A great need met by bold vision, deep trust, strategic acumen, generous funding, and a willingness to take risks—that is the alchemy that created Resources Legacy Fund (RLF), and it continues to guide the organization’s evolution and impact. What began as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s ambition to protect “To accomplish big things, we needed new approaches and we needed to be nimble. RLF is continually adapting to meet the next challenge.”Michael Mantell, RLF Founding President land in a new way in California has become an independent organization working with a diversity of funders, partners, and leaders across the country and internationally to advance bold environmental outcomes. In 20 years, RLF has helped to conserve over five million acres, advance new environmental approaches and policies, and generate more than $30 billion in new public funding for water, land, and ocean conservation while advancing social equity and climate change resilience.
At the time, accelerating, largescale development was threatening California’s ocean bluffs, rolling hills, mountain forests, and rich valley farmland. Much-needed efforts to protect these lands had been stymied by diminished government budgets, counterproductive environmental regulations, siloed non-profit organizations, and pro-growth business interests. Meanwhile, the West Coast philanthropic sector had yet to assert a catalytic role in conservation.
“Michael and his team always had an important ability to listen deeply and find a path forward. That went far in earning trust with the Foundation and continues to be vital in RLF’s work with all partners.”Jeanne Sedgwick, former Conservation Director, David and Lucile Packard Foundation In 1996, with an infusion of assets from David Packard’s multi-billion-dollar bequest, the Packard Foundation started thinking bigger about California land protection. Jeanne soon convinced Michael to leave his post in state government to consult for the Foundation, planning what would become one of the largest privately funded conservation initiatives in the United States. In consultation with myriad experts, they took a multifaceted approach to mapping out a vision of California defined by large, protected landscapes that people would enjoy for generations. The effort was launched in 1998 as the Conserving California Landscapes Initiative (CCLI) , a five-year endeavor to protect 250,000 acres, design new statewide policies, create new public funding, and build local organizational capacity.
Realizing the conservation goals of CCLI required more than creativity, vision, and an unprecedented financial gift. Trust was at the heart of it. Jeanne and Michael secured the Foundation’s confidence to develop and implement the strategy. And to successfully coalesce stakeholders—especially those at odds with one another—they had to establish and nurture trust among funders, policymakers, the nonprofit and business sectors, and leaders in urban and rural communities. “Michael and his team always had an important ability to listen deeply and find a path forward. That went far in earning trust with the Foundation and continues to be vital in RLF’s work with all partners,” says Jeanne.
CCLI opened doors to a new kind of environmental philanthropy that could achieve more through strategic collaboration. Delivering on the Packard Foundation’s vision, Jeanne pushed to create a platform for philanthropists to pool funds and advocate for policies that would have much bigger impact than private money alone could. Meanwhile, Michael was seeking strategies to work across existing boundaries of government, philanthropy, environmental nonprofits, business, and advocacy/lobbying firms.
“No one had seen anything like this, utilizing multiple strategies to work around obstacles to get the right thing done for conservation.”Doug Varley, consulting attorney The result, in 2000, was the creation of two independent, but coordinated entities to institutionalize a new environmental model—Resources Legacy Fund, a 501(c)(3) capable of receiving philanthropic donations and making grants, and Resources Law Group, a law firm capable of leading political campaigns and engaging in select lobbying on behalf of foundations. Working closely with Jeanne, consulting attorney Doug Varley designed the unique two-entity structure, which allowed an emerging team to work quickly and strategically to create opportunities, take risks, change course, and accelerate progress faster than traditional environmental organizations.
“No one had seen anything like this,” says Doug, “utilizing multiple strategies to work around obstacles to get the right thing done for conservation.” He recalls a presentation Michael gave to a conference of funders in the early 2000s about RLF’s success leveraging philanthropic investments to advance new policy and public funding: “At the end of his talk, the whole room wanted to know how they could do that in their sector.”
RLF would end up helping the Packard Foundation take a landscape-level approach to protecting over 500,000 acres—more than double the original CCLI goal—leveraging their $175 million investment to generate almost $800 million in private and public funding, in addition to spurring a host of new statewide environmental policies and funding and enhancing the capacity of several regional and local organizations.
It was the beginning of a new era of philanthropy and public-private partnerships. RLF was both the glue and the grease—building alliances and accelerating change.
RLF learned early on that in order to achieve enduring environmental outcomes, it needed to build broader support for conservation and listen to community needs. Through some of its early projects—such as the Children and Urban River Parkways program and aspects of CCLI and the Preserving Wild California program—RLF and its funders began building relationships in communities underserved by parks and access to safe outdoor spaces. These communities—often low-income and/or consisting predominantly of people of color—also experience the worst air and water quality impacts as a result of California’s development patterns and are routinely excluded from public policy and funding decisions affecting them.
“We learned how important it is to start with the end in mind and keep building a bigger table for those who would continue to lead after we left.” Mary Scoonover, former RLF Executive Vice President RLF invested time and money to establish trust, creating accessible opportunities for community members to share their priorities, establish relationships with decision makers, and co-design outcomes. “We learned how important it is to start with the end in mind and keep building a bigger table for those who would continue to lead after we left,” says Mary Scoonover, RLF Executive Vice President of 18 years. “Without community support to sustain political pressure and steward environmental outcomes, success can be fleeting.”
As RLF works to create a more just and resilient future for people and nature, it has been shifting its measure of success beyond acres and square miles of land and ocean protected to community-driven initiatives. Through programs like California Conservation Innovations, International Boreal Conservation Campaign, Open Rivers Fund, Land-Sea Connection, and many others, RLF and its funding partners are building capacity among diverse, new leaders and deepening partnerships with Indigenous Peoples who are driving conservation solutions to today’s intersecting issues of climate change, community health, and social equity.
After 20 years, RLF remains committed to the breakthrough strategies that led to its founding and achievements. This creativity positions RLF to refine and redesign its aspirations, partnerships, and strategies as it adapts to new challenges and opportunities, while leveraging the relationships and skills the organization has honed over time. Early RLF partner and former CEO of The Nature Conservancy Steve McCormick says, “RLF continues to RLF itself. Innovation is in the organization’s DNA.”
Seeing the threat of anti-democratic influences growing in American politics, RLF and its partners recognized it was no longer possible to think about the environment—or any issue of importance—apart from a healthy democracy. “RLF continues to RLF itself. Innovation is in the organization’s DNA.” Steve McCormick, former CEO of the
Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationIn response, RLF helped launch a partner 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, the Fund for a Better Future, as a vehicle for donors to invest quickly in causes that uphold democratic values, protect the environment, improve health, and advance social equity. Supporting the new entity, RLF also launched a separate nonprofit 501(c)(3), Shared Ascent Fund, as an avenue for funders to invest directly in efforts that bolster democracy and advance economic, racial, and gender equity.
In 2016, several RLF funding partners were seeking an organization to sponsor and incubate high-impact initiatives that lack and do not seek 501(c)(3) status. The professionalism and integrity of RLF’s program management and administration attracted funders. RLF quickly adapted to provide back office support to important donor projects in need of fiscal sponsorship and to add programmatic value where useful and desired.
These new funds and services continue to add significant flexibility and strategic opportunity to the philanthropic platform that RLF created 20 years ago—giving donors a broad array of tools to effect change amid the enormous challenges facing communities and ecosystems around the world—while expanding the range of partners, talent, and knowledge that RLF engages.
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