Conservation Groups Receive Nearly $160,000 in Grants to Advance
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Organizational Development

Grants from Keep It Colorado and Land Trust Alliance aim to strengthen conservation sector

May 15, 2024 – DENVER – Keep It Colorado and the Land Trust Alliance have partnered to award $159,250 in grants to land trusts and conservation nonprofits, helping them strengthen and build programs to create a more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just conservation sector and advance organizational capacity. After participating in a competitive application process, 11 land trusts and conservation nonprofits received awards to support a total of 13 projects. Investments from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) generously funded this initiative through Keep It Colorado’s Emerging Conservation Opportunities (ECO) program.

Groups that received grant awards are seeking to expand their work and missions to engage more communities in conservation (“community-centered conservation”) and ensure that all Coloradans benefit equitably from land conservation — while sustaining their organizations’ capacity to conserve and protect land. 

“Financial investments in conservation today are a great service to Colorado’s landscapes and the people and wildlife who call Colorado home,” said Amy Beatie, executive director for Keep It Colorado. “Generous grant programs like this one from GOCO will help the conservation community build a more inclusive, lasting and relevant conservation movement. Keep It Colorado is so grateful to GOCO for its vision, and to the Land Trust Alliance for its partnership in helping us bring the vision for this program to life.”

“The Land Trust Alliance is committed to providing programs and tools for land trusts to create inclusive, welcoming organizations that respect diversity and to help them engage all people who live in the communities they serve,” said Marcie Bidwell, the Southwest program manager for the Land Trust Alliance. “These projects will expand access to a diverse spectrum of Coloradans including Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other People of Color, LGBTQIA+ people, low-income communities and people with disabilities. We are proud to partner with Keep It Colorado on this initiative and grateful to Great Outdoors Colorado for providing funding, training, peer support and more to land trusts across the state.”

Organizations that received grants totaling $87,700 for community-centered conservation and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice projects are:

Aspen Valley Land Trust, Activating AVLT's Community Engagement Strategy, $10,000

Aspen Valley Land Trust (AVLT) is building a community engagement strategy to meet the goals of its organizational strategic plan and strategic conservation plan and reflect the demographics of AVLT’s multicultural community. The grant will enable AVLT to conduct more than 50 interviews in Spanish and English to help further understand and engage public schools and nonprofits, including assessing their needs, values, ideas, and obstacles around getting students connected to nature; collaboratively design three new bilingual programs; and implement ideas for using AVLT’s nature-based Marble Basecamp and Coffman Ranch to meet local needs and interests.

Colorado West Land Trust, CWLT & MLC Cross-Cultural Regional Partnership Planning & Phase II Program Development, $13,000

With inspiration and assistance from fellow land trust Montezuma Land Conservancy (MLC), Colorado West Land Trust (CWLT) is working to build relationships with Indigenous communities and create a traditional harvest program. The program aims to enable Ute Mountain Ute Tribal members, and ultimately those from other regional Indigenous communities, to access and reconnect with their ancestral lands. The grant will enable CWLT and MLC to collaborate in creating a more formal regional partnership, with goals to create a scalable and replicable process; develop consistent programming; and build a legal toolbox that can also benefit the larger land trust community. 

Crested Butte Land Trust, Spanish-language Resources and Field Trip to Conserved Lands, $15,000

The Crested Butte Land Trust (CBLT) provides field trips to conserved lands every summer and winter. In an initiative to be more inclusive of all residents in the Gunnison Valley, CBLT is partnering with local businesses, organizations and individuals to provide a field trip to conserved lands for residents whose primary language is Spanish. The grant will be used to offer these field trips and provide Spanish-language signs throughout the Gunnison Valley, and a website with Spanish-language information for the community about how to recreate in public areas made possible through conservation. 

Eagle Valley Land Trust, Eagle Valley Land Trust Conservation Center Community Planning Process, $12,000

In partnership with the Eagle Valley Outdoor Movement, Eagle Valley Land Trust is creating a community Conservation Center to serve as a gathering place for members of the Eagle Valley community to connect with local conservation and each other. Inspired by community feedback and requests, the center will house an accessible gear library and bilingual adventure center to provide skill-building workshops to address distinct barriers to outdoor access. This grant will support facilitation of community planning sessions, focus groups, and town hall gatherings; Spanish translation services; stipends to support diverse community engagement; and childcare for participants.

Guidestone Colorado, Advancing Organizational DEIJ at Guidestone Colorado, $10,200

The agriculture education-focused nonprofit aims to increase accessibility to its Farm to School, Farmhands Education, Historic Hutchinson Homestead, and Colorado Land Link programs for all aspiring farmers and ranchers, especially historically marginalized groups; be a recognized safe space for LGBTQIA+ youth; include more perspectives in storytelling; and integrate honest and age-appropriate histories into K-12 curriculum. The grant will advance internal efforts to expand staff and board understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice and apply it to Guidestone program areas, and consider how its mission and vision can more effectively advance equity and justice within its communities. 

Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust, Building an Inclusive Foundation for Succession Landowner Compliance, $15,000

Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust is developing educational outreach for realtors and their clients that explain how conservation easements function and encourage prospective buyers to talk to land trust staff before buying. The aim is to improve succession planning on conserved properties and maximize stewardship success among owners who weren’t involved in writing the original conservation easement. The grant will create language equity for Spanish-speaking community members who want to participate in agriculture or other land uses, and will be used to supply prospective buyers and realtors with dual-language materials as well as English and Spanish translation services during an educational workshop. 

