TDS
The Delos Society
We Invest In Creators Who Document The World
A New Foundation for Human Exploration Begins Here
Storytelling Is In Crisis
Human exploration and storytelling are in crisis. Despite staggering advances in equipment, digital imaging, and streaming technology, today's generation of frontline National Geographic-style explorers, photographers, filmmakers, feature writers, and content creators lack the funding and support that were once available to fund bold, boundary-pushing expeditions and assignments to document the planet's mission-critical frontiers. We refuse to live in a world where these kinds of epic stories and human adventures go untold and unexecuted, and whose most miraculous moments and discoveries can't be leveraged for direct impact, advocacy, education, and action.
That's where The Delos Society comes in. In a world saturated with synthetic content, we support authentic, first-person storytelling from the field based on deeply-felt lived experiences centered around real people, cultures, landscapes, wildlife, forces, phenomena, activism, and current events. We fund and force multiply explorers and storytellers who think big, dream bigger, embrace risk, challenge the status quo, and whose work carries the human spirit of exploration and adventure embodied by legends like Jacques Cousteau, Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, and Yvon Chuinard into the next generation
Restoring The Human Narrative
Photography, filmmaking, and the written word (yes, writing) — a.k.a. storytelling — are the backbone of modern day activism and conservation (remember the adage: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, and we will love only what we understand"?) Ansel Adams' iconic images of Half Dome helped persuade Congress to designate Yosemite Valley a National Park. Hugo van Lawick, the Dutch wildlife cinematographer who shot thousands of hours of Jane Goodall with her chimpanzees, helped save dozens of iconic African animals from extinction. And modern ocean explorers like Paul Nicklen, Cristina Mittermeier, and Brian Skerry have inspired the creation of entirely new marine protected areas in critical biodiversity hot spots threatened by plastics and overfishing like the Galapagos Islands through their storytelling.
Yet, in recent years, the TV, media, and outdoor industries have shifted away from these "Patagonia-style" expeditions, assignments, and sponsorships that once brought the world's most important stories from the edges of earth into our living rooms and made them real so people would act. The Delos Society was founded to restore this support, revive storytelling as a vital tool for conservation, and reconnect donors seeking a proven, direct-impact way to save the planet back to the action again
Origin Story
A few days before Christmas, 2002, I received an email from a caver named Chris Nicola who claimed to have just discovered evidence of four Jewish families that had survived the Holocaust living in sensory deprivation underground for over two years in what is now one of the world's longest caves in eastern Ukraine (currently 87.3 miles). If true, Nicola's story would amount to one of humanity's greatest survival stories: 38 normal people — merchants and farmers, not elite alpinists or military-grade explorers — outfoxing the Nazis in a game of cat-and-mouse akin to Anne Frank meets Ernest Shackleton's Endurance. Proving it, however, would require an extremely complex and extended underground caving expedition to a remote area of Ukraine still heavy with antisemitism, suspicion of Westerners, and memories of the Cold War. The odds of finding intact artifacts or some other physical evidence that the story was true after 70 years of floods and erosion were also close to zero. But Nicola was on a mission and undeterred.
In July the following year, backed by $21,000 from National Geographic, Nicola and a team of elite Ukrainian cavers ventured into the "Priest's Grotto" cave (technically called Ozernaya) where we discovered dozens of artifacts two miles from the entrance that verified the survivors' story, including the families' prized millstone (pictured above) which they used to grind grain into flour to stave off starvation until the Russians liberated Ukraine. In June, 2004, this extraordinary story was published as one of the longest feature articles ever in National Geographic Adventure magazine and was eventually adapted into a book as well as a feature length documentary that premiered at leading film festivals around the world. The Secret Of Priest's Grotto (a.k.a. No Place On Earth on Netflix) is now considered one of the most improbable and inspirational human survival stories in history. And all it took was $21,000 to begin to unearth it.
How many more stories like this lie hidden around the world waiting to be discovered if the next generation of intrepid explorers and frontline storytellers is empowered with the support, infrastructure, and financial resources to tell them?
