Palouse Land Trust - Big Growth!

Our grant was for capacity with an emphasis on developing our donor base.  We wanted to talk about some of the results we’ve seen with our increased efforts in donor stewardship this year, but also what we’ve been able to accomplish in terms of our mission.

In terms of donor base development:

• This year we’ve seen a 72% retention rate for members
• Our number of gifts this year is up 30%, and our average gift amount is up 25% from last year.
• With new donors this year, our average gift has doubled from last year’s average for new donors.
• We’ve reactivated 31 donors from prior years

Of the 40 key donors we were looking to reactivate this year, we’ve renewed over half of them, with a number of them promising to give a year-end gift.

This grant made a big difference to our organization in our first year with a paid staff person, and I wanted to share a little about what we’ve been able to accomplish this year:

• We’ve updated our website to a new platform that allows it to be much more dynamic and useful as an outreach and engagement tool.  Check it out at www.palouselandtrust.org
• We’ve updated our strategic plan this year to include goals of expanding our outreach throughout our large service area, and enhancing education efforts at Idler’s Rest to collaborate more with educational institutions for the study of and enhancement of the preserve.  We recently had 6th graders from PPSEL out at Idler’s Rest to map the trails as part of their study of Lewis and Clark.

• We trained a group of volunteers this summer to help us with our annual easement monitoring to make sure that the land we’ve already protected stays that way
• We’re currently working with two landowners in Troy.  Both projects will protect important forest and stream habitat and critical wildlife corridors, and we’re working closely with one of these landowners to design her easement so that the property can be used as a center for youth agricultural education in the future.
• We’ve reopened an easement project that was previously turned down by PLT because it requires some more complex facilitation to get it done.  We’re currently working with state resource agencies and other partners to get this property protected.  It will protect over 600 acres – 300 of which is in active agriculture.  The rest of the property is a critical wildlife corridor, and would protect almost 2 miles of the south fork of the Palouse River.  According to WA DFW, the Palouse River corridor is the only quality wildlife habitat left in Whitman County (two pictures in slideshow).
• We’re working with IDFG on a project in Latah County that will protect about 200 acres of important meadow habitat and will involve a major restoration project to restore in-stream flows for fish.
•  We’ve been partnering with USFWS to go after some large-scale funding that would allow for regional scale protection and restoration of Palouse Prairie habitat.
• We’ve seen a great amount of additional interest from regional partners like WA Department of Fish and Wildlife, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Heart of the Rockies Initiative, and the national Land Trust Alliance over the past year.  They’re all excited that PLT is growing and has a dedicated staff person.  A number of these groups have offered technical support and training opportunities so that we can start to address the needs of landowners throughout our service area.

We wanted to thank you all so much for this grant and your support this year – it’s made a HUGE difference.  THANK YOU!