We’re Awarding Six Wisconsin Land Trusts with Capacity-Building Grants
On May 11th, we announced that we’ve awarded six capacity-building grants to land trusts in Wisconsin as part of our Land Trust Excellence & Advancement Program (LEAP).
LEAP, a three-year initiative carried out with our national partner the Land Trust Alliance, provides universal and customized services to every land trust in Wisconsin (50 independent organizations) to grow their capacity and sustainability, ensure that they are legally and financially sound, and ultimately, speed the pace of private land conservation across the state.
Beyond the universal services, these six land trusts will receive customized services in the coming year including a guided organizational assessment, implementation plan, individualized mentoring and coaching, and a discretionary grant for use on a major project such as preparation for national land trust accreditation status.
The six land trusts receiving grants include:
- Green Lake Conservancy Foundation
- Ice Age Trail Alliance
- Kettle Moraine Land Trust
- Natural Heritage Land Trust
- Northwoods Land Trust
- Ozaukee Washington Land Trust
For 17 years, we have provided a variety of universal services to land trusts. LEAP builds on and enhances this tradition of quality support to land trusts. In fact, next Thursday all land trust staff and board members are invited to attend a Webinar on board member evaluations, and an in-person workshop on Tax Benefits for land trust work will be held on June 21st in Madison. We will be unveiling more of our universal services through LEAP in the next year.
Our next round of customized services applications will be announced later this fall and we’ll continuously update and refine our universal services to land trusts.
We are thankful to the following organizations for their support of LEAP: The C.S. Mott Foundation, The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation , The Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and Wisconsin Energy Foundation.
Kudos to Gathering Waters and the Land Trust Alliance for launching LEAP and to the six land trusts that recently received capacity building grants. I can honestly vouch that LEAP will be transformative for the Wisconsin land trust community as the similar Advancing Conservancy Excellence program has been for Michigan. I hope all Wisconsin land trusts will take advantage of the universal services offered by LEAP!