Introducing The Next Frontier of Mission-Driven Philanthropy
Funding Proven Human Impact In The Age of AI
An historic transfer of wealth is currently underway down through a generation whose very understanding of the world and what's humanly possible was shaped by photographers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, and long-form feature writers set loose on the planet by National Geographic, the BBC, Royal Geographic Society, and magazines like the New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, and Vanity Fair.
A large share of this wealth now sits locked up in real estate, land, boats, and yachts that are a costly financial and emotional burden for their owners, estates, and heirs. Many of these assets are also largely illiquid in today's markets, subject to steep capital gains taxes, and, at best, worth a fraction of their owners' investment if sold. The Delos Society turns these dormant, under-utilized assets into critical financial fuel for the world's next generation of frontline explorers and storytellers by providing essential support for their mission-critical expeditions, self assignments, long-form features, short films, and independent creator channels, including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok as well as personal websites that bring vital stories about ocean exploration, wildlife conservation, new scientific discoveries, and the effects of climate change to tens of millions of viewers daily around the world.
In the process, donors, sponsors, boat and property owners, and corporate charities who partner with us gain an invaluable estate planning advantage, are able to engage directly with the stories, causes, and campaigns most important to them, and help support the modern age of exploration and digitally-native storytelling.
Become An Origin Partner
The Delos Society's Origin Partners are founding sponsors — including entertainment, media, outdoor, travel, and technology companies — whose vision and goals for impact and engagement align with our mission to sustain exploration and storytelling as essential pillars for long-term environmental conservation, advocacy, policy, and education
Our Programs
Grants & Partnerships
Grants & Partnerships
Grants & Partnerships
We are currently living in the greatest age of storytelling in human history. Yet, paradoxically, the most moving, powerful, and critical stories from the outermost edges of Planet Earth are increasingly going unreported. We were founded to help right this imbalance by financing narrative expeditions and frontline assignments in the tradi
We are currently living in the greatest age of storytelling in human history. Yet, paradoxically, the most moving, powerful, and critical stories from the outermost edges of Planet Earth are increasingly going unreported. We were founded to help right this imbalance by financing narrative expeditions and frontline assignments in the tradition of the British Royal and National Geographic Societies and old school magazines like the Atlantic, New Yorker, and Vanity Fair in order to nurture the next generation of bold, boundary-pushing explorer-storytellers. Our grants and awards span funding for expeditions and assignments to capture a once-in-a-lifetime natural phenomena or breaking news stories to ongoing support for long-term conservation, local activism, or humanitarian documentary work in partnership with leading outdoor apparel brands, legacy media outlets, and global environmental organizations — and everything in between. If you've got an audacious idea to save the planet or tell a story about the human connection with the natural world, we want to hear from you
P.E.A.C.E. Labs
Grants & Partnerships
Grants & Partnerships
Performance. Exploration. Adventure. Creativity. Enterprise. The foundations of human thriving and innovation have never been more important as they are right now in the Age of AI. At the same time, the core principles of adventure psychology and the Explorer's Mindset — including personal agency, intrinsic motivation, and goal stacking —
Performance. Exploration. Adventure. Creativity. Enterprise. The foundations of human thriving and innovation have never been more important as they are right now in the Age of AI. At the same time, the core principles of adventure psychology and the Explorer's Mindset — including personal agency, intrinsic motivation, and goal stacking — are coalescing into an explosive cultural zeitgeist around peak performance, neuroplasticity, biohacking, and longevity science that reaches millions of people daily.
