Better Together: Land Trusts Win by Collaborating

When land trusts band together, good things happen. Collaboration often improves the flow of information, builds organizational capacity and increases the possibility of regional conservation projects. With the economic downturn, many land trusts have actively sought partnerships, forgoing their individual silos to save costs and maximize returns.

Collaboration takes many forms. Some land trusts have created formal coalitions, often at the suggestion of funders, to spearhead regional work; other land trusts have partnered more loosely. Whatever the configuration, there is a distinct advantage to cross-boundary work. “Just getting together and learning to trust each other has been very empowering for our land trusts,” says Tim Abbott of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative. Following are four stories of land trusts that have banded together to achieve their conservation goals.

Sharing Information

In 2001, several Chicago-area funders posed a question to the Land Trust Alliance. With 12 land trusts operating separately in the region, could efficiencies and economies of scale be achieved by these groups working together?

The answer was “Yes!” A year later, the Chicago Region Land Conservation Coalition (CRLCC) was born. Initially, the land trusts seemed to view each other guardedly, more as competitors than partners, a stance that has mellowed with time. “In our eighth year, the collaboration is finally coming together,” says Johanna Garsenstein, Chicago project manager for the Alliance and the coalition’s facilitator. “Now there is more of a networking aspect. People are calling each other for help rather than calling me.”

The CRLCC has spearheaded an ambitious media/public outreach effort, facilitated a strong peer-to-peer network, collaborated on deals, provided training and education for member organizations (particularly accreditation preparation), and participated in some state-level policymaking.

“We have found that the more you talk and hang out, projects simply arise and ideas come up,” says CRLCC member Brook McDonald, president and CEO of The Conservation Foundation. Because of the coalition, for example, the nearby Liberty Prairie Conservancy is modeling a homeowner’s conservation program on one from The Conservation Foundation. This kind of information sharing saves time and money, allowing land trusts to devote the slim reources they have to vital conservation projects.

Within coalitions, as CRLCC has learned, tensions periodically arise around style. “There are those who want to plan and those who want to act quickly. By definition, collaboration is not fast. Consensus is not fast,” says McDonald. An important mitigating factor has been CRLCC’s excellent leadership, which has kept the group cohesive and on point.

Broadening Reach

In 2005, Connecticut’s Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), in conjunction with the Trust for Public Land, created the Litchfield Hills Greenprint, a GIS-based computer model that analyzes community-based data to promote land conservation efforts. “When the Greenprint was done, we didn’t want this incredible document to sit on the shelf,” says Tim Abbott, HVA’s Greenprint director. “So we brought people in and broadened the tent of involvement.”

The result was the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative, a coalition of 22 local land trusts committed to protecting half the region’s remaining prime farmland, core forests and drinking water resources. Members of the collaborative receive Greenprint data and mapping services, as well as general staffing and administrative support from HVA. These services are supported by members’ annual dues ($250- $500 per land trust) and private donations. Soon the Greenprint collaborative will component, as well. The HVA is launching a regional Pledge Fund of private donors committed to supporting land acquisition efforts. Land trusts will submit promising acquisition projects, and interested donors can support them directly through the fund.

The underpinning of this coalition is the Greenprint. Its greatest benefit, however, has been face-to-face interaction. “Just sitting together and talking with our neighbors,” says Abbott, “is the most important thing we do.”

Supporting the Community

In a conference room in Taos, New Mexico, farmers and ranchers listen intently. They are getting pointers about raising and marketing healthy, grass-fed livestock. Half an hour later, they learn about the benefits of conservation easements and tax credits. This workshop is sponsored by De la Tierra a la Cosecha (From Earth to Harvest), a unique partnership of the Taos Land Trust, the Taos County Economic Development Corporation and Taos Valley Acequia Association.

De la Tierra a la Cosecha’s mission is to sustain the land, water, food and culture of northern New Mexico. The member groups work at this by promoting profitable family farming, ranching and food security. If farmers and ranchers lose their property to development, it removes land from food production, unravels centuries of tradition, and diminishes both biological diversity and cultural diversity. “We make it more cost-effective for people to stay on their land and keep it productive. It’s just another way of conserving the land,” says Ernie Atencio, executive director of the Taos Land Trust.

The coalition has conducted inventories of the assets and needs of the local agricultural community. In addition to holding workshops, it has also worked on policy issues, and provided broad technical assistance to farmers and ranchers. As an example, the program connects farmers to the Taos Food Center, which is an industrial-sized kitchen where farmers can transform their vegetables into commodities, such as salsa, to sell to local and regional commercial markets. The collaborative has also acquired a “Mobile Matanza,” a certified mobile livestock slaughter unit, that allows small farmers to slaughter and sell their meat directly to restaurants at a higher price than they could otherwise get. These measures help keep farmers working profitably on their land.

“There is still a lot of skepticism about land conservation in the West,” says Atencio. “But with a program like this, we have ranchers, farmers, other social change organizations and the land trust all cross pollinating. It is very gratifying, and it’s fun. People are realizing that conservation is not some plot to take over their land. It is about protecting their way of life.”

Saving a Landscape

In 2004, the Blue Ridge Forever Coalition, a partnership of 10 local land trusts in western North Carolina, formed in response to concerns about population growth and its impending development threats (the state is braced for a 50% increase between 2000 to 2030), and at the urging of funders, who believed the land trusts could address these challenges more effectively through a unified voice.

The Blue Ridge Forever Coalition set an ambitious goal of preserving 50,000 acres by 2010. With the help of six state and federal agencies, three national conservation organizations, and 10 land trusts,1 the coalition created a Conservation Vision — a blueprint for regional land protection efforts — and achieved its 50,000-acre goal on schedule.

The coalition does three main things. It conducts public outreach to highlight land protection accomplishments; builds land trust capacity through education and information exchange; and fundraises on behalf of the coalition and individual land trusts. Since 2005, the coalition has raised $2.1 million (primarily grant and foundation money), 1.2 million of which has been passed through to member land trusts.

The coalition considered conducting a major gifts campaign in early 2008 — poor timing given the economic downturn. They decided not to proceed with the campaign and attracted fewer gifts than they had hoped from major donors. “Collaborative major donor fundraising is the toughest nut to crack, especially in a climate of quickly shrinking funds,” says Margaret Newbold, associate director of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina. In the future, the coalition will focus on foundation and grant opportunities primarily.

Managing the Blue Ridge Forever Coalition sometimes can be a challenge. All decisions require a two-thirds majority of the group. “Some land trusts feel constrained by the opinions or beliefs of other land trusts,” says Phyllis Stiles, campaign director for the coalition. “But elected officials love that we are one group, as does the public.”

Indeed, the benefits of working as a coalition seem to far outweigh the challenges. “We have learned,” says Newbold, “that speaking as one voice can be far more powerful than speaking as separate land trusts.”

In the end, collaboration is a matter of common sense. It allows land trusts to retain their unique identity while also exchanging interesting ideas, pursuing regionwide conservation projects, and achieving some economies of scale. For small land trusts, collaboration may be the difference between surviving and thriving, or losing steam altogether — especially in a struggling economy. Opportunities for collaboration abound. Land trusts are discovering these opportunities and reaping the rewards.