Opportunities Unlimited for

About the Organization

Organization category

Public Charity

Country / State

United States / Michigan

Mission

Opportunities Unlimited for the Blind’s mission: To provide opportunities for children and young adults who are blind or have low vision to build life skills, self-confidence, and independence.

Programs or services

OUB offers summer camps and virtual year-round programming for children and youth who are blind or low vision. We focus on skill building in areas where teachers don't have time or facilities, and parents often don't know how to teach such as personal organization, cooking, gardening, social skills, outdoor recreation and education, nature and ecology, arts, leadership, community involvement, and adaptive sports. We focus on the needs of each camper, and we hire young adults who are blind or low vision as their counselors and senior leadership to provide mentoring and leadership training.

Detailed programs

We are all about teaching skills of blindness to our campers - filling in the gaps between what teachers have time and facilities to teach, and what parents know how to teach, which often isn't that much. Cooking, cleaning, self-organization, social skills, travel skills using a white cane, mental math, using Braille labels on appliances, learning to face their fears - whether that be of thunderstorms, bugs, performing in front of people, riding a bicycle or climbing rock walls - are all important things we learn at camp.

Target Audience

Families, teachers and physicians who have children with visual impairments or serve children who are blind or low vision.

Geographic Focus

United States

Current projects

We offer 7 weeks of summer camp - each week with a different theme, and a few virtual classes during the school year centered around holidays. We are also offering a financial literacy course specifically designed for children who are blind or low vision.
Our current camps are: Cooking and Serving, which includes cooking every day and a community service project - usually including woodworking with power tools, Discovery Camp which is largely science and nature based, Orientation and Mobility Camp, focusing on bus travel in the Grand Rapids MI area, our Adventure Trip, which goes to a different area of the Midwest every summer - like a giant family camping trip but with kayaks and often rock climbing on real rocks, Bicycling Camp, where kids learn to ride adaptive bikes, tandem bikes, and even single bikes with radio helmets which is so important for their balance and self-preservation skills as well as self-esteem, and Arts Week with an international focus on art and culinary traditions, as well as art media that are accessible for blind people and performance arts - music, theater and dance.

Organization goals

OUB is focused on continuing to fill in the gaps between family and school for our kids who are blind or low vision with continued innovation and barrier- breaking programming, such as teaching blind kids to ride a single bicycle. We are seeking to transition to a less "family" style run organization to more diversified leadership team which is less dependent on one person.

Leadership

Executive Director, Gwen Botting
Camp Director, Aric Wallace (low-vision)
Office Manager, Erin O'Connell (works in the blindness field for public schools)
Outreach Manager, Joe Pelle (blind person)
Program Director, Lexi Green (low vision person)
Assistant Executive Director, currently vacant
Assistant Camp Director, currently vacant
Collaborating Organizations: Optimist Club of Grand Rapids (owner of our camp location), Patrick Carlton, contact; Lions Clubs of Michigan (volunteer to help us get camp ready for the summer) Gwen Botting, contact, Chicago Adventure Therapy (works with us to provide great Adventure Trips by providing kayaks and rock climbing equipment, volunteers and instructors) Zorbari Nwidor, contact; Choosing to See (provides leadership to teach bicycling skills to children who are blind or low vision), Jesse Crandall, contact; AMBUCS, provides adaptive bicycles and tricycles, Al Lemieux, contact, Naturology for nature programming, Maureen Stine, contact; Michigan Department of Parks and Recreation for nature programming, and a number of other volunteers who share their loves and talents with our campers and staff.

Strategic priorities

As OUB looks to the future, finding a way for the current Executive Director to retire is a priority, but that also means finding or building a storage facility for all the materials and vehicles she stores at her home, and for a volunteer, who keeps track of all the finances (which is then reviewed by the OUB Board Treasurer), and the skills that they both bring to the organization. This will mean a significant increase in salaries that OUB will need to be able to provide several new employees. There are improvements to the Optimist Club property that OUB would like to make, but that will take negotiation and much more money! From a programming point of view, we are a very strong, if small, organization with a lot of respect in the blindness community - we aim to capitalize on that goodwill and expand our services to fit the needs of the children who register to come to camp, and continue to explore what we can do to "fill in the gaps".

Organizational capacity

We have a very solid core of staff members right now that can, and do, manage the day-to-day affairs of running our summer camp and our virtual programs during the school year. The next Executive Director will inherit a strong team that is driven to succeed and fulfill our mission. We are confident that the money will follow our success as long as people like you, who are reading this note, can feel the need and choose to step in to help.

Funding Needs

Grant categories you're seeking

BIPOC, Children, Disabilities, Education, Elementary Education, Environment and Conservation, Quality of Life, Social Justice, Special Education, Sports and Recreation, Students, Youth and At-Risk Youth

Funding needs

Recently, our main benefactor passed away, leaving us with $70,000 to make up for each year, which is roughly half of our budget. We also need to dramatically increase our budget for salaries, as our Executive Director needs to retire, and a replacement person or persons would require much more than the $25,000/year salary she currently makes.