We believe this mainstream convergence of adventure, psychology, neuroscience, and technology represents a rare tipping point — not only for science, entrepreneurship, and the environment but also for human health and wellbeing. This is why we created P.E.A.C.E. Labs. We are a collective of explorers, adventurers, performance psychologists, neuroscientists, entrepreneurs, peak performers, and world record holders studying the Explorer's Mindset, the Adventure Brain, and the Spirit of Discovery. On the ground this means we explore how adventure and outdoor sports boost mood and cognitive functioning, and study why peak performers across disciplines (mountaineers, founders, SEALs, CEOs) share similar traits when it comes to goal setting and problem solving. Commercially, think next-generation "cognitive" wearables and apps that track Emotional Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery (’Strava for the Mind’), premium podcast, online, and streaming content featuring global leaders in business, tech, politics, sports, and entertainment. For more information, please visit www.peacelabs.co
Assignment: Life
Grants & Partnerships
Assignment: Life
Assignment: Life is our own boundary-pushing magnum opus: a 5-year campaign to build out a global, mobile, multi-nodal network of storytelling platforms (i.e., expedition yachts) positioned in critical biodiversity hot spots and designed to give frontline photographers, cinematographers, explorers, adventurers, and digital content creator
Assignment: Life is our own boundary-pushing magnum opus: a 5-year campaign to build out a global, mobile, multi-nodal network of storytelling platforms (i.e., expedition yachts) positioned in critical biodiversity hot spots and designed to give frontline photographers, cinematographers, explorers, adventurers, and digital content creators unhindered access to some of the wildest and hardest to reach places on earth that are only reachable by boat. Creatively and generationally, Assignment: Life will give veteran photographers and filmmakers the chance to work alongside the next wave of emerging Millennial and Gen Z digital-visual artists on location for extended periods of time and provide them with the access and support required to pursue their most ambitious personal projects
Delos Studios
BoatsForNature.org
BoatsForNature.org
Traditional entertainment, media, and TV are in a tailspin and no one is immune. Social media, influencer culture, and the streaming wars have upended the age-old formula for adventure, natural history, wildlife, and human cultural programming, and as a result, today's emerging explorers, storytellers, photographers, and filmmakers must f
Traditional entertainment, media, and TV are in a tailspin and no one is immune. Social media, influencer culture, and the streaming wars have upended the age-old formula for adventure, natural history, wildlife, and human cultural programming, and as a result, today's emerging explorers, storytellers, photographers, and filmmakers must find new ways to fund, produce, and distribute their work and meet their audiences where they are. Delos Studios works with top independent production companies, showrunners, networks, and streamers to help our storytellers and grantees develop their projects and transform their expeditions and adventures into epic documentaries, motion pictures, and dramatic limited series (think Free Solo, My Octopus Teacher, Nyad). We also produce our own in-house programming spanning feature films to silent shorts that we distribute on our own platforms and channels and through select media and online partnerships
BoatsForNature.org
BoatsForNature.org
BoatsForNature.org
Our flagship boat and yacht charitable donation program and estate planning tool. There are an estimated 12 million recreational boats in the U.S., 95% of which are used less than twice a month. This represents one of the world's largest and most valuable underutilized asset classes. We relieve owners of the expense, risks, and burden of
Our flagship boat and yacht charitable donation program and estate planning tool. There are an estimated 12 million recreational boats in the U.S., 95% of which are used less than twice a month. This represents one of the world's largest and most valuable underutilized asset classes. We relieve owners of the expense, risks, and burden of boat ownership while providing vital financial support for the next generation of explorers, adventurers, and storytellers in the process. If a boat meets our donation criteria, we'll pick it up anywhere in the country in 48 hours and our proprietary, cloud-based technology stack handles all of the donation and tax deduction paperwork securely online in partnership with your CPA or attorney. Donate your boat and gain an essential strategic tax planning advantage in exchange for a planet that you can pass down to your kids. Simple as that
Discovery Fleet
BoatsForNature.org
Discovery Fleet
Our Discovery Fleet will be a first of its kind: a privately funded, fully-donated, professionally-maintained fleet of sail and powered expedition vessels, customized and retrofitted by us to function as self-sufficient mobile storytelling and exploratory platforms. Ranging from nimble, shallow draft river boats to aluminum, double-hulled
Our Discovery Fleet will be a first of its kind: a privately funded, fully-donated, professionally-maintained fleet of sail and powered expedition vessels, customized and retrofitted by us to function as self-sufficient mobile storytelling and exploratory platforms. Ranging from nimble, shallow draft river boats to aluminum, double-hulled motoryachts designed for polar waters, these purpose-built vessels will be available for use by Delos Society grantees to support their work and expeditions and will also be available for short and long-term charter by scientific organizations, ecotourism operations, and television and film production companies. 100% of the proceeds from The Delos Society's Fleet charter operations will be directly re-invested into our organization, creating an essential self-supporting , on-going source of funding that is not reliant on donations and charitable giving