2023 Annual Report

From Our Chair and CEO

Land Sustains Us

It gives us the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the materials that clothe and shelter us and provides us with millions of jobs and benefits to our communities. The Conservation Fund is committed to the land that provides for us all, protecting America’s natural heritage and enhancing the economic and community benefits the land provides.

Theodore Roosevelt, the father of modern American conservation, famously said more than a century ago: “Conservation means development as much as it does protection.” In the ensuing decades, many came to see environmental protection and economic development as conflicting goals, but we have always understood that they are compatible. In fact, in today’s era of enormous environmental and economic challenges, they are inseparable.

We were founded on the belief that conservation and economic development go hand in hand. As we reflect on 2023 and look ahead to our 40th anniversary in 2025, our vision for conservation is ambitious, unifying and grounded in the knowledge of an incredible track record built over decades of working alongside communities, farmers, foresters and businesses to benefit all Americans.

By approaching conservation in a new way, it can unite Americans rather than divide. Conservation is advancing America through the protection of special places, securing working farms and forests and providing for communities. Conservation is connecting America — protecting large landscapes and migration corridors and opening the way for the infrastructure and transmission capacity needed to secure a clean energy future. And finally, conservation is bringing us together — rural or urban, farmer or forester. Conservation is for all Americans because land sustains us all.

Conservation is indispensable for bringing the nation together to tackle our most urgent challenges. To address climate change, we need to build a vast, clean energy infrastructure. To balance the land that infrastructure requires, we will need to protect additional land that will, in turn, protect wildlife habitat and help slow the crisis of unprecedented biodiversity loss. To keep America’s large forests intact, we will need to promote sustainable forestry and outdoor recreation opportunities. To secure a sustainable future, we need to preserve local farms and create opportunities for a new generation of farmers.

TCF had an outstanding year in 2023, continuing to advance our vision of conservation and economic development working hand in hand. We protected land across the United States, from urban parks to vast forests to mountaintops. Our working lands initiatives — Working Forests and Working Farms — reached important milestones. We escalated our work to preserve America’s endangered historic and cultural treasures. We also kept our focus on promoting economic opportunity and vibrant communities in everything we do.

As the scale of the challenges ahead becomes clearer, The Conservation Fund has huge opportunities to apply our experience, expertise and unique perspective and approach to tackling them. Our new logo, which we’re thrilled to unveil in this annual report, represents this unique perspective. The icon’s three elements represent our past, present and future. They also represent our priorities: land, communities and climate. The line between the elements represents the connections between them all.

Thank you to TCF’s outstanding team of professionals and all our partners and supporters. We are advancing America and connecting America through conservation because of your support. We look forward to working together to sustain the land that sustains us all for years to come.

Sustaining Land

The Conservation Fund protected over 120,000 acres of land in 2023. That’s the equivalent of conserving an area as large as Arlington County, Virginia — where TCF is based — every seven weeks.

But land conservation isn’t just about acres. Land is America’s most important natural resource. It cleans our air and water. It supports our abundance of wildlife and unique biodiversity. It provides jobs and opportunities for recreation. It nourishes our bodies and our souls. Without The Conservation Fund’s work, that precious resource would be lost to fragmentation, subdivision for housing developments or conversion into strip malls and parking lots.

We work with government entities, community organizations and private partners in all 50 states to protect land for all of us. Our unique model lets us acquire threatened land quickly, create a conservation solution, transfer it to a permanent owner, then use the funds again for more projects.

Sustaining Communities

From downtown Chicago to rural West Virginia, and everywhere in between, quality of life is intertwined with the land. Conserving land creates places to play and commune with nature and enjoy the outdoors. It helps urban and rural communities build resilience against natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. It preserves historic sites that tell the story of America’s journey. And it sustains our farming heritage, connecting communities to local food.

The Conservation Fund works in communities across the nation helping build parks and trails, restoring and protecting landmarks, preserving threatened farmland and providing financial and other support to local groups doing the hard work on the ground. Conservation isn’t just about nature. It’s also about making communities stronger and enriching the lives of the people who live in them.

