Module A
Mental Wellness
Naming what you feel, out loud, to people who will still be there Thursday. Practiced weekly on the ramp, not preached once from a slide.
Issue 001 · The Print House · The Belonging EditionSince 2005
Alone and all one are one letter apart. That letter is a person.
STOKED is a youth nonprofit solving the disconnection crisis through movement and mentoring. It is the crew you get inducted into, not a program you get processed through. Adults mentor coaches. Coaches mentor kids. Kids grow up and become the coaches. Guides fill in the space. Nobody rides alone.
SEC.02 / Why Movement?Name the villain
The disease is loneliness.
Not their loneliness. Everyone’s. The kid eating lunch in the bathroom stall. The 22 year old with 4,000 followers and nobody to call at 2am. The adult reading this right now with a full calendar and an empty weekend.
Loneliness is not a personality flaw. It is a missing crew problem. And you do not fix a missing crew with an app, a webinar, or a pamphlet. You fix it with a reason to show up. A ramp. A wave. A hill. A stretch of asphalt. Movement gives strangers a reason to stand in the same spot, week after week, until they stop being strangers.
Action sports are the front door. Belonging is the building.
No lonely kid has ever signed up for a belonging program. Nobody wants to be the loneliness kid. But every kid wants to drop in, paddle out, or land the thing their friends said they could not land. STOKED sells the skate ethos, not the skate industry. The crew that claps when you fall and claps louder when you get up.
70%
The collapse in time young people spend with friends in person. Ages 15 to 24 went from about 150 minutes a day in 2003 to about 40 in 2020. Nobody chose that. It happened to them, and most of the adults reading this carry a quieter version of the same thing.
US Surgeon General, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, 2023
See the cure ↓Continues in SEC.03
SEC.03 / Our ModelThe back office, in public
The cure is a chain.
Everyone names the cure. Almost nobody says what belonging is made of. It is not a room. It is not a program. It is not a feeling that arrives on its own. It is a person who shows up long enough to change your life. Everything below exists to protect that person.
The coach is the load bearing link. A chain fails where nobody maintained it.
A young person cannot get more from an adult than that adult has to give, so the coach is who we invest in first. We recruit the coach, train the coach, and pay the coach, because unpaid people leave and the entire promise here is somebody who does not. Belonging is a two way cure. The adult who mentors a coach heals their own isolation in the same motion. Everyone in the chain earns the same name: Stoker. Here is the machine, drawn to spec, because a model you cannot diagram is a model you cannot trust.
A young person meets a coach at their own school. Years later they are the coach, paid, 18 to 30, running sessions for twenty kids at one school. They stay two or three years and leave qualified, at STOKED or anywhere. Later on, with a career of their own, they come back and mentor the next one.
Both arrows point at the coach. Everything here exists to protect that person.
20%
More adult income for low income children raised in high connectedness places. Economic connectedness is among the strongest predictors of upward mobility ever measured.
Chetty et al., Nature, 202221B
Friendships analysed to find it. Two causes of disconnection: never meeting each other, and meeting and still not befriending each other.
Social Capital II, Nature, 202233
Weeks, twice a week, same crew. Almost every youth program in America solves the first cause. Only repeated shared stakes time breaks the second one.
The STOKED school yearEveryone else buys the introduction. We buy the thirty three weeks after it.
Plate 04 / DeliveryThe Big 3, taught on every ramp, wave, and hill
Module B
Storytelling
Your story, told by you, on your terms. Cameras, mics, and edits in the hands of the kids, so the world hears them before it labels them.
Module C
Life Skills
Budgets, interviews, first paychecks, hard conversations. The boring superpowers, taught by coaches who just learned them and remember exactly how it felt.
Find your place in the chainCoach · Mentor · Guide · Igniter
SEC.04 / What we doInside real schools, every week
We put paid coaches inside schools.
Ten coaches. New York City. Middle and high schools. Not a field trip, not an assembly. The same adult, the same twenty young people, every week, all year.
The sport gets them in the room. The coach is why they come back.
The coach is a young person too. This is a real job, with a wage, at the start of a career. They are learning to hold a room, run a session, handle a hard conversation, and be somewhere every week whether or not they feel like it. Those are career skills, and nobody builds them alone. That is precisely why a coach needs a mentor, and why the chain does not stop at the kids.
Plate 05 / The ladderA student can start anywhere and keep going
Find your push. Find your people.
Risers
Makes a young person feel part of something.
Twelve weeks, no experience needed, everyone starts at the same line. It ends in a push-a-thon their whole community comes to, which for most of them is the first time they get cheered for in public.
- Format 12 weeks · 1 coach to 20 youth · 2.5 hrs · 1 to 2x a week
- Model Skateboarding + STEAM (middle school) · Skateboarding + Executive Skills (high school)
Where belonging takes off.
Launchpad
Turns that into belonging that lasts a school year.
The full year, any grade. Two sports, project based learning, and something the whole cohort finishes together, often a mural they design and paint on their own campus.
