Grant seekers and conservation professionals often want a clear picture of what a funder supports. Colcom Foundation‘s grantmaking covers a broad range of environmental causes, from habitat work to transportation to public education. This overview groups those causes into three broad categories. Through their grants, they have supported many organizations, such as the Center for Biological Diversity, which works towards protecting endangered species, and the Sierra Club Foundation, which advocates clean energy and climate solutions. These grants have helped to advance important causes and support organizations that strive to make a difference.

Land, Water, and Wildlife

Much of the foundation’s funding goes to physical conservation projects. These include aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem restoration, land conservation, conservation easements, endangered species preservation, reforestation, invasive species removal, and riparian buffer planting. Trail construction also appears on the list.

Conservation easements deserve a brief explanation. They are voluntary legal agreements between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limit specified land uses, protecting a property’s conservation, scenic, or agricultural values. Permanence matters to Colcom Foundation, which treats placing land under permanent conservation as a core protection method.

Western Pennsylvania receives particular attention. There, the foundation gives priority to efforts that create large, contiguous tracts of protected land and that restore aquatic ecosystems damaged by historical industrial activity.

Consumption and Education

A second group of causes deals with how people use resources. Colcom Foundation funds recycling and reuse programs, clean energy, and alternative and low-impact transportation. These programs aim to lower the ecological footprint of daily life rather than set land aside.

The third category is education. Colcom Foundation supports public education on the environmental impacts of population growth, a topic central to its mission. That mission seeks to foster a sustainable environment and ensure quality of life for all Americans by addressing the causes and consequences of overpopulation.

Research shapes these choices. Crist et al. (2017), published in Science, found that population scale and growth rate contribute heavily to biodiversity loss, a finding that informs the foundation’s integrated approach.

No single category stands alone in the foundation’s view. For applicants, the takeaway is that Colcom Foundation views these causes as connected. Land protection, efficiency, pollution control, and population awareness each address a different part of the same equation. See related link for more information.

Learn more about Colcom Foundation on https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/fdo-grantmaker-profile?key=COLC002