A landmark $600,000 grant and a shrinking waitlist mark OTF’s most active year yet as it works to close the gap between American classrooms and the outdoors

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation (OTF), the nonprofit behind the nation’s only K–12 curriculum teaching the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, has added over 60 school districts and over 800 new schools to its Outdoor Adventures (OA) program since January 1, 2026. This year to date marks the largest number of schools added in any eight-month period in the organization’s history. These additions have brought roughly 60,000 new students into the program this year, growing OTF’s reach from 210,000 students at the start of 2026 to approximately 270,000 students across all 50 states and into Canada. OTF plans to bring in more schools by December 31, 2026, bringing the total schools using the OTF Outdoor Adventures programming to over 2800. 

The growth caps three years of efforts building relationships with schools that wanted Outdoor Adventures but couldn’t afford it. A $600,000 grant from Safari Club International Foundation (SCIF) and SCIF Sables, OTF’s largest single donation ever, let OTF quickly add roughly 800 of those schools in 2026, with new adoptions in New York, NY, Charlotte, NC, Jacksonville, FL, and across Texas and California.

OTF’s waitlist of schools registered for Outdoor Adventures but not yet served shows demand still outpacing capacity. It fell from 2,358 schools in 2025 to 1,221 after this year’s grant-funded push, then climbed back to approximately 2,000 as another 600–700 schools requested the program.

“When we say OTF is committed to safeguarding our outdoor heritage and children’s outdoor futures, we are not just being dramatic,” states Keith Tidball, Executive Director of Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation. “The average American spends seven hours a day on a screen; the average American child spends 4 to 7 minutes a day outside in unstructured play, or 30 minutes total counting structured activity. That’s a crisis, and OTF meets it where it matters most: the schoolhouse, during school hours. Our Outdoor Adventures K-12 curriculum has proven efficient, effective, and extremely popular. The beauty of this program is that it isn’t an extracurricular activity, it is actually scheduled into the school day to help children thrive and enhance their health, wellbeing, and physical and mental fitness.”

Founded in 2009, OTF’s Outdoor Adventures curriculum is the nation’s premier PE curriculum for outdoor education skills, growing roughly 20% year over year as the only national program bringing wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation education directly into K–12 classrooms. The curriculum spans 40 units and 360 lessons including but not limited to hunter education, archery, fishing, orienteering, wildlife identification, and Leave No Trace principles, all delivered through a PE class in school. In Texas alone, 19,000 students earned hunter education certifications in 2025.

Since its founding in 2009, OTF’s Outdoor Adventures program has onboarded a cumulative total of 2,741 schools and has introduced more than 1,250,000 students to the outdoors. Graduates of the program have gone on to work in careers as wildlife biologists, game wardens, hunting and fishing guides, and outdoor educators, and the organization continues to hear from alumni now teaching their own children the same skills and values they learned through OA.

“In our first year working with SCI, the SCI Foundation, and Sables, we have been able to fight what I call ‘ecological amnesia,’ and are on track to add 1,000 schools,” Tidball says. “Our goal is to shift from adding more schools, to adding more school districts. With approximately 13,500 public school districts nationwide, if we establish an active OTF program in at least 6,000 additional districts, we can create a sustainable pipeline of lifetime outdoorspeople and wildlife conservation advocates.

Looking ahead, OTF will be debuting their Rock the Schoolhouse national awareness and expansion campaign at the SCI Convention in Nashville, TN, January 18 – 24, 2027. This campaign will encourage donors to financially sponsor an entire school district’s participation in the Outdoor Adventures program. Additionally, they will also launch a monthly giving program for those wanting to provide sustained support throughout the year.

For more information on Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation and the Outdoor Adventures program, visit gootf.com.

About Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation

Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation (OTF) is a public nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that exists to help educators introduce and conduct outdoor education in the classroom, and to promote and fund wildlife conservation. Its Outdoor Adventures (OA) program is the nation’s only K–12 curriculum teaching outdoor skills and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation across all 50 states and Canada. OTF is supported by a diversified base of foundations, corporate partners, individual donors, and state agencies, including Texas Parks and Wildlife, Safari Club International Foundation, MidwayUSA Foundation, the Weatherby Foundation, the Conklin Foundation, and Scheels, among others. Learn more at gootf.com or on Facebook and Instagram @outdoorstomorrowfoundation.com 

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SOURCE Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation