Seminars
Some topics require more time than is allotted for a Rally workshop. Daylong and half day seminars are your chance to experience high quality, intensive trainings and delve further into important issues in land conservation. Choose from 16 diverse seminars that will be taught by prominent, experienced course leaders. Come away with fresh ideas and a new understanding of the subject matter!
Register early - many seminars sell out quickly.
Helpful Symbols
To assist you in choosing a seminar that is just right for you, your skill level and interests, look for these symbols:
* indicates seminars of interest to board members
CLE indicates continuing legal education credits
Continuing Legal Education Credit
The Alliance will apply for Continuing Legal Education credit for workshop sessions in the Legal Issues track as well as those workshops denoted with aCLE symbol and for seminars 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, and 15. The cost for obtaining CLE credit is $100 per person, per state. Please indicate which state(s) you are applying for when you register.
Lunch will be served to participants who register for one daylong seminar or two half day seminars. Participants who register for one half day seminar may purchase a lunch ticket in advance for $35. No onsite lunch tickets will be sold.
Seminar Prices
The first seminar price indicates the rate for staff/board of Alliance Member Land Trusts, and the second seminar price indicates the rate for Partners & Others.For questions about any of these seminars, please e-mail rally@lta.org.
Tuesday, September 17
Daylong Seminars
SEM-1
Get F.I.T. – Fundraising Inspiration & Tools to Transform Your Fundraising*
Sarah Brooks
8:30am – 4:30pm
Basic/Intermediate | $165/$195
Make this the year you help get your organization's fundraising efforts in shape. In this fast-paced, interactive session taught by a land trust peer with a track record of fundraising success, you'll learn how to evaluate your organization's current fundraising fitness and identify the strategies, tools, and organizational attitudes you'll need to help you meet your fundraising goals. Board members, executive directors, and fundraising staff will all have a chance to analyze real world examples of land trust fundraising wins and learn how to make an effective fundraising fitness plan to reach your organization's mission without breaking a sweat!
SEM-2
ABC’s of Conservation Easement Stewardship: Amendments, Baselines and Comprehensive MonitoringCLE *
Jane Ellen Hamilton, Renee Bouplon
8:30am – 4:30pm
Basic/Intermediate | $165/$195
Standards and Practices Curriculum
Have you ever struggled with making sure your monitoring program is comprehensive, effective and efficient? Have you wondered if your baselines contain everything you need, nothing you don’t need, and whether they can be useful for other reasons than supporting a particular easement? Have you wrestled with a difficult easement amendment proposal? If so, this interactive daylong seminar, taught by two experienced land trust practitioners is for you! Elements of three Alliance curriculum courses will be covered (Conservation Easement Stewardship, Conservation Easement Drafting and Documentation, Managing Conservation Easements in Perpetuity) and practices 11B, 11C, 11I.
SEM-3
Advocating for Conservation Success: How Do I Get from Here to There?*
Lynne Sherrod, Anne Garnett
8:30am – 4:30pm
Basic | $165/$195
Everyone advocates for something. Are you effective and is it time well spent? This highly interactive course will aid in understanding the political and cultural climate which provides opportunities and challenges for the cause of land protection and addresses the "how" and "why" it can be incorporated into your overloaded schedule. It will also address cultivating and maintaining effective relationships with both policy makers and the media. You will leave armed with a personalized organizational action plan and the necessary skills for advocacy and organizational messaging conducive to conservation initiatives at the local, state and national level. Case studies from across the country will help shed light on real life examples about what works, what doesn't and why.
