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About Us – 2020 Update

2020 About Us Post

Welcome!!! Welcome!!! Welcome!!!

Well here is a little bit about us, our drive, our vision and our journey………

Wheel House Warriors is a non-profit organization founded by Karina Johnson January 29th, 2019.

This Facebook group was started to cultivate community with wheelhouse owners. This community was started in order to help a veteran in need and to spread the word of his situation and have an event to promote him and his ice fishing business during his hardship. So, we encouraged people to go ice fishing out on his roads and support this 80 year old veteran by starting a Facebook group and asking people to meet up and go and support this veteran!

Word spread faster than we could ever imagine, and this veteran had the greatest turn out to date, saving his business, his home and renewing his spirit for the ice fishing community.

Over the next few months, the community started planning ATV trips within the camping season and then it was hunting season and the community of wheelhouse owners continued to grow and people continued to join. Everyone was sharing their stories about ATV’ing and hunting.

A logo was developed, and the product started to be sold online. This all started to help a veteran so Karina decided, that is how it should always be.

She filed for her assumed business name and her 501c3 and became an official Non-profit organization in the State of Minnesota.

This group is a community that started with Wheelhouse owners but also includes those that do not own yet, or those that own campers.

The community is about being there for one another and discussing our ice fishing, camping, ATV’ing, hunting adventures all while raising money for our veterans in the process.

The group has been showcased on Adventurer Outdoors podcast as well as showcased on Focus Outdoors TV. Our very first Warriors Winter Event was in 2020. Last year we were able to donate the following:

1) Donating a Service dog to a veteran with PTSD that is supposed to graduate in the fall of 2020 (15K value)

2) Donating $1000 to Hometown Hero Outdoors – another nonprofit group that takes veterans and law enforcement officers on all expense paid fishing and hunting trips

3) Raising and Donating $1300 to Patriot Assistance Dogs because the very first service dog that graduated passed away and the owner (a veteran) wanted to get another one of his dogs certified so that it could be his new service dog and go into public places.

4) Donating $500 to a widow that lost her husband overseas she had 2 small children.

5) Donating a plaque, flag, and multiple items to the family that lost their little boy in Chisago that was hit by a drunk snowmobiler while they were ice fishing.

6) By having our events out of a veteran owned establishment on Mille Lacs (Dickies) who is in his 80’s and amazing man and a veteran…. awesome guy and he looks like Santa Claus, so you have to love him!

7) And we donated a couple of items of our swag to other nonprofit charities such as one that was doing an event for one of our members that was diagnosed with breast cancer – we like to take care of our members also. This is a community!

We had an amazing turn out last year and are projecting to quadruple in size for the turnout this year…. yes, you read that correctly – quadruple! It is crazy!!!

Last year we had approximately 280 people in attendance and like I said, the way things are looking and by the way this group has grown and is continually growing, I am expecting quadruple that… let’s hope the weather cooperates!

I feel that Wheel House Warriors has become so much bigger than other groups for these reasons;

1) We accept and love ALL Wheel House owners and even those that do not currently own but want to!

2) We are NOT just about ice fishing… although that is our greatest passion… we also keep in touch with our members ALL year round for hunting, open water fishing, hunting, ATV’ing and camping.

3) We are NOT brand specific as far as the Wheel House you own, you can own any brand or even have built your own – we just want a community of people that can be there for one another.

4) There are absolutely NO politics allowed on our page and we keep a VERY close eye on that – so it is kind of a refreshing page to NOT have to deal with that when it’s all over everything else

5) We truly give back 100% of our proceeds to veterans and those in need. We are trying EXTREMELY hard to pay off our bills which is basically our swag that we purchased for inventory to get us started, but in ANY business, it is hard to turn a profit immediately. We want to give back to our veterans as MUCH as possible so we try to only take a small percentage between 5 and 10% currently to pay down our debt which is JUST our initial inventory of gear that we are selling to make money to give to veterans. It is a delicate balance and I feel we are doing amazing!!!

This year we are splitting our donations with Hometown Hero Outdoors which is an organization that takes veterans and law enforcement officers on once in a lifetime fishing and hunting trips. We are also donating to Patriot Assistance Dogs which is a business that trains and matches up service dogs with veterans with special needs and PTSD.  Karina’s ultimate goal with this group is to be able to donate one service dog a year to a veteran.

There is no greater fun than being on the ice, in the field, on the trails, or in the woods and all the while giving back to the people that fought for our freedom to have fun and do the things we love. We support troops, our veterans and the families that stand behind them.

This group will celebrate its second birthday a couple weeks before our event and we are proud to say that we have grown to over 6,400 people, which has become the fastest growing Ice fishing group to date!

We appreciate your support for our group and aiding us to raise money for our veterans and our warriors….. We may not be the kind of warriors the men and women fighting for this country are but we would like to think we are the Wheel House Warriors… Fighting to support THEM ALWAYS…..

ONE NATION UNDER GOD INDIVISIBLE WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL….

We thank you for your part in being a Wheel House Warrior with us….

Sincerely,

Karina Johnson
Founder / CEO
Wheel House Warriors

Any use of our names or logos is prohibited without our consent