2022 Schedule – Central Time

In cities across America, too many neighborhoods struggle with undue concentrations of stagnation, disinvestment, and poverty. Past decisions have led to disparities in community opportunities. Land trusts need to help ensure that new investments in parks benefit everyone -- especially the people and families who need it most. Most funding for parks is generated through voter-approved measures at the state and local level. Since 1988, voters in cities, counties, and states have approved over 2,800 ballot measures, creating $83 billion in new funding for parks and conservation. In 2019, New Orleans voters approved an important ballot measure that intentionally directed funding to park-underserved areas of the community. Land trusts have been involved in many of these successful ballot measures, developing their advocacy chops and, in some cases, truly transforming their organizations. This workshop provides land trusts with the tools needed to lead or support ballot measures. Learn from communities that have successfully taken their case to the voters to create new funding for historically park under-served neighborhoods.

Do you prefer to sit at your desk crafting conservation plans, managing programs, and writing grants, or would you rather go for a walk, go skiing or even flyfishing? That’s major donor fundraising in a nutshell. In this seminar, two living and breathing executive directors will explain how a good major donor gift program will empower your conservation goals and allow you to sleep better at night (and get out from behind your computer). We’ll provide tales of fundraising tragedy and triumph. Plus we’re funny.

Maintaining and growing relationships with members, donors, supporters, and the community can be a challenge. You’re not alone if you have had to set aside long-standing strategies and test out lots of new methods and ideas to stay connected in recent years.Use all that you’ve learned about what works (and what doesn’t) to create a powerful, effective marketing plan to help your land trust grow membership, participation, and support. This session uses the process of creating a strategic marketing plan to integrate your lessons learned with the best practices of marketing and outreach – resulting in a plan, messages, and strategies that reach, connect with, and engage audiences and reach your goals. Whether your land trust wants to reconnect with long-time supporters, reach a younger, more diverse audience, or attract more members, this workshop provides the steps, tools, and templates you need to get started. And we’ll highlight land trust staff and examples to inspire and talk through the real work of refreshing and

This workshop will demonstrate how land trusts of any size can access federal funds to conserve wildlife. With two-thirds of land in the Lower 48 under private ownership, many imperiled species depend on private land. As stewards of 56 million acres of private land, land trusts are well-positioned to be leaders in stemming the current biodiversity crisis. Defenders of Wildlife will unveil a new tool for land trusts that helps identify the federal program that best suits their unique situation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service will describe how land trusts of any size can engage with the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, Coastal Program, and National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants Program. The Woodlands Conservancy based near New Orleans will provide a case study of a land trust with only two full-time staff members that secured funds from the USDA Conservation Stewardship Program for habitat enhancement. The Land Trust for Louisiana will provide a case study of a land trust with only two full-time staff members who secured funding from the USDA Agricultural Conservation Easement Program for the first Agricultural Land Easement in Louisiana to conserve a large rice farm for bird species of conservation concern. By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to: o Identify opportunities for land trusts and federal agencies to work together to conserve wildlife o Understand the basics of how to develop a competitive application to receive federal funds o Understand how land trusts with small staffs can navigate federal requirements and processes for meaningful partnerships.

A well written proposal, along with clear and concise supporting materials is just one element to receiving grant funding. What is equally important, and less discussed, is the communication with a funder before the proposal is written, as well as the continued relationship during the life an awarded grant. This session outlines the elements of a successful grant application, how to collaborate with a funder, which, along with attention to a few key details, can make the difference between a large grant and a large disappointment. This session will reinforce those things that may seem obvious, that preparation and developing and maintaining relationships with funders leads to long term success. The session will also include an informal and sometimes humorous and insightful look into how a grant application is reviewed and what areas receive the most attention, as well as key aspects of the applicant/funder dynamic. The presenter spent 20 years at land trusts successfully raising funding from foundation and government grants before become a grant maker himself and combines those experiences into sound advice.