SEM-4
Conservation Easement Drafting and DocumentationCLE
Laurel Florio
9:00am – 5:00pm
Basic/Intermediate | $180/$210
Standards and Practices Curriculum
This course will give you an overview of the importance of conservation easement project plans, the negotiation and drafting of conservation easements, and an overview of the preparation of baseline documentation reports. You will learn how to draft a baseline documentation policy or procedure, and how to create comprehensive baseline reports. In short, you will have the knowledge and tools to take your easement and baseline drafting to the next level. Sound drafting of documentation is one of the keys to successful stewardship and easement permanence. Practices covered: 8G (Project Planning), 9E (Easement Drafting), 11B (Baseline Documentation Report). Attendees will receive a copy of Conservation Easement Drafting and Documentation by Jane Ellen Hamilton.
SEM-5
The Audacity of Perpetuity: Building Organizational Strength and Resilience*
Marc Smiley
9:00am – 5:00pm
Basic/Intermediate | $165/$195
The audacity of perpetuity demands a closer look at the strategies for creating a sustainable organization. It starts with people – without great people as volunteers and staff, we will never get to the rest. It concludes with fundraising – without fuel land trusts can’t save land and manage it forever. In between are plans that help us define what we want to accomplish and how we will get there. This seminar is the full-meal deal: how to build the people, plans and structures needed to protect land effectively today and sustainably forever.
Half Day Seminars
SEM-6
Managing Risk: Succeeding at Easement DisputesCLE
Elizabeth Wroblicka, Sylvia Bates
8:00am – 12:00pm
Intermediate/Advanced | $90/$105
This seminar is geared toward reducing the risk of losing a conservation easement violation dispute by highlighting the link between drafting, stewardship and enforcement. Beginning with drafting, we will discuss why some easement provisions are more difficult to monitor and enforce, such as affirmative landowner obligations. We will debate the pros and cons of referring to management plans, and discuss whether it is good practice to reference other laws that also restrict a landowner's uses. Next, we look at the land trust’s stewardship program, from baseline content and monitoring reports to recordkeeping procedures. Finally, we will discuss recommended steps to take when a potential violation is discovered.
SEM-7
Water Rights in Western Conservation EasementsCLE
Peter Nichols, Jeff Appel, Peter Dykstra
8:00am – 12:00pm
All | $90/$105
This seminar is intended to develop participants' ability to recognize and follow good practices when including water rights in conservation easements. The session will highlight current practices throughout the West, drawing from the experience of the panelists and participants. Building on this base, the seminar will develop participant's understanding of the legal and practical water issues that should be considered in a conservation easement through participatory problem solving in small groups. Finally, practitioners will take home some simple yet comprehensive tools to use for good practices, including checklists and model conservation easement deed language.
SEM-8
Closing the Gap to Success with Bridge Financing
Clint Miller, Reggie Hall, Ole Amundsen III
8:00am – 12:00pm
All | $90/$105
All too often, land trusts are under-capitalized or may not be prepared to pursue their priority land deals within the time frame that the market and seller dictate. This seminar is designed to help land trust professionals enhance the business acumen of their organization. By understanding the art of bridge financing a project, attendees will be able to take an introspective look at best practices in their organization to determine whether their organization is on the right path to achieving their financial and conservation goals.
SEM-9
Savvy Risk Taking and PreventionCLE
Leslie Ratley-Beach, Paul Doscher, Kevin Reilly
8:00am – 12:00pm
Intermediate | $90/$105
Don’t be scared; be prepared. Effective land trust leaders must cultivate risk awareness and balance taking opportunities with avoiding catastrophic loss or harm. Using the real life experience of the Trout Unlimited risk management committee, and examples from the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, we will delve into the practical details and benefits of organizational risk management. We will briefly cover basic risk management concepts, overview insurance planning and outline a sample risk management plan including mitigation strategies and risk reduction solutions. This course qualifies for the Terrafirma risk management discount for 2014.
SEM-10
Don’t Wait For A Wreck: Easement Revitalization Lessons And ToolsCLE
Bill Long, Tom Pierce
8:00am – 12:00pm
Intermediate/Advanced | $90/$105
Most land trusts hold some conservation easements that have significant challenges (questionable conservation value, poor drafting, confusing terms and incomplete baselines). This seminar will define problem easements, offer methods to identify potential challenges and describe ways to either fix them or manage them. A key component of this seminar will be to permit participants a significant opportunity to share their experiences with problem easements and begin working on solutions.
