Beyond the Boards is RINK’s corporate social responsibility and community arm. It covers all of RINK’s sports and both of its locations in Manitoba and BC. In Manitoba, Beyond the Boards has been working with Linking Hope for a couple of years. The relationship started informally and is now being formalized, with a clearer picture of what both organizations want to do together going forward.

The shared goal is simple: get kids playing sport who would otherwise be priced out of it.

Linking Hope

Volunteers sorting donated clothing at Linking Hope’s Winnipeg warehouse

Linking Hope is a registered Canadian charity based in Winnipeg. It operates as a supply chain between donors with surplus goods and over 100 frontline community agencies that put those goods directly into the hands of people who need them. Sports equipment is one stream of that pipeline. Linking Hope also moves clothing, hygiene products, and household essentials across the province.

For co-founder Rob Crowley, the cost of gear is where the barrier to play hits hardest. “Sport is expensive. For a lot of families, the cost of equipment is the difference between their kid playing and not playing. Having a drop-off point at RINK gets gear moving faster, and it puts the donation in front of a community that knows what working equipment looks like. As this partnership grows, we’ll be putting more equipment on more kids.”

In 2025, in partnership with the Rotary Club of Manitoba, Linking Hope and RINK distributed over 700 pieces of hockey equipment to communities including Oxford House, Split Lake, Bloodvein River, and the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports organization. The 2026 goal is to reach three more Northern communities.

Beyond the Boards

The inaugural Beyond the Boards Classic charity golf tournament

Beyond the Boards is how RINK shows up for the community, across its sports and its locations. Its anchor event is an annual charity golf tournament that raises funds for Manitoba-based causes, with Linking Hope among the organizations the tournament is built to support. Programming runs alongside RINK’s calendar and pulls in athletes, staff, and partners.

The most visible piece of the partnership today is the drop-off program. RINK’s Oak Bluff facility is a public drop-off hub for Linking Hope’s sports equipment donations, hockey gear primarily but any sport. Equipment left at RINK gets collected, sorted at Linking Hope’s warehouse, and redistributed through their network.

“Beyond the Boards exists so RINK can put its facilities, network, and overall reach behind organizations doing real community work,” said Chad Bisko, CEO of RINK. “Linking Hope already knows where the equipment needs to go. Our job is to keep filling the bin and figure out what else we can do to back them up.”

What’s next

The drop-off program is the starting point, not the whole plan. The two organizations are working on expanding the partnership in four directions:

  • Growing the on-site equipment drive at Oak Bluff, with more visibility, more donation pushes through the year, and a clearer pipeline from bin to family.
  • Getting RINK Hockey Academy student-athletes into the community, including hands-on work decommissioning donated equipment at Linking Hope’s warehouse, taking apart unusable gear to recover the parts that still have life in them.
  • Folding Linking Hope into the Beyond the Boards fundraising calendar, with the annual golf tournament as the anchor.
  • Pairing RINK’s Regional Development group with Linking Hope’s community work, trading expertise both ways: equipment flowing into the Manitoba communities RINK travels to, and RINK’s qualified coaches and trainers showing up at community events Linking Hope is part of.

This work sits inside Beyond the Boards’ Manitoba footprint, where Linking Hope is the local partner. The longer-term plan is to extend Beyond the Boards into Kelowna with a BC-based partnership that operates the same way: a local charity that knows where the gear and the support need to go, with RINK’s facilities, network, and people behind them.

About Beyond the Boards
Beyond the Boards is the corporate social responsibility and community arm of RINK. It anchors RINK’s community impact work across both Manitoba and BC operations and runs an annual charity golf tournament supporting Manitoba-based causes. RINK is a multi-sport athlete development organization with locations in Oak Bluff, Manitoba and Kelowna, BC. Divisions include RINK Hockey Academy (RHA), R1 Hockey, On-Ice Development, Testify Performance, and RINK Golf Academy.

About Linking Hope
Linking Hope is a registered Canadian charity based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It connects businesses and individuals donating surplus goods with over 100 frontline community agencies across Winnipeg and Northern communities. linkinghope.ca