Natural Selection

Many grass-roots environmental groups struggle even as big organizations gain support

When Ken Cook envisioned what his organization, the Environmental Working Group, would be doing this

decade, he thought it would be promoting solar energy, eliminating pesticides from foods, and protecting wetlands and wilderness areas.

Instead, he says, much of his time these days involves trying to stymie efforts by the Bush administration and many in Congress to unravel a web of environmental regulations constructed during the past three decades. “The whole environmental community was poised to make a great deal of progress, including closer work with the private sector,” says Mr. Cook. “Now, it’s really hard to find an area of conservation or environmental policy where we aren’t in a damage-control mode.”

Indeed, while a weak economy has made fund raising more difficult for all types of nonprofit organizations over the past couple of years, many large environmental groups have seen giving grow, fueled by public alarm over some federal policies affecting the environment. Over all, giving to environmental and animal-related organizations last year grew by 2.8 percent, to $6.59-billion, according to the edition of “Giving USA” released this week. That is significantly more than the overall state of giving, which dropped 0.5 percent. Environmental groups collectively received about 2.7 percent of all charitable donations in 2002. In 2001, such groups received $6.4-billion, or 3 percent of all donations.

Still, many charities say that even with the gains, they have been stretched thin battling on many fronts to prevent rollbacks of current regulations, leaving scant resources available for undertaking new programs. Some observers say skepticism among many politicians in the White House and Congress toward traditional environmental solutions is greater now than it was even during the early years of the Reagan administration, when many nonprofit organizations capitalized on public dismay over the administration’s environmental policies by doubling or tripling their memberships.

“This is the most difficult time politically for conservation in my lifetime,” says Bill Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society.

Complex Picture

Adding to the problems for environmental groups: Significant asset losses or reorganizations have led several major foundations that were stalwart environmental supporters in the 1990s to sharply reduce their grant making or suspend it altogether, leaving big gaps that other grant makers have been unable to fill.

Last year’s modest growth reflects a complex picture in which some large national groups continue to expand, capitalizing on public dismay over some Bush administration policies, while budgets at many smaller groups are being squeezed, forcing them to trim staff and curtail programs.

“There has been somewhat of a shakeout of the environmental community, and several groups have merged or folded in the past few years,” says Fred Krupp, who directs Environmental Defense. “Challenging economic times mean we will continue to see more of that. But good ideas, in my experience, generate financial support.”

A potential added complication this year could be fallout from recent criticisms of management and other practices at the Nature Conservancy, the wealthiest of the green groups. The organization announced major changes to its operations this month. Some fund raisers worry that the controversy may have rattled donors, adding fuel to the mistrust many Americans express about nonprofit institutions.

Among the experiences of the biggest environmental organizations so far this year:

• The Wilderness Society expects to raise more this year than the $18.8-million it raised in 2002, though still somewhat less than the $23.8-million it received in 2001. In the first seven months of its fiscal year it has already brought in more from foundations than in any previous year. The group has also seen its list of members, who pay annual dues of $30 and up, grow by 20 percent over the past two years, partly in response to its efforts to oppose proposed oil drilling in the Arctic and plans to relax logging restrictions in national forests. The Wilderness Society added seven people to its 150-member staff — not for new projects, but to shore up its work in forest conservation and protection of the Alaskan wilderness and national monuments, and its campaign to limit the impact of off-road vehicles like dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and jet skis.
• The Sierra Club raised more money than ever from foundations last year, despite the absence of some major supporters, through smaller grants from more institutions, including family foundations. It has also had success in persuading some large individual donors to increase their gifts. So, despite the fact that its membership has been stalled at around 750,000 for the past couple of years, the group expects its revenue this year to surpass last year’s figure by about $2-million.
• The Environmental Working Group, which depends heavily on foundation grants, has seen its budget rise from $1.6-million two years ago to around $2.5-million today, as a growing number of grant makers and other donors have decided that issues as diverse as the safety of sport-utility vehicles, drinking-water contamination, and farm-subsidy distribution could benefit from its ability to combine policy analysis with public education.
• The Natural Resources Defense Council expects to have raised $44-million in contributions for its operating budget when its fiscal year ends this month, about 8 percent more than it collected last year. While foundation gifts have lagged a bit, “we’ve made up for it in our membership, major gifts, and special events,” says Jack Murray, its director of development.

Yet plenty of other groups are struggling for survival. While small grass-roots organizations with no paid staff may be accustomed to operating on a shoestring, says Jim Abernathy, executive director of the Environmental Support Center, in Washington, midsize groups with several staff members can face daunting prospects — particularly if they do not have deep pockets or multiple streams of revenue from diverse sources.

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, in St. Louis, for example, is cutting its staff and budget in half for its next fiscal year, which begins July 1, after seeing a sharp drop in foundation grants and major gifts. The director, Bea Covington, says she expects revenue to fall from $600,000 to perhaps half that amount, so she has trimmed her staff from six full-time workers to three full-time workers and two part-timers.