SEM-11
Board Member Summit: Strategies for Building and Maintaining a Great Board*
Heather Harker, Joanne Horgan
8:00am – 1:00pm
All | $50
Are people looking forward to serving on your board? Do you have an active, engaged, and thoughtful board who wants to fundraise? Would you like tips on what to focus on in board recruitment and orientation to make the land trust attractive to new people and play to people’s strengths? In the Board Member Summit, we’ll cover how to attract great people to your organization, build a strong board orientation and development process, and more. Through discussion, examples, and hands-on exercises, participants will leave the session with concrete, practical steps for taking their board to the next level. Includes lunch.
SEM-12
How to Communicate Like Their Favorite Nonprofit*
Kivi Leroux Miller
1:00pm-5:00pm
Intermediate/Advanced | $90/$105
How people feel about your land trust matters more than what they think about it. The angel in their hearts overrules the bookkeeper in their heads all the time – and the angel controls the checkbook too. Yet many land trusts focus their communications on the bookkeeper - talking mostly about taxes, to-do lists, event logistics, and program statistics. Instead, what if you focused on connecting with and engaging those inner angels to the point that you became their favorite nonprofit? During this session, you will learn how to transition from “bookkeeper” communications that constantly interrupt your supporters to “angel” communications that attract them to you. Just imagine the good those angels can make possible for your land trust.
SEM-13
Steve Small’s Checklist and Tips for a Conservation Easement ProjectCLE
Steve Small
1:00pm – 5:00pm
Intermediate/Advanced | $90/$105
Steve Small will go through a 40+ item conservation easement project checklist, compiled during over 30 years of legal practice. The checklist will take you from the first email or call, through the closing binders, to general strategy for dealing with an IRS audit if one comes up. Steve will put particular emphasis on: (1) the most important things to remember to keep the IRS happy; (2) often-hidden tax, legal, and appraisal planning issues; (3) fringe-of-the-law (and as yet unanswered) tax, legal, appraisal, and drafting questions, including unconventional but potentially useful easement provisions; and (4) the most common land trust easement document (“we always do it this way”) mistakes he encounters.
SEM-14
Learning Landscapes: Nurturing a Child's Relationship to Land and Learning*
Rob Wade, Paul Hardy
1:00pm – 5:00pm
All | $90/$105
Connecting people to land can and should begin at an early age. Learning Landscapes utilizes a unique strategy in partnership with schools, landowners and resource professionals to make this connection a daily possibility for children in the Upper Feather River Watershed. This hands-on session will share the creative process of developing this successful program while providing specific tools and direction to develop a Learning Landscapes program for your own land trust.
SEM-15
Tune-up Your Template: Conservation Easement Drafting for People and PerpetuityCLE
Matthew McQueen
1:00pm – 5:00pm
All | $90/$105
Why do we say “grantor” when we mean “landowner”? What does “witnesseth” mean and should we care? Does “shall” really mean something different than “will”? Our form conservation easements are the foundation of every easement transaction, but, prior to tailoring an easement to a specific property, how strong is our foundation? This seminar will focus within the “four corners” of our form conservation easements. Each participant will be asked to bring their own easement template to use for comparison as we discuss format, structure, and language in order to increase clarity, understanding, and ultimately enforceability.
SEM-16
The Less Visible Leader: Leadership for Diverse Networks and Coalitions*
Dianne Russell
1:00pm – 5:00pm
Basic | $90/$105
Do you want to be a more effective leader when engaging with new constituencies in collaborative processes? This seminar will provide a framework for improving your leadership approach and increasing results in a network or coalition of diverse partners. This highly participatory session will use individual and group exercises, as well as case examples from the group, to identify strategies to be more effective. The session will be very helpful for those already leading a network or coalition.
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