Keep It Connected is a program of the Heart of the Rockies Initiative. We are a partnership of 27 local, regional, and national land trusts working in five states and two provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Washington) across 315-million acres in the Central Rockies of North America. The single largest impediment to lasting conservation of the region’s wildlife connectivity is access to capital funds. Based on the best science available, Keep it Connected showcases the region’s most important private lands for wildlife connectivity that are ready to conserve now. The projects in this portfolio are mature, seeking capstone funding to be completed, and help private foundations and philanthropists easily sort through and identify the most critical, ready to protect, private lands that fit their values and mission. Keep It Connected helps land trusts respond to the growing demand of landowners seeking tools to retain the agricultural, wildlife, and open space values of their land, with a particular focus on lands that contribute to sustaining wildlife connectivity. Our secure, searchable portfolio highlights one active project from each of the 27 land trusts in our network. It is designed to find the funding necessary to move each project to completion and bring the next project waiting in the wings into the spotlight, therefore increasing the pace of conservation. We seek to share the lessons learned to date with our colleagues who might be thinking about ambitious collective projects to respond to the ongoing biodiversity and climate crisis.

Moving from fundraising basics to a major campaign is a big leap - one that takes keen understanding of what it will take for a campaign to succeed. This session focuses on the pillars of strength needed to support an effective campaign, reflected in 6 Cs - case, constituency, capacity, capability, culture, and climate. Participants will explore these dimensions of fundraising readiness and learn how to assess and improve on them.

Fundraising campaigns in Northern California have been analyzed using predictive analytics models to determine the degree to which past behavior, demographics, charitable giving, wealth profiles, and neighborhood characteristics predict response to direct mail appeals. In this session, the presenters will compare a half dozen different models that predict which past donors will give to a current campaign and models that predict how new prospects will respond. We will discuss practical approaches for targeting direct mail. Campaigns can be made more cost effective by eliminating mail sent to people who are unlikely to respond and by analyzing variables to assess which characteristics most influence response. Interesting patterns were identified such as the proximity curve — how response varies by distance to the land conservation project, and the donor decay curve — the mathematical function that describes how current donors become lapsed donors. The findings can be used by any land trust and have broad implications for data collection, estimation methods, targeting, revenue optimization, and the procurement of lists for future appeals.

Legacy Match Campaigns are matching grant campaigns that incentivize donors to disclose that they have left the land trust in their wills. For every donor who does advise the land trust of their bequest intentions in writing, a set amount of money is released from the grant. In this workshop, we will explore Legacy Match Campaigns from two different perspectives – the perspective of a donor putting up the matching grant and the perspective of the land trusts running the campaigns. We’ll discuss securing the matching grant itself, planning out the campaign, and follow-through strategies. And we’ll split up into discussion groups to further imagine more localized applications. This is an idea that can and should be applicable everywhere and with land trusts of just about any size.

We face systems-level challenges in today’s world, including addressing the interwoven climate, biodiversity, and environmental justice crises. Such challenges reveal the need for conservation to be a systems-level solution, rooted in an understanding of the web of interconnections—biological and sociocultural—in which we operate. Working at the landscape scale is critical for solving these systems-level challenges. As land trusts embrace landscape scale conservation, collaboration among land trusts and with many additional stakeholders is essential to success, but there is little funding available to support collaborative processes. As one practitioner notes, “Grantors are just interested in the project…it’s like they think that the part that makes the project happen, the collaborative structure that allows us to do this work—all of that just happens on its own and doesn’t take any resources or investment.” In reality though, building and sustaining the collaboration that yields impactful conservation projects requires significant time, energy, and skill. Using the Landscape Conservation Catalyst Fund as a case study, representatives of two land trusts will talk about how Catalyst Fund investments helped them build effective landscape collaboration. We will then explore the opportunity for land trusts to participate in increasing national investments in collaborative processes to bring conservation to scale as a practical response to the systems-level challenges we face. The workshop will conclude with a discussion among participants of strategies for land trusts to sustain their collaborative approaches to conservation.