“It’s mostly as a proactive move rather than a reactive one,” Ms. Covington says. “In a two-to-five-year horizon, we’re expecting things to be rather thin” until the economy fully recovers.

The coalition is “focusing on creating an army of people who will give us $250 a year,” says Ms. Covington. She hopes that that sum, while significantly higher than its basic annual membership fee of $35, will be less subject to economic fluctuations than are four- and five-figure gifts.

Faced with an even larger drop in support, the Safe Energy Communication Council disbanded in March, after farming out many of its programs to other organizations. The Washington group was founded in 1980, after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant near Harrisburg, Penn., focused public attention on the potential hazards of nuclear power. The organization grew steadily until, by 2001, it had an annual budget of around $600,000 and the equivalent of more than seven full-time workers.

Scott Denman, who directed the group since 1983, says it faced the loss of big grants from several major grant makers, including the W. Alton Jones and Turner Foundations, as well as from the federal Department of Energy, which had underwritten its program on energy efficiency but which faced its own budget cutbacks and changing priorities. The Jones Foundation reorganized in 2001 into three smaller foundations; the Turner Foundation has suspended its grant making following a precipitous drop in assets, much of which was held in AOL Time Warner stock donated by its founder, Ted Turner.

In discussing various scenarios with the executive committee of his board of directors, Mr. Denman says, “it became very clear that the only way the organization could survive on its own was if we boiled it down to one or possibly two staff people,” with a budget of about $100,000 this year. What’s more, given reduced grant budgets at many foundations, “it seemed certain that 2004 and 2005 were not likely to be any better,” he says. So the board decided to pull the plug.

‘Pruning’ May Be Needed

Some observers predict that more organizations may need to fold or merge.

“The question is whether there’s enough money around to support the whole field of environmental organizations,” says Wade Greene, an adviser to several philanthropists. “Are some of the groups sustainable at much lower levels of support, or does there have to be some pruning and concentration of resources?”

In an effort to help grass-roots organizations cope with the hard times, the Environmental Support Center has teamed up with the Institute for Conservation Leadership to offer small grants and consulting services to help small groups manage themselves more effectively. Their goal is to encourage organizations to think about their most critical contributions, and use strategies to get them through without impairing those missions.

Mr. Abernathy of the Environmental Support Center speaks with authority when he counsels organizations facing cutbacks. His own organization saw its income decline by a third in the past year when it lost support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Turner Foundation, and it has trimmed its staff from about 20 to 15.

With encouragement from grant makers, some environmental groups are trying to broaden their support by forging alliances with organizations that have a somewhat different array of interests and advantages. Groups representing hunters and sports fishermen, for example, might have more political clout with Republican legislators than other conservation groups, says Ann Krumboltz, who directs the Brainerd Foundation. Brainerd has increased its support for Trout Unlimited, a group dedicated to protecting trout and salmon fisheries, which promotes pristine waterways as other groups do but which has a different constituency from that of some of the more confrontational organizations.

The foundation has also supported efforts to reach out to Roman Catholic bishops, Alaskan women, and other constituencies that might join forces in defending environmental gains. “We’re definitely looking for new ways to bring new voices to conservation and environmental stewardship,” Ms. Krumboltz says.

Although Brainerd’s assets have dropped from $50-million to about $35-million, she says, the foundation decided to give out $2.8-million last year, or about 8 percent of its assets, rather than the 5 percent required by law. “Since some of our bedrock environmental laws are under attack, we need to bolster support for groups that are defending those laws on the national level,” Ms. Krumboltz says.

Many activists believe that environmental progress at the federal level ultimately depends on electing leaders more sympathetic to the issues. And that, in turn, requires mobilizing the millions of Americans who identify themselves as environmentalists but who don’t vote.

“In most states in the mid-1990s, environmentalists weren’t voting with any more frequency than the general public,” says Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, which works to help elect pro-environment candidates and grades elected officials on their support for environmental issues. “That’s been a real driver behind our program: making sure that these folks who are very engaged in the policy process also understand that part of citizenship is voting around the issues.”

Eleven million Americans belong to at least one environmental organization, says Ms. Callahan — nearly as many members as the AFL-CIO has. “In terms of sheer numbers, the environment is a sleeping giant,” she says.

Public Inspiration

Denis Hayes, who helped to organize the first Earth Day in 1970, says environmental groups must regenerate some of the public passion that animated that event if they are to prevent a sweeping rollback of environmental gains.

“For a long time, the environmental community had a degree of self-satisfaction because we had poll figures showing that virtually all Americans agreed with us, so we stopped the process of riding herd to keep explaining our positions,” says Mr. Hayes, who now runs the Bullitt Foundation, a Seattle grant maker that focuses on environmental protection in the Pacific Northwest. “Now we find ourselves in a position where we damn well better do that.”