Celebrating BBPI's 5th Birthday
Dear Friends,
Well, it’s official: the BBPI is now five years old. Half a decade has never flown by faster! Whether or not we’d reach this milestone was never in doubt - I’ve always had the utmost confidence in our mission, our paleontological experiences, and our wonderful, talented staff. And if that wasn’t enough, our passionate and dedicated participants and supporters have eliminated any lingering doubts.
What is difficult to wrap my brain around is just how much has been accomplished in so little time. If you’ll allow me to reminisce for a moment: . . . When we opened our doors in 2017, we had just one employee, only a few months to fill a field season, and a big dream. That year we reached ~4,500 people in our various outreach and education programs, and that summer we hosted 31 folks for our first dig season in Montana. We had few supplies or equipment of our own, and a very uncertain future beyond August.
Fast forward to the year that just ended, and things could hardly be more different. In 2021 we employed 10 paleontologists and additional critical staff - including rock-star fossil preparator, Katie Hunt - and met over 14,000 people at our programs. Last summer we hosted 117 people in Montana, and sold out the 2022 season before Thanksgiving! We purchased a brand new truck to help us haul literally tons of fossils back to our very own Fossil Preparation Lab in Philadelphia, located inside one of the preeminent museums in the country! While it is difficult to promote any single 2021 highlight to the top of the list, I’m not sure anything could beat the donation of an antique Yellowstone Bus, which sold at auction for ~3 times what we expected, funding numerous new programs and positions both in Montana and back East! And let me take this just one step further: all of these accomplishments followed the pandemic year of 2020, in which we had to cancel our field season!
As exciting and important as all of that is, 2022 is shaping up to be even more impactful. We are launching several new outreach programs this spring, launching a new donor-funded internship program, hiring more staff, and even have a new coloring book due out in days! We’re also purchasing an enormous new trailer to help us bring even MORE fossils back to the lab each season - get ready, Katie! We also have a major announcement about the future of the organization coming soon, but we don’t want to spoil that surprise just yet!
While I’m so proud of all the ways we’ve changed, I’m equally proud of what hasn’t. Yes, we have talented and driven staff, but none of this would be possible without the unwavering support of our participants and donors: people who believe in that same big dream from 2017. That dream, by the way, is the other thing that hasn’t changed. It certainly has grown over the years - and in the coming months we’ll share with you exactly how it has grown - but at its heart, the dream remains the same: to harness the universal appeal of dinosaurs and paleontology to engage people everywhere to promote the earth and natural sciences.
Sincerely,
Jason P. Schein
Founding Executive Director