This year marks bwca.com’s 14th year of operation. The online community of bwca.com has grown from a handful of members in 2002 to now 27000+ registered members. During peak season, we support 170K user sessions and 1.6 million page views per month. The site hosts 100K photos, 800K messageboard postings, and 1200 trip reports. A wealth of knowledge is made available to all through the existing content and welcoming community of great members.

We have continued to build bwca.com on same technology since the inception. It is time for an upgrade to the look, the features, and underlying technology. Here are a few highlight of what we would like to accomplish:

- Improve overall site structure with improved mobile support.

- Better search capability

- Improved maps and interactive capabilities

- Photo gallery upgrade

- Trip report views

- More consistent site performance/load time


This is a very large chunk of work and to accomplish this in a reasonably expedited manner it will take $$$ to make it happen.

The site is primarily funded through business sponsorships, member donations, and affiliate link advertising (REI, etc). The work put into the site is primarily volunteer work. More member support is required to take the site to the next level and to support the next decade of operation.

Last year 256 members made donations to the site, some more than one. This is estimated at about 5% of the active members and .5% of engaged members/guests who use the site to augment their BWCA experience. Our goal in 2015 is to increase the number of members or guest who donate to the site to 1000 people.

It has been brought up that membership fees could be used to increase funding. We have chosen not to go this route because we want to engage new people in the BWCA/Quetico and the great community involved in the site.

We recognize that not everyone can or will make contributions to the site, but if you are inclined then this is the year and time to show your support for the flying moose so that we can kick changes into motion.

Please visit the donation page to learn how to support the site.