The NRA Foundation is dedicated to protecting our Second Amendment freedoms by supporting activities that promote safe and responsible firearms ownership. It’s America’s leading charitable organization in support of the shooting sports. Through the fundraising of Friends of NRA, the NRA Foundation provides financial support to eligible teams and organizations through its grant program.
Every year, the NRA Foundation awards more than $10 million worth of grants to charity and youth shooting sports programs. One of the little-known partnerships the Foundation has is with the National Archery in Schools Program (NASP). The NRA Foundation buys over $500k annually of archery supplies through NASP. Those supplies are then awarded as grants to 4-Hs, summer camps, Scouts and school-based NASP archery teams nationwide.
NASP is an in-school archery program providing archery instruction at its host schools in grades 4 through 12. Starting in 2002, as an effort to grow archery and motivate young people to learn a life skill and embrace outdoor recreation, it quietly transformed into a life-changing in-school activity that brought out the best in students. Providing standardized equipment allows for inclusion of students from all backgrounds, including students with a range of physical disabilities. Educators all over the country have confirmed that hard-to-reach students have often been eager to engage with an after-school archery club once they learn archery in gym class.
As both a vendor and recipient of grants from the NRA Foundation, NASP is a valued partnership. NASP illustrates why it is important to the Foundation’s mission. To say nothing of the camps, Boy Scouts and 4-H programs that were granted archery supplies in 2023, NASP alone had over 1.3 million student archers in the 2023-24 school year with more than 9,000 participating schools.
NASP surveys its student archers and compiles that data. NASP’s president, Tommy Floyd, said, “We greatly value our NRA Foundation partnership. NASP is committed to supporting the mission of educators and growing the sport of archery. We know that NASP provides 68% of our student-archers with the opportunity to feel connected to their school. We also know that 34% of them feel that NASP is a motivator for academic success. There has never been a more-important time for all advocates of the shooting sports to work together. We all have a part to play, and the NRA Foundation grant program has been a great experience for us.”
Likewise, 18% of archers introduce a family member to archery and roughly 50% go on to pursue hunting and hunter education. Peter Churchbourne, managing director of NRA Hunting, said, “With the muted success of traditional R3 [recruiting, retention and reactivation] efforts, any opportunity to transition a recreational shooter, archery or firearm, into a hunter is very helpful. It’s very encouraging to see the statistics that these new archery shooters are making the leap.” Of particular interest to the Foundation, 33% of NASP archers go on to participate in firearms target shooting.
Recognizing NASP’s power to train and equip the next generation of archers, equipment manufacturers are eager to support the program. This enables NASP to sell archery equipment to its participating schools and the NRA Foundation at very affordable prices.
With recruiting, retention and reactivation of shooters and hunters as a core part of its mission, the NRA Foundation is excited to have the National Archery in Schools Program as a partner. With the help of the Friends of the NRA and NASP, the NRA Foundation will continue to help students and teach freedom.
