Our Mission
Origin Story
The BRO Foundation was forged from lived experience in high consequence backcountry environments, where good intentions are not enough and the margin for error disappears quickly. We saw a recurring gap: people willing to help, but without clear standards for training, communication, and risk assessment.
The Foundation formalizes a higher standard for backcountry public service: preparation before response, judgment before action, restraint before risk, and accountability after every operation, including the willingness to decline recoveries when risk thresholds are exceeded.
Our Commitment
We are a nonprofit public service organization. Our work spans preparedness education, volunteer training, field safety, communications readiness, and responsible recovery support, each an expression of community resilience and environmental restraint.
Recovery is one application of disciplined field judgment, not the sum of our purpose. We treat every operation as a continuous cycle: prepare, respond, recover, review. This is only possible because of community support and direct donations from people who believe this service should exist.
Board of Directors
BRO Foundation is governed by board officers responsible for mission direction, financial stewardship, governance, accountability, and responsible public service decision-making.
Mark Harshany, MD
Founder and Board Chair
Mark applies a career in military medicine to the Foundation, treating recovery as a system where mitigating risk comes first. As Founder, he built the organization's protocols around the questions field medicine demands: what are the hazards, how do we prepare, and what rules keep decisions objective under pressure.
Ronnie Boutte, PhD
Treasurer and Director of Finance & Compliance
Ronnie provides financial oversight, ensuring donations, grants, and equipment purchases are handled with discipline and transparency. He safeguards the Foundation's credibility through clear financial controls and compliance with nonprofit reporting obligations.
Ira Roper
Secretary and Director of Governance
Ira maintains the Foundation's governance framework: board records, meeting minutes, resolutions, and policy documentation. His role ensures clear decision making, documented accountability, and continuity as the organization grows.
Mark Harshany, MD
Founder and Board Chair
Mark applies a career in military medicine to the Foundation, treating recovery as a system where mitigating risk comes first. As Founder, he built the organization's protocols around the questions field medicine demands: what are the hazards, how do we prepare, and what rules keep decisions objective under pressure.
Ronnie Boutte, PhD
Treasurer and Director of Finance & Compliance
Ronnie provides financial oversight, ensuring donations, grants, and equipment purchases are handled with discipline and transparency. He safeguards the Foundation's credibility through clear financial controls and compliance with nonprofit reporting obligations.
Ira Roper
Secretary and Director of Governance
Ira maintains the Foundation's governance framework: board records, meeting minutes, resolutions, and policy documentation. His role ensures clear decision making, documented accountability, and continuity as the organization grows.
Medical & Advisory Board
Providing expert medical oversight and specialized guidance across field safety, organizational ethics, and environmental stewardship.
Aidan Harshany
Director of Field Safety and Ethics
Aidan brings pre-hospital emergency medicine into technical recovery. He oversees field medical readiness and evaluates deployments by weighing environmental hazards, mechanisms of injury, and triage capacity in austere settings, keeping evidence-based safety standards and operator welfare at the center of every operation.
AnnMarie Harshany
Director of Environmental Conservation
AnnMarie aligns the Foundation's public service with responsible land stewardship. She guides our minimal-impact extraction standards and, through partnerships with conservation groups and land agencies, holds the organization accountable to keeping its footprint as small as possible during recovery.
Aidan Harshany
Director of Field Safety and Ethics
Aidan brings pre-hospital emergency medicine into technical recovery. He oversees field medical readiness and evaluates deployments by weighing environmental hazards, mechanisms of injury, and triage capacity in austere settings, keeping evidence-based safety standards and operator welfare at the center of every operation.
AnnMarie Harshany
Director of Environmental Conservation
AnnMarie aligns the Foundation's public service with responsible land stewardship. She guides our minimal-impact extraction standards and, through partnerships with conservation groups and land agencies, holds the organization accountable to keeping its footprint as small as possible during recovery.
Together, our leadership provides deliberate oversight focused on protecting people, responders, equipment, and the land, while reinforcing the principle that in high risk environments, judgment and restraint are as important as capability.
What We Do
Our work extends beyond a single mission profile. We serve the public through education, training, communications, and disciplined field support, strengthening the communities that depend on the backcountry.
Community Preparedness & Response
Building whole community readiness before incidents happen. We help individuals, families, volunteers, and backcountry users plan, organize, and prepare so that capability exists before it is needed, and can be applied responsibly when it is.
Field Safety and Wilderness First Aid
Supporting wilderness first aid, scene safety, hazard mitigation, and patient centered decision making in remote and austere environments.
Training and Exercises
Developing accountable volunteers through structured training and realistic exercises that build proficiency in communications, restraint, safety, ethics, and responsible field operations.
Communications Capability
Building radio communication knowledge, amateur radio readiness, and interoperable field communications capability for remote environments where infrastructure is limited or absent.
Responsible Recovery Support
Providing no cost recovery assistance when appropriate, with a deliberate emphasis on risk assessment, safety, and environmental protection at every stage of the operation.
Land Stewardship and Access
Supporting responsible recreation, hazard mitigation, trail preservation, environmental restraint, and continued access to public lands.
Judgment Before Action
These three principles are the doctrine every operation runs on. Success is measured by sound decisions, disciplined skill, and respect for the land, not by speed, visibility, or volume.
Sound Judgment
Every operation begins with a deliberate read of the situation: the hazards, the terrain, the people, and the window to act safely. We commit when the assessment supports it and choose the safer path when it does not. Clear thinking under pressure is the first capability we build and the one we trust most.
Controlled Capability
We bring real skill and equipment to the field and apply it with precision. Technique, training, and the right tool matched to the moment let us solve hard problems without escalating risk. Capability is strongest when it is measured, rehearsed, and under control.
Environment First
The land outlives any single recovery. We favor controlled, low impact methods that protect terrain, trails, and continued access. Doing the work well means leaving the ground we operate on as intact as we found it.
Sound judgment. Controlled capability. Environment first.
Support Training, Safety, and Service
Your donation supports community preparedness education, wilderness first aid training, volunteer readiness, communications resources, safety equipment, responsible recovery support, and public service programs.
Every contribution helps BRO Foundation build capability before emergencies happen and serve responsibly when people need help.
Nonprofit Status
BRO Foundation is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) public charity. Donations may be tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Legal Name: Backcountry Recovery Operations Foundation
EIN: 41-3914685
Location: West Jordan, Utah
Status: Active and accepting tax-deductible donations
BRO Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit built on preparedness, training, and disciplined public service. We invest in community readiness, wilderness first aid, volunteer development, communications capability, environmental stewardship, and responsible recovery support. As an independent, nongovernmental organization, we serve alongside the communities and agencies we support, never in place of them.
The Backcountry Recovery Operations Foundation is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) tax exempt public charity (EIN 41-3914685). Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.