For Industry Donors
Retired rope and rigging can fund the next workforce. We arrange pickup, recycle material, document the weight, and show your contribution publicly when you opt in.
Donate ScrapMission & Governance
About Ropes for Riggers
For Applicants
If you're entering or advancing in heavy-lift and rigging trades, this fund exists to reduce the training-cost barrier. Applications open Fall 2026.
Notify MeMission
Ropes for Riggers (R4R) redirects the value of retired wire rope and steel rigging - the material our industry treats as waste - into scholarships and education for people entering trades related to heavy lift, crane operation, rigging, ironworking, pile driving, NDT, and sling fabrication. Donated scrap is recycled; the proceeds fund scholarships; the donors get a public thank-you and the option to be matched with trained graduates. Full circle, from waste to training to employment.
Founder Story
That's why I started Ropes for Riggers.
I started in the wire rope and rigging industry 15 years ago with zero experience and zero connections. I was handing out resumes to industrial shops because I knew it paid better than McDonald's. One called me back, and just like that I was fabricating slings rated for hundreds of thousands of pounds, inspecting rigging that could determine whether someone's loved one came home at night, and installing ropes I knew almost nothing about onto cranes worth millions.
I did all of that without a single certificate to my name - just an employer with a good insurance plan and a willingness to call me a "competent person."
That's not how this industry should work. In Canada, only 20% of a crane operator's apprenticeship has to cover rigging theory - and how that 20% is spent is entirely up to the instructor. I've met educators who couldn't tell me the difference between a malleable and forged wire rope clip. It always comes back to the same problem: funding.
Governance
How the work is structured
Board Chair
→ Board of Directors
→ Committees (Finance & Audit, Scholarship & Impact, Industry & Partnerships)
→ Operations (future: Executive Director, Program Manager, Operations Coordinator, Marketing Lead)
→ Industry Ambassadors (external network).
Board Bios
Board members
Dean McDonald
Board Chair
Dean McDonald is the founder and Board Chair of Ropes for Riggers. He has spent 15+ years in wire rope and rigging - fabricating slings, inspecting gear, and installing rope on cranes across British Columbia. He is the owner of Vancouver Rigging Supply Ltd and a long-time advocate for hands-on rigging education. He started R4R to close the training gap he's watched widen for a decade and a half: redirecting the value of scrap rigging into the next generation of heavy-lift professionals.
Ross Muirhead
Director (Inter-Mtn Testing)
Cam Garrison
Director (Oversite Solutions)
Rick
Director / Technical Advisory
Transparency
Every donation to Ropes for Riggers is tracked from the scrapyard ticket to the scholarship award. When your material is picked up, it's weighed, described, and logged against your company. It's recycled through a vetted partner; the revenue is deposited into the R4R account and reported publicly on our leaderboard. Material with instructional value - a birdcaged rope, a bent hook, a gouged shackle - is set aside for partner trade schools rather than scrapped.
Funds stay local. If a province or state contributes scrap material, those funds are tracked and allocated back into that same region. Donors fund the future of their own workforce.
Applying for CRA charity status. Tax receipts begin once status is granted; early donors will be supported retroactively.