A partnership proposal for Mission Aviation Fellowship
That sentence is MAF's entire case for support, and it is also the plain fact of life in the Cayman Islands. In May 2027 we are bringing up to 4,000 flown-in VIPs from major faith-forward organizations onto this island for several days anchored on the Emancipation Day holiday. We would like MAF to have that room.
Into a valley where the road gives out two days short of the village.
To a community that measures the nearest clinic in days on foot, not miles.
Onto a strip of dirt or grass, before the weather closes it for the season.
Out. Which is the difference between a medevac and a funeral.
Going to their own people, in their own language, on the only transport that reaches them.
Grand Cayman, May 2027. Same principle, different payload, and every one of them lands on a runway to get there.
Since 1945 MAF has made one argument over and over. Rise Cayman is a place where the audience is standing on the proof of it.
Aviation and the islands
The Cayman Islands are not connected to anything by land. Everything that arrives here comes by sea or by air, and for most of the last seventy years it has come by air.
Cayman Brac Airways began flying in 1955. Cayman Airways took over as the national flag carrier in 1968 and has been one of the country's defining institutions ever since, running the interisland service that keeps Cayman Brac and Little Cayman attached to Grand Cayman and to the world. Take the aircraft away and the Sister Islands go quiet. There is no alternate route.
MAF makes the same case about a valley in Indonesia or a riverbank in the Congo. Different terrain, identical fact. The airplane is not a convenience in either place, it is the connection, and without it the people there stay cut off from medicine, from commerce, and from the message.
Why we take this personally
Her people have been on Cayman Brac for generations, and the aviation part of that story is not incidental to who they are.
Her grandfather founded Red Carpet Airways. By the late 1970s it was flying nonstop between Clearwater and Cayman Brac and running the interisland hops down to Grand Cayman and Little Cayman on Convairs, DC-3s, and Trislanders. Those flights were how people on the Sister Islands reached a hospital, a market, a school, or a relative. Somebody had to decide that a few hundred people on a small island were worth the fuel and the risk, and he did.
I married into that family. The legacy is not mine by blood, but carrying it forward is part of why Rise exists at all. Relatives of ours work inside Cayman Airways today, and that relationship is already open as we build the group air block for the festival. I fly myself, which is how I know what those old interisland runs cost the people who flew them.
So when MAF describes a pilot mechanic who is the only reliable link between a village and a doctor, nobody in my house needs that explained. We have heard the family version of it at the dinner table for years.
In the Cayman Islands, aviation is not a sector. It is the reason there is anything here to reach. Kenny Klepacki, Founder and CEO, Rise Cayman
MAF was founded in 1945 by pilots coming home from the war who believed the aircraft could carry something better than what they had been carrying. Betty Greene flew the first mission the following year. Small aircraft and stubborn pilots opened up the Cayman Islands in the same era, doing the same unglamorous work of tying small places to big ones.
That is the argument we want on stage in May 2027, and MAF is the organization with eighty years of standing to make it.
The room
Rise Cayman is a ticketed public festival of faith, music, and purpose, open to the entire island. Around it we fly in up to 4,000 VIPs from major faith-forward organizations as part of premium donor packages, and they sit alongside Caymanian families, businesses, and the national holiday crowd.
That guest list is worth pausing on. These are people who already fund missions work, who already sit on boards and mission committees, and who have just proven they will get on an aircraft for something they believe in. MAF spends most of the year explaining to donors why the airplane matters. Here the airplane is what put every one of them in the seat.
The Cayman Islands Government is a sponsor of the event, alongside Caymanian businesses and families and a group of United States organizations and nonprofits. Combined partner audience reach runs in the millions.
The date
Rise runs across several days anchored on the Emancipation Day holiday in May 2027.
When emancipation reached the Cayman Islands in 1835, it arrived without the apprenticeship period imposed across much of the British Caribbean. Freedom came whole and at once, with no waiting attached to it. Caymanians have marked that ever since, and the holiday remains one of the most meaningful days on the national calendar.
For a ministry whose work is reaching people who have been cut off, that frame beats anything a beach could offer. What MAF flies into remote places is the same thing the island celebrates in May, which is that release does not get handed out in installments.
The proposal
We are asking MAF to take the founding position in the aviation and mission category, and to run a donor activation inside the festival while its people are already on the ground.
The founding position holds the aviation and mission category for MAF across the first edition and carries right of first refusal in the years that follow. It comes with stage presence, brand placement across festival environments, inclusion in pre-event promotion running through partner audiences in the millions, and a named role in how the aviation story gets told all week.
Founding partners are also written into the origin story of the event, and that position only exists once.
A private fundraising track for MAF donors and prospects, built inside a festival MAF does not have to produce. We handle the venue, the production, the hospitality, and the arrival logistics. MAF brings its people, its stories, and its ask.
Your donors get an island, a national holiday, a main stage, and a reason to travel. Your development team gets several unhurried days with them, which is the part that is close to impossible to buy at home.
On the ground
Most of these pieces already exist inside MAF. We are supplying the room, the audience, and the week.
Timing
Partner organizations lock their spring 2027 programmes during the fall 2026 planning cycle. Anyone who has not committed by then builds that season around something else, and the category goes to whoever moved first.
We would rather that be MAF, so here is the sequence we are working to.
A working call with MAF development and church engagement leadership. Thirty minutes is enough to know whether this is real.
Term sheet from us covering the founding category, the donor activation scope, hosted seat allocation, and deposit at signature.
Signature, category reserved, and MAF lands inside its own planning cycle rather than fighting it.
Joint invitation build. MAF donor list, Rise hospitality inventory, and the air block worked together.
Programme lock, content capture plan, and final donor confirmations.
Rise Cayman. Several days anchored on the Emancipation Day holiday.
Next step
Bring whoever owns donor engagement and whoever owns the aviation story. We will come with the term sheet already drafted, because the fall planning cycle does not wait for anyone.
About Rise Cayman
The Rise Cayman Music Festival is a ticketed public festival of faith, music, and purpose held in the Cayman Islands, open to the entire island and anchored on the Emancipation Day holiday in May 2027. It is the most influential international gathering for redemptive media, bringing up to 4,000 flown-in VIPs from major faith-forward organizations together with Caymanian locals, businesses, and families, with combined partner audience reach in the millions. Rise Cayman operates under Redemptive Pursuits and is sponsored by the Cayman Islands Government alongside Caymanian businesses and families and United States organizations and nonprofits.
Learn more at www.RiseCayman.com