- Format 33 weeks · 1 coach to 20 youth · 2.5 hrs · 2x a week
- Model Skate + Snow + Creative Design, or Skate + Mural Design
From the board to what's next.
Pathways & Summit
Gets them to the next thing after school.
Everything in Launchpad plus a real internship, career mapping, and college readiness. Every student leaves with a written plan and presents it at a year end showcase.
- Format 33 weeks · 25 to 35 youth · plus 2 to 3 snow trips
- Model Skate + Snow + a placed internship · or a full snowboard season
Plate 06 / What every student getsRegardless of which package their school picks
Free therapy
Every student gets NYC Teenspace access, plus programming on mental wellness, storytelling, and life skills. Those three are not a slogan. They are the tracks.
Camp Woodward
Fully covered scholarship slots at Woodward in Pennsylvania. Everything included, no cost to the family.
Coaches who keep training
Restorative practices, trauma informed care, and CPR, taught throughout the school year rather than once in September.
A mentor network
Adults beyond the coach a student sees week to week. The chain, made available to a fifteen year old.
A live partner dashboard
STOKED OS shows a school its own enrollment, attendance, and session data in real time. No reports to request.
A community, not a vendor
Events and workshops all year. We are not a program that visits. We are a crew that stays.
Bring this to your schoolRunning now at Bronx Lab High School, East Side Community School, and the Institute for Collaborative Education
SEC.05 / Proof of ImpactAudited in the back office
Receipts come in three kinds.
Most nonprofits lead with big round numbers. We lead with the receipts nobody can fake. Time, mechanism, culture. The money scoreboard is below them, framed as what it honestly is: an opening ledger being built in public.
01 · Time · Kept since 200502 · Mechanism · The chain math03 · Culture · The crew itself
Receipt 01 / Time · The house archiveTwenty years of kept things
Since 2005
Twenty years, three cities, and a shelf of kept things. The oldest receipt in the house is a person: the kid from an early box who came back as a coach, then trained the next one. Time is the one receipt nobody can print in a hurry.
479Young people served
8Schools
5Paid coaches
33Weeks a cohort runs
That was last year. Mission 01 runs on 10 coaches and ends at 15 schools.
The math holds at any scale
A precise model is a form of honesty. Every term below is structural. None of it is a projection.
- The loopAdults → Coaches → Youth ↺
- Coach statusPaid, trained, backed
- Coach standingWorkforce, never volunteers
- Cities running the blueprintNew York City
You can hear this receipt
The first time a kid drops in, the whole crew holds its breath with them. Then everybody screams. That sound is the product, and it cannot be faked, licensed, or bought. It has to be inducted, one Stoker at a time, every week, in person.
Walk into any session in any city and the culture audits itself in front of you. Somebody always teaches the new kid. Nobody sits alone.
Founded2005 · Twenty years running
Cities liveNew York City
The Chain · monthly membership$7 to $87 · Open
Catalyst room$1,500 and up · Forming
Quarterly earnings callPublic · On the record
Proof ahead, not proof inflated. This ledger fills up in public. We publish counts and totals when they land in the audited books, and not one minute before. If a number is not here yet, it is because we refuse to round belonging up.
Give belonging. See the chain.
Every time.
SEC.06 / Mission 01Reported in public, quarter by quarter
Twenty-one years. Here is mission one.
We are going to run this the way a public company runs. One mission at a time, a number on every line, and the score published whether it flatters us or not. New York. August 31 to December 31, 2026.
Two of these lines are at zero. That is not an oversight, it is the order the work has to happen in. You cannot mentor coaches you do not have. We spent the last year going from five coaches to ten. This is the season we build the people who hold them up.
CoachesPaid, trained, on the ground
10 / 10Done
To raise by Dec 31What gets us to fifteen schools
Goal $150,000Open
SchoolsSigned for this school year
8 / 15
MentorsOne for every coach
0 / 10Open
GuidesAdults who show up for sessions
0 / 50Open
Revenue figure is cash basis, January through July 2026, from our books. Government funding: $0.00. The first report publishes December 31.
We need 10Become a Mentor35 and up. You mentor a coach, not the kids. This is the line with a zero on it.We need 50Become a Guide21 and up. Show up for sessions, roll on trips. The lightest lift on this page.We need 7Open a schoolA principal, a counselor, a district contact. Seven buildings short of fifteen.Fund a schoolFund a coach$11,000 funds one coach and the mentor in their corner for a full year. Twenty young people.
Every open line is a door. Pick one.
That is the whole page.
SEC.07 / InitiativesOpen right now
Something you can join.
Nobody funds a shortfall. People fund a thing they can picture, on a date that matters. Here is what is actually open right now, priced the way we price it for a principal.
The Bench
Schools pay for a coach's hours in the building. Nobody pays for what makes that coach worth the hours. Ten coaches, ten mentors, one year of training, supervision and the people behind them.
$11,000One coach, one mentor, one year
SEC.07 / The ChainFind yourself on this page
Everybody here is somewhere.
There is no audience tier. Every person in this building holds one of these, and the same word covers all of them: . Most people find themselves in the third or fourth card down.