Impact & Recognition

Outcomes and impact

We measure our long range success by former campers and staff members who have become "taxpayers", meaning they are making money and can sustain themselves and their families. We have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence of former participants who have gone on to improve the lives of other persons who are blind or low vision, from people who have gone on to earn degrees to teach people skills of blindness (teachers of the visually impaired or mobility specialists or rehabilitation teachers), set themselves up in business selling products designed for people who are blind or low vision, or have simply made a life for themselves in the field that most interests them, like finance or social work. One former staff member works for a professional sports stadium, several work for universities, and several for other non-profit organizations.

Success stories

One camper came to us as a 14-year old. She did not want to be at camp, she did not believe she was going blind, she was NOT going to participate. A staff member insisted that she learn to cut vegetables with a blindfold on because she WAS losing her vision. She came back for the next two years and then, as a 20 year old, applied to work in the camp kitchen. She later became a certified kitchen manager and served us well for 6 years running our camp kitchen like a pro, despite being nearly totally blind.
Another camper as a 14 year old did not know how to put her own hair in a pony tail, or what the root ball on a plant from the nursery was. She now works for Microsoft.
A pair of twins came to camp when they were 10 and did not know how to use silverware. We fixed that, sort of! (It takes a lot of practice!). Five years later they came back and we realized they didn't know how to get dressed by themselves - their grandmother had been dressing them since they were babies. They knew how to put on all of their clothes by the end of the week.
A very timid and shy camper applied to work and became a Counselor in Training, then worked as a Dishwasher, a Counselor, then Head Counselor, and is now the Camp Director. And he's not all that timid anymore!

Organization achievements

Our Executive Director and Camp Director have each received awards recently for their work taking kids who are blind or low vision into natural areas and teaching them that nature is a valuable friend, not an enemy - especially bugs and other things that fly! We are frequently invited back to do presentations or participate in other ways in programs for families, Lions Clubs, and other people interested in what we do. We now garner respect from parents, guardians and teachers as well as physicians with whom we have shared our mission and goals.

Major funders

Kalamazoo Community Foundation Donor Directed Grant $70,000; donor passed away Summer 2026 - grant ended
Grand Rapids Community Foundation - $13,000/year for 3 years
Michigan Bureau of Services to Blind Persons - varies each year depending on how many of their clients we hire
Grand Rapids Community Foundation - Butts Fund - $4000
Lions Clubs of Michigan - $10,000 (estimate)
Dreyfus Foundation - $5000
Choosing to See - $3000 for Bicycling Camp
Individual Donors - $25 - $5000 each

Partnerships & Collaborations

Collaborating Organizations: Optimist Club of Grand Rapids (owner of our camp location); Lions Clubs of Michigan (volunteer to help us get camp ready for the summer), Chicago Adventure Therapy (works with us to provide great Adventure Trips by providing kayaks and rock climbing equipment, volunteers and instructors); Choosing to See (provides leadership to teach bicycling skills to children who are blind or low vision); AMBUCS, provides adaptive bicycles and tricycles, Naturology for nature programming; Michigan Department of Parks and Recreation for nature programming, and a number of other volunteers who share their loves and talents with our campers and staff.

Sustainability, dissemination & replicability

OUB is definitely at a cross-roads at this point. We have lost a major financial contributor as mentioned above, and we need to make the transition from a family/personality driven organization to a more team based organization. We have been making more presentations to professional organizations, recruiting everywhere we can, and we believe that this camp model CAN be replicated in other places and we have done some coaching with other groups seeking to mirror our success with modifications based on their location. A group in Idaho is doing a one week program similar to ours, and a group in Wyoming is considering starting a program like ours.

Internal checks & balances to prevent fraud

The Executive Director does not have access to the organization check book, only a debit card. Finances are kept in line by a volunteer, who collects and documents receipts and keeps her informed of spending limits that need to be met. All books are reviewed by our Board Treasurer, and payroll and taxes are handled by a professional book keeper.

Get Involved

How can volunteers get involved?

We are always open to volunteers offering what they are good at to help us out! Camp always needs a good cleaning, trails need clearing, and the garden restarted every spring. During the summer season, we can always use someone willing to help us with our garden, to help with teaching cooking and cleaning skills, and to help supervise some of our younger staff members who may not really understand the nature of work. We could also use someone who is willing to maintain our vehicles and do "handyman" types of repairs around camp, which is located on the west side of Grand Rapids Michigan.
We would also love to engage someone who loves social media and can help us improve our presence on those platforms. This includes finding someone who can help us upgrade our website and make sure it is accessible. We are also usually in need of people who can do the simple task of drive! Since most of our staff are blind or low vision, driving is sometimes the thing we miss most in our list of staff abilities!

How can donors support your mission?

Donors can help by sharing the word about our work and success, help us find the next leaders for our organization, and offer their support for the changes we are about to undertake. Obviously, recurring yearly donations we can count on would be the most helpful, but also offering expertise in this transitional moment would be encouraging.

Do you accept partnerships?

Absolutely!

Are you seeking board members?

We are! We are especially in need of someone who lives with blindness or low vision and has a heart for kids who also live this this different ability, and someone with a family member who has blindness or low vision. BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people are especially encouraged to reach out to us.

Website & Social Media