Fundraising Wisdom: Think big, act boldly and be radical
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About This Saving Land
A 10-year program to expand the capacity and impact of land trusts ushered in a bold new era of conservation in Oregon. However, the successes of this program are not limited to one state. Learn how the program came about, what its impact has been, and how it might inspire others to think big, act boldly and be radical.
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At Rally 2023 in Portland, Oregon, I was honored to take the stage to share an innovative project that brought transformation and hope to land conservation in my beautiful state — the Oregon Advancing Conservation Excellence program, a 10-year effort to accelerate land protection statewide by expanding the capacity and impact of land trusts. This program, funded by a visionary philanthropist and overseen by the Land Trust Alliance, ushered in a bold new era of conservation in Oregon.
I want to share the story of how this program came about, what its impact has been, and how it might inspire you to think big, act boldly and be radical in your own states, just like we have in Oregon.
Leap of faith
The story began almost 15 years ago with two men walking amidst lupine and balsamroot wildflowers on a ridgeline about an hour from the Columbia Gorge. The men were Glenn Lamb, then the executive director of Columbia Land Trust and now a member of the Alliance’s board, and John Gray, a philanthropist who had only recently learned about the work of land trusts. John Gray had deep and very humble Oregon roots, and he wanted to make an impact on the state’s natural resources. He was also curious and a really good listener. On that walk, his gaze lifted from thinking of his family’s legacy as protection of one iconic keystone place in Oregon to something bigger and bolder. That’s because Glenn Lamb was also listening. He listened when John spoke about his own interest in bridging divides and building a broader conservation community. Glenn took a pretty big leap of faith — he took off his organizational hat and asked John to consider what a gift might look like to enhance the entire capacity of land trusts in the state. Thankfully, John accepted that invitation!
Within the next year, John Gray made a $10 million, 10-year investment in capacity building for Oregon land trusts, and thus was born a decade of unparalleled conservation work in this beautiful state. The Land Trust Alliance also took a leap of faith, embracing the role of facilitating those funds into the hands of Oregon land trusts by creating the ACE program.
Lasting impact
Through ACE, the Land Trust Alliance delivered 246 capacity-building grants to 25 land trusts in Oregon in the span of one decade. These grants were strategic and based on work that was done to understand the opportunities and needs of the state’s land trust community broadly and at each land trust individually. The impacts of ACE have been astounding.
ACE also provided critical support for the formation of the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, our beloved state association that has grown and excelled beyond anything that we possibly could have imagined.
And, perhaps our most important work to date, the Gray family’s investment helped to launch the Oregon Land Justice Project, a collective commitment of Oregon’s land trusts with our state’s Tribes to expand Indigenous access, ownership and stewardship of land. Talk about an impact that goes so far beyond what any singular acquisition could have done!
At my own organization, the wildly wonderful Greenbelt Land Trust in the Willamette Valley, there are many stories of the transformative impact of the ACE program. Just one example is our stewardship program. In 2011, when John and Glenn were walking on that ridgeline, Greenbelt Land Trust had a very small but mighty stewardship program. Fast forward to today and Greenbelt has one of the most professional, well-equipped and expansive stewardship programs at any land trust in our state, dare I say in the country. Our staff and partners are writing the book on transforming Willamette Valley landscapes, restoring the conifer-dominated forests into native oak woodlands and transforming marginal farmland into functional floodplain forests.
These protected and restored lands have led to a boon for the species that depend on them. In the Willamette Valley we have celebrated a wild ride of down-listing and delisting of endangered species over the last 5-10 years — from Fender’s blue butterfly to golden paintbrush, Bradshaw’s lomatium and Oregon chub. This only in a decade. Every one of these accomplishments over the last decade was enhanced by the investment and commitment of ACE into Greenbelt Land Trust.
Now I want to turn from reflecting on the past to talk about where we are today, and how we emerge out of this 10-year commitment when the challenges haven’t gotten any less.
Here in Oregon, we know intimately the challenges of a changing climate punctuated by wildfire, flooding and drought. This is the stark reality that we are all faced with. And yet, as land trusts, as foundations, as agencies, we wield incredible power. We are landowners, we hold vast assets, we hold knowledge, we hold relationships and influence. We have the ability to respond.
Here are my calls to action based on the lessons learned from Oregon’s 10-year journey and transformation through the ACE program:
More than ever, we need bigger and longer investments made in service of conservation, and more than ever, we need to be thinking big, acting boldly and demanding radical change from ourselves and from each other. Because really, is there any other choice?
While the Oregon ACE program was only designed to be a 10-year commitment, the work is ongoing through the Oregon Lands and People Project. The project — a collaboration with the Land Trust Alliance, the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts and the Oregon Community Foundation that builds on the success of the ACE program — aims to secure millions of dollars of new state funding annually to support inclusive, innovative and transformative land conservation. In 2025, the project delivered over $550,000 in grants to support Oregon’s land trusts as they build community partnerships and organizational capacities.
Jessica McDonald is executive director at Greenbelt Land Trust in Oregon. She shared this story with attendees of Rally 2023 in Portland, Oregon — watch her original presentation.