Southern Plains Land Trust, Centering DEIJ at the Southern Plains Land Trust, $12,500

Southern Plains Land Trust (SPLT) is expanding community outreach and investments in education with the recent acquisition of the Purgatoire River Property in southeastern Colorado, which it intends to turn into a community hub with public access to hiking trails and environmental education seminars. The grant will enable SPLT to create a holistic diversity, equity, inclusion and justice plan that integrates with its strategic plan, with goals to conduct a community-input process that engages local people in determining how the community hub can best serve their interests.

Organizations that received grants totaling $71,550 for organizational development projects are:

Central Colorado Conservancy, Capital Expansion and Sustainability Roadmap, $15,000

Central Colorado Conservancy will use the grant to develop a three-year fundraising plan along with fundraising assets and donor-facing materials. Grant funds will also support refreshing and expanding content on the conservancy’s website to better communicate the impact of its work, increase its visibility, and enhance its outreach and fundraising efforts.

Lake Fork Valley Conservancy, Lake Fork Valley Conservancy Board Development Initiative, $10,000

Lake Fork Valley Conservancy will leverage the grant to increase its nonprofit sustainability by providing consulting services and professional development opportunities to its board of directors and staff in financial literacy, leadership development, and board member recruitment and retention. The conservancy will also create a board handbook to help onboard members, define roles and responsibilities, and serve as a reference.

Montezuma Land Conservancy, Creating Equitable Land Access Solutions in Southwest Colorado, $15,000

Montezuma Land Conservancy (MLC) will use the grant to develop community-identified, on-the-ground solutions to the barriers of land access in the southwest region as a continuation of the Southwest Equitable Land Access (SELA) Project. These initiatives will include the establishment of a community-led 501c2 land-holding nonprofit to acquire and equitably make available farmland properties, and continuation of the development of a land access pilot project at MLC’s existing educational farm hub, Fozzie’s Farm.

Mountain Area Land Trust, Investing in the Future: Modernizing Mountain Area Land Trust Technology, $11,550

Mountain Area Land Trust (MALT) will use the grant to make critical upgrades to its technology, infrastructure and stewardship processes in order to be sustainable and efficient, and to optimize staff capacity. Specifically, the grant will fund upgrades to MALT’s landowner records and stewardship monitoring systems; staff training for Salesforce, Quickbooks and other software best practices; resources to support digital stewardship technology for annual monitoring; and implementation of protective cybersecurity systems.

Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust, Tapping into Expertise to Boost RiGHT's Financial, Fundraising, and Operational Sustainability, $10,000

Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust will utilize the grant to restructure its financial tracking system and create a membership and planned giving program to strengthen its organizational foundation and ensure resiliency through the future.

Southern Plains Land Trust, Communications Refresh and New Staff Development at the Southern Plains Land Trust, $10,000

Southern Plains Land Trust will use the grant to conduct a comprehensive overhaul of its website and its communications strategy to better reflect its emphasis on environmental education, science and monitoring, and community outreach, and express a renewed vitality of the organization’s work. 

These grant programs directly align with Conserving Colorado: A 10-year Roadmap for the Future of Private Land Conservation. The roadmap contains five strategic pillars, two of which focus on community-centered conservation and DEIJ and creating a lasting conservation movement. Developed by and for the conservation community, the roadmap calls on conservation organizations to double the number of acres conserved, double the number of people engaged in conservation and double the resources needed to support conservation over the next decade — goals that are important to securing a healthy, livable future in Colorado. 

Keep It Colorado’s ECO program is designed to advance land conservation and support a thriving land conservation sector. GOCO’s multi-year commitment of investments is allocated among discrete focus areas to respond to the highest priority needs and opportunities facing the conservation community. In 2022, Keep It Colorado partnered with the Land Trust Alliance to provide programming in response to increased coalition member demand for support advancing their organizational work. Learning that members are highly dedicated to expanding their work and missions to support community-centered conservation; becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive conservation movement; and sustaining their efforts as organizations of excellence in conservation, the partnership focused on providing support in these areas with, among other offerings, this Organizational Advancement grant program.

About Land Trust Alliance

Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization working to save the places people need and love by empowering and mobilizing land trusts in communities across America to conserve land for the benefit of all. The Alliance represents approximately 1,000 member land trusts and affiliates supported by more than 250,000 volunteers and 6.3 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., with staff working in communities across the U.S. Learn more at landtrustalliance.org.

About Keep It Colorado

Keep It Colorado serves as a unified voice for conservation organizations focused on private lands conservation, and does so by bringing together land trusts, public agencies and conservation champions around a vision to create a Colorado where people, lands, waters and wildlife thrive. Keep It Colorado advocates for sound public policy; provides connection and collaboration opportunities for conservation partners; offers a forum to address emerging conservation issues and opportunities; pursues sustainable funding and programmatic tools and solutions; and works to advance a culture of conservation in Colorado. Learn more at www.keepitco.org. 

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Photo: Eagle Valley Outdoor Movement focus group at the new Conservation Center in Edwards, Colo.