About The Pacific Mountain Institute

The mission of the Pacific Mountain Institute is to deliver sustainable environmental solutions.

Founded in 2009 by Corey Kirkwood, the Pacific Mountain Institute (PMI) provides an organizational structure for independent social entrepreneurs to research, develop, and incubate pilot projects that deliver sustainable solutions to environmental problems. The Institute provides fiscal sponsorship, technical assistance, peer relationships, and additional tailored resources to support each entrepreneur during the pilot project process.

The team at PMI encourages social entrepreneurs to develop models that provide long-term environmental benefits, delivered through a self-sustaining financial model that can adapt and expand in response to local conditions.

Corey’s business partner, John VonLunen, became the first entrepreneur to develop and implement a pilot project at the Institute in 2009. The success of the Gear to Grow Project has since grown it into a fully operational and ongoing project at PMI.

The Pacific Mountain Institute is organized as a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit corporation and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Project Focus Areas

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Ongoing Projects

Gear to Grow

The Gear to Grow Project allows outdoor retailers and manufacturers to donate gear for a tax deduction and for the benefit of educating the public and getting more people involved in outdoor recreation. Simply put, we broker gear between the donors and organizations getting people involved in the outdoors.

River Basins

This was one of the first project under development at the Pacific Mountain Institute. The goal was to develop a geographically based website for coordinating multi-stakeholder efforts at environmental conservation and restoration. This online community for coordinating environmental management efforts was also to serve as a repository for the general public of the data and information provided by diverse stakeholders on the complexity involved in the environmental management of a particular geographical region such as a watershed or river basin. In the end, there was not a sufficient revenue model to move forward.

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Filling the Gap

As we were working on the paperwork for tax exempt status for the Pacific Mountain Institute, John and I had numerous discussions about what we were trying to accomplish with this entity. At one point I described a perspective that I think summarizes where we hope to fill a gap.

When looking at environmental and social problems, there have traditionally been two approaches: Top down regulations and legislation from government entities and Bottom up grass roots efforts by the public. While both of these avenues for effecting change have seen varying amounts of success there remains a gap in effectiveness between the two approaches.

Governments can not and should not regulate decisions made by individuals that fall within their rights to have free choice. Governments should and do protect individuals from unsafe and destructive behavior in a broad sense, but on individual decisions like how much energy an individual uses to heat his or her house, the government has no role.

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More Coming Soon

Over the next several weeks and months, this site will provide more detail about the Pacific Mountain Institute and its projects. Please come back to check on our progress.

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