ISHA News: 2024 Annual Fundraising Campaign

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Seth Masia

Seth Masia

I began skiing with the birth of the FIS World Cup circuit in the late 1960s. Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1974, after working in a suburban ski shop and at a Colorado resort, I joined the staff of SKI Magazine in Manhattan. It was a marvelous time to learn about the sport and the business. Editorial director John Fry hired me as a junior editor and technical writer. In the autumn he “promoted” me to produce SKI Business and Cross Country SKI, tripling my workload in return for a five percent raise. I got to hang out with publisher Nick Hock, who proved to be a wise and generous mentor with encyclopedic knowledge and a bottomless barrel of filthy jokes. My guide to New England was photojournalist Peter Miller; my frequent host in Colorado was Rocky Mountain rep Ian Ferguson; I edited copy from Mort Lund, Charlie Meyers, Stu Campbell, Dick Dorworth, Bob Beattie and Jimmie Heuga, among other luminaries.

I skied with Otto Lang, Toni Matt, John Woodward, Tom Corcoran, Stein Eriksen, Andy Lawrence, Billy Kidd, Jean-Claude Killy, Ingemar Stenmark, Tommy Moe, Mike Wiegele, Hank Kashiwa, Franz Weber, Jean Mayer, Steve McKinney, Nancy Greene and Al Raine. I covered Winter Olympics and FIS World Championships. I skied around the world and saw how factories operate on three continents. It was a lot to absorb. I felt lucky, and privileged and awed every single day. Counting from my first day on skis, I figure I’ve witnessed about 60 percent of the history of Alpine skiing.

Now I’m fortunate to spend my “retirement” reviving and preserving the spectacular stories I’ve heard over those five decades. Other than a week in the Monashees, nothing could be more fulfilling. It’s extraordinary that we have Skiing
History magazine and ISHA. Most sports don’t have a cultural resource in the form of a history magazine. Baseball and the various forms of football have bi-monthly history magazines, and golf has a quarterly. The Tennis Historian was founded in 2021 and has published just six issues. I was reminded recently that cycling has no such thing. Nor skating, nor basketball, nor swimming, nor sailing.

We owe the continuing vigor of Skiing History to the passionate support of our readers. Paid circulation of the magazine has grown 50 percent since a low point during the Covid shutdown. In fact, paid circulation is at an historic high, which constitutes a welcome vote of confidence in our mission to popularize the culture and heritage of our sport. ISHA runs on the passion, commitment and willingness of our individual members and corporate sponsors to offer financial support. In recent years, membership dues and magazine sales offset 23 percent of our annual budget; your donations paid 47 percent of our expenses (the remainder was covered by corporate sponsorships and investment revenue). Your generous support enabled:

  • An ambitious redesign of the website skiinghistory.org to streamline both content search and membership renewal.
  • The annual museum grant program of $5,000, encouraging local museums to create new exhibits and programs.
  • The annual ISHA Awards Program and Banquet, promoting publication of original research in skiing history, with related events including a vintage fashion show and the John Fry Lecture.
  • We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France, and the founding of FIS in 1924.
  • Six issues each year of Skiing History, where an expanded editorial budget enabled us to enlist more regular contributions from your favorite writers. Your donations also helped us meet the challenge of fast-rising costs for postage and printing.
  • Ongoing oral history videos, published on the website.

As you may know, postal rates will rise an average of seven percent this year, and printing costs will go up five percent. When we kick off our annual fundraising campaign in October, please help us to meet these costs. You’ve set new charitable-giving records in each of the last 10 years. Let’s keep it up. 

 

2025 ISHA MUSEUM GRANT APPLICATIONS ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED

The International Skiing History Association is accepting applications for the 2025 Museum Grant of $5,000. The funds are for capital projects intended to help a ski museum increase its awareness and community support. Any nonprofit ski museum in the world may apply. Applications are being accepted in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and Japanese.

The application window will close noon EST December 20, 2024. Interested ski museums should contact Janet White, ISHA executive director for information on how to access the application. She can be reached at
janet@skiinghistory.org.