Bob Augsburger: The Tie that Bound Us Together

Beginning in 1979, when the Brandywine Conservancy hosted the first get together of land trusts to discuss how we should prepare for the expiration of easement legislation passed in 1976 that would expire in 1980, it became obvious that land trusts had to develop a unified voice to meet new challenges. With the introduction of legislation in late 1979 that would have eliminated easements for agricultural and open space purposes, the conservancy and another land trust set up a network to coordinate a lobbying effort with the help of Kingsbury Browne and Tom Schmidt of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. We quickly learned that to succeed over time, we would have to have an organization that would develop standards for easements and appraisals and advance the state of the art in landsaving. The congressional committee had doubted our motives, considering us to be promoters of tax dodges for pampered wealthy folks and farmers.

After we secured the “open space including farmland” language in the legislation, Kingsbury took a sabbatical in 1981 to tour the American “land trustscape” and set the stage for a formative convocation at the Lincoln Institute that led to the creation in 1982 of the Land Trust Exchange. In 1983, when Steve Small at the IRS began talking to us about the regulations he was to write, it was quite evident to us that we had to work fast to close the professionalism gap.

Our growing board had big ideas and big plans, but was woefully short of enough funding to support a staff and the research needed to develop handbooks on easements, monitoring and enforcement, baselines, etc. The National Trust, the Trust for Public Land and others helped fund our first ventures, but we needed a more secure base. None of us had a national perspective on fundraising, which required a steady and knowledgeable hand. We needed a seasoned player. How we found Bob Augsburger is lost in my memory, but his credentials said that he thought big and he was agreeable to chairing the board.

The challenge for Bob was great. He had to meld an effective board from a motley crew of hard charging, risk–taking innovators on one side and more conservative process-types on the other, and guide us through strategic planning and fundraising to create a modern organization. It’s a tribute to his consensual style flavored with wit and humor that we came together and went from facing extinction, or at least hibernation, to an organization that grew with confidence and solid achievements. He felt right at home with these young hard-partying folks and in fact led us in occasional mischief. Jean Hocker has inimitably prepared a succinct and eloquent statement about Bob that few of us could top and to which I subscribe.