It’s the data that did it: How one youth mental health charity increased its revenue 1,000% and quadrupled its growth

After growing its revenue tenfold over the past ten years, a British Columbia youth mental health organization is looking to expand beyond the province, launching its first program in Ontario. 

Gordon Matchett, the CEO of the Take a Hike Foundation, attributes this growth to ongoing investments in outcomes data about youth who participate in the organization’s programming. This longitudinal research has drawn in a higher volume of—and more consistent—funding. 

“The idea of growth is to reach more kids. […] It is really about reaching more youth with a proven program,” Matchett said.  

Take a Hike’s model is simple: replicate the same program in different regions, with some flexibility to meet the unique needs of each community. 

In 2016, the organization operated out of four locations, serving 80 youth. As of September 2025, the program has expanded to 16 locations, reaching 320 young people. 

Take a Hike provides outdoor, land-based learning opportunities, counselling, and mental health support in partnership with British Columbia’s school districts. 

“We set ourselves this very large vision [of partnering with every school district in B.C.] and then chunked it down into more manageable pieces,” Matchett said. 

The first program opened in Vancouver with School District 39 in 2000. Thirteen years later, the program expanded to the West Kootenays and Burnaby. 

There has been significant expansion since 2019, with the program rolled out to West Vancouver, Coquitlam, Nanaimo, the Cowichan Valley, Central Okanagan and other school districts in British Columbia. Of the 15 school district partnerships listed on Take a Hike’s website, four began in 2024.  

Funders respond to longitudinal outcomes data

Since 2017, Take a Hike has collected data on outcomes with participants through pre-program and post-program surveys. This has helped them gather evidence about the benefits of their outdoors learning programs, and reconfigure the program based on what works best for the participants, Matchett said. 

Over time, the Take a Hike team and an external evaluation scientist measured youth outcomes by looking at metrics like academic achievement, eventual workforce participation, young people’s sense of connection and belonging, and improvement in mental and physical health. 

Matchett said that Take a Hike “would never have been able to get government funding [or] have conversations with donors that give us six and seven-figure gifts” without this longitudinal evidence. 

“We’ve also done some work with the Ministry of Education in B.C., where we’ve looked at the trajectory of youth who have received Take a Hike programs through the education system, versus youth with a similar profile that did not do Take a Hike. They showed that we had a demonstrable difference on the outcomes for those youth.”

Take a Hike’s revenue comes from a mix of individual donors and corporate and philanthropic grants. Matchett and the fundraising team specifically seek out grantmaking partners that are willing to enter into a long-term partnership rather than only providing funding for specific programs, recognizing that unrestricted funding is increasingly difficult to come by. 

From $670,000 in revenue in 2016, the organization is projected to earn $7.5 million in 2026. 

There have, however, been some bumps along the path. Three years ago, Take a Hike was awarded a government grant of $2 million annually for three years. 

“When we started getting that funding, we knew that [it] could be transformational,” Matchett said. “But it could also be devastating to an organization if it was lost.” 

At the end of March this year, Take a Hike lost that seven-figure government funding. 

Presuming this may eventually happen, Take a Hike decided that government funding would only be earmarked for growth and that other sources of revenue would sustain regular programming and operational costs. 

While Take a Hike has recovered from the loss of government funding, it has had to delay the launch of new programs with additional school districts in the pipeline. 

“While most of the organizations that also lost government funding through the same program at the same time had to shut down programs, we didn’t have to, because we had that revenue pipeline behind us,” Matchett said. 

It may have slowed down the organization’s growth trajectory, but Matchett prides himself on having the revenue to ensure that no staff had to be laid off, and no young person was left without this programming. 

Investing in internal staff and processes

The organization continues to hire staff to support its growth. In 2016, the organization employed eight people. Today, Take a Hike has 60 people on staff. 

For each new program in a new school district, Take a Hike adds another mental health clinician. As the organization brings in another $500,000 in revenue and grants, it adds an additional fundraiser. Currently, Take a Hike employs 14 fundraisers. 

As the organization grows, Matchett and the team have also begun investing in specialist staff to support IT, data, systems management, and internal communications, he said. With the expansion to Ontario, Take a Hike has also hired a fundraiser in the province, with the Ontario programs otherwise being managed from British Columbia.

“In the beginning, when there were only 10 or 20 staff, I could meet everybody individually and say: ‘Hey, this is where we’re going and this is what is going to be happening,’” Matchett said. 

“Once you get to 50 staff, it makes a huge difference,” he said. “This is a completely different organization.”

Tell us this made you smarter | Contact us | Report error