B, and Kevin for helping to make this campaign a huge success! Recordings of all livestream sessions are available here.

Finally, a long-standing Tour des Trees tradition is to honor the “Best of Tour” awards! These individuals went above and beyond in displaying the Tour spirit throughout their entire campaigns.

And thank you to ALL of our Rollin’ in Place participants for your hard efforts to make 2020 one for the books. See you next year!