Connecting Americans to History & Heritage

Conservation protects more than America’s natural treasures. It protects our rich historical heritage as well. African American history is a central part of that heritage — and many historic sites that tell the story of the African American journey are at risk of being lost through neglect or a lack of resources to preserve them.

One of these special areas is Alabama’s Black Belt. Named for its dark, nutrient-rich soil, the region stretches across the south-central portion of the state. The fertile soil made the Black Belt a center for cotton production using enslaved people before the Civil War. A century later in the 1950s and 1960s, Black Belt cities such as Marion, Selma and Montgomery, and the surrounding rural communities, were home to some of the central events and people of the Civil Rights movement.

TCF’s work with partners and communities nationwide to protect historic sites preserves America’s heritage, brings visitors and investment to rural and urban areas, and ensures future generations will have the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of past generations.

Sustaining Economic Opportunities

The Conservation Fund works at the intersection of conservation and economic development because protecting land and promoting economic opportunity aren’t just compatible — they are interdependent. This is especially true in America’s rural communities, where preserving and activating the economic potential of wild places and forests is a key to prosperity.

Land conservation also opens a sustainable path for building the infrastructure needed to support the 21st century economy. Generating and transmitting the energy America will need in the decades ahead to power growth while addressing our climate challenges will require vast amounts of land. Success will depend on pairing infrastructure construction with an equally ambitious conservation effort that will ensure America’s wild places and biodiversity can flourish.

Sustaining Economic Tomorrow

The Conservation Fund’s work has always reflected a dual mission. Nature and people. Environment and economic opportunity. Conservation and community. Building on that dual mission is now more important than ever.

The United States and the world are facing immense challenges — from climate change to an unprecedented loss of species and wildlife habitat to sustaining standards of living and quality of life in rural and urban communities alike. It is impossible to tackle these challenges in isolation; they are interrelated, and their solutions are interdependent.

As the challenges grow in the years ahead, we will be growing to meet them. We are working with our government and private sector partners and our fellow nonprofits to identify critical needs and implement conservation solutions that advance all our goals. We are also building innovative new financial tools and other initiatives to scale our proven model and deliver even more impact, for nature, the economy, communities and climate.

We are proud of everything we were able to accomplish in 2023 and the years before.

We thank the many organizations and individuals who have joined us as partners on this journey. All we have accomplished — and all we plan to accomplish in the critical years ahead — is only possible with your support.

Nearly 9 Million Acres Protected

From Our Chief Financial Officer

I am pleased to report that 2023 was another great year for The Conservation Fund, in terms of both mission impact and our ability to generate sustainable financial results. In fact, 2023 was our fourth year of record revenues, up 3 percent year over year. We achieved this growth through continued strong program activity for land conservation and completion of more large projects but also through our focus and discipline recycling our internal capital as efficiently as possible. Our big challenge — and opportunity — is the urgent need to conserve more critical lands and scale up our work well beyond what our existing resources can support.

To meet that challenge, we are expanding our fundraising efforts for both philanthropy and impact capital. Building upon the success of our Green Bonds a few years ago, we have established five joint ventures with family offices and foundations to coinvest in some of our largest projects based upon a simple premise: If a coinvestor/funder can help us acquire and conserve additional at-risk properties and landscapes, TCF will return capital and share any financial surplus with them once the projects are completed. And by leveraging our proven business model and incredible staff, we can create unique opportunities for funders using new impact investment instruments to drive permanent impact for climate, nature and healthy communities on a sustainable basis that would otherwise not be possible without their financial support — a direct line of sight to specific impact with low financial risk.

The scale of the conservation challenges we face requires mobilizing every possible resource to meet them. Additional philanthropy will be critical to realizing our vision, but we will also accelerate our impact by continuing to innovate new ways of engaging donor advised funds, family offices, asset managers and corporations to help us protect the lands that matter most. We welcome you to join us on this journey.

Thank you for all your support.

Our Supporters