Age 12 to 18
Youth
Comes in through a partner school, never on their own, and never as our marketing. The reason the rest of this exists.
The outcome
Age 18 to 30 · paid
Coach
Trained, waged, and backed. Most of ours came up through the program. The kid who had somebody becomes the somebody.
The craft
Age 35 and up
You do not mentor the kids. You mentor the coaches. You fill the link the whole chain hangs on.
The gift of time
Age 21 and up
You show up, you stand in the crew, you roll on trips. The lightest lift on this page and the one kids remember.
The crew
Any age
You fund the person who keeps showing up. Not a spectator tier. Giving is a door, not a balcony.
The fuel
Currently empty
You
Everybody in the five cards above walked in not knowing which one they were. Take three minutes and find out.
Start the playbook →
SEC.08 / The BoardWhat the chain needs right now
Live on the wall.
Campaigns, asks, and nights. Every one of them countable, with a date it closes.
SEC.09 / Join the ChainFree, and it stays free
Start the chain playbook.
Not a mailing list. You will learn what is actually wrong, how we fix it, what we call things, and where you fit. Then you decide what you are willing to be on the hook for, and you sign your name to it.
01The problem
02The chain
03How we work
04Your role
05The Commitment
Not ready for the whole playbook?
Just keep me postedA short form. No cost, and you can leave whenever.
SEC.10 / Ways to giveEvery door leads to the same room
Three doors in.
There is no spectator tier at the Print House. Everyone in this building is in the chain somewhere. All three doors cure the same disease, including yours.
Give Yourself
Bring your hours and your story. Get inducted into a crew that expects you on Tuesdays.
- Coach The paid craft. 18 to 30, trained, waged, backed.
- Mentor The adult hour. 35 and up, the gift of time.
- Guide 21 and up. Time and talent, shared at sessions.
Give Resources
Monthly is what lets us promise a young person a coach in October and still have one there in May. Monthly members are called Igniters.
- $7 The one anybody can say yes to. Start here.
- $17 Keeps a kid rolling every month.
- $27 Backs a coach in training.
- $49 One young person, for a whole year.
- $87 A young person, plus their first day on a mountain.
Give Power
Catalysts fund the whole machine at $1,500 and up. The room, the quarterly earnings call, and a real say in where the chain goes next.
- Seat The quarterly earnings call, live.
- Voice Direct line to leadership on expansion.
- Name On the next city this chain reaches.
Plate 09 / Fund something specificA named school, not a general fund
Most giving disappears into a general fund. Here you fund a coach, and the bench that makes one possible.
The whole thing
Fund a bench
One coach and the mentor in their corner, for a full year. Their training, their supervision, their gear, their background checks, the software the school sees, and the coverage that lets any of it happen. The school pays for the hours. You pay for the person those hours are worth.
The part that compounds
A coach's training year
Sixteen hours before they ever run a session, then four hours every month after, and they are paid for all of it. This is the line that decides whether someone lasts a season or builds a career out of this.
Every mentor is a volunteer
Find and match a mentor
Recruit, screen, train, onboard, match. Mentors give their time free, so this is never a fee to a person. It is what it costs to find the right adult for a twenty three year old coach and stand them up together.
The cheapest door here
Outfit a coach
Jacket, hoodie, two tees, a hat, and shoes, all branded. A coach in STOKED colors is someone a young person can find across a plaza. A coach in street clothes is a stranger.
SEC.11 / Straight answersThe things people ask quietly
Do I belong here?
Do I have to give money to be part of this?
No. Never. Giving and showing up are two separate doors and neither one gates the other. Some of the people who hold this thing together are alumni who came up in the program and are broke. Requiring a gift to volunteer would break the whole ladder.
What if I do not skate, surf, or snowboard?
Then you are like most of us. The sport is the front door, not the point. Nobody signs up for a belonging program, but everybody shows up for a session. What we actually need is adults who keep coming back, and that is not a board skill.
Am I too old? Too young?
Coaches are 18 to 30 and paid. Guides are 21 and up. Mentors are 35 and up, because mentoring a coach takes a few miles. Youth come in through a partner school. Funding has no age. There is a slot for basically every adult reading this.
What am I actually agreeing to?
To be an active part of this chain when it needs you. Concretely, that is one of five things a year: give, raise, open a door, recruit somebody, or host something. Pick whichever fits your life. We would rather have a clear small yes than a vague big one.
What happens if life gets busy and I go quiet?
You go inactive. You never go out. Nobody gets removed from this for having a hard year, and there is no reapplying. Come back when you can. That is not a nice sentiment, it is the actual rule.
Is this only for New York and LA?
Programs run in New York and Los Angeles today. The chain itself is not geographic, and people join from everywhere. If you want one where you live, say so, because that is genuinely how the next city starts.
Why do the coaches get paid?
Because a young person doing work this real should earn from it. Coaching pays a wage, builds career skills, and puts a young adult on a different trajectory while they change somebody else’s. It also means we can promise a young person the same face in May that they met in October, which volunteering never could. The coach is the load bearing link in the chain.