Strategic Plan
Our strategic framework was developed during an intensive planning process in 2005. Our President's Letter and Director's Message provide insight into this process. Questions and answers about our strategy and its implementation can be found on our Funding Areas & Guidelines FAQ and Grant Application Process FAQ pages.
Mission
Our mission is to protect the environment of the Northwest and to build broad citizen support for conservation.
Vision
We envision a future in which Northwest citizens inspire their leaders to make the strongest possible commitment to steward our natural resources for generations to come.
Ours is a region of abundant natural resources, vast areas of undisturbed wild lands and thriving populations of humans, wildlife, fish and native plant species. To sustain our fish and wildlife populations, we need large core habitat areas linked by wildlife corridors, rivers and streams. To sustain a healthy economy, we need clean air, land and water. To ensure that our children experience these natural treasures, we need an informed and engaged populace.
Our vision offers us hope for our region. We see the possibility for government agencies, businesses and citizens to work collaboratively and to lead the nation in developing new approaches and technologies to protect our natural resources. Elected officials and public policymakers already acknowledge that a healthy environment is a key competitive advantage in a region with a globalizing economy. Over the coming decade, we expect decisions made by these leaders to reflect what they already know to be true about the connection between a clean environment, a vibrant economy and a thriving population.
Values
Reflecting the experience of our founder, we are an entrepreneurial foundation. As such, we embrace entrepreneurial traits such as innovation, leveraging resources, risk-taking, high performance, effective leadership and responsiveness.
- Innovation We are committed to pursuing innovative approaches to longstanding issues and problems.
- Leveraging Resources Our grantmaking capabilities are limited and we understand that many of our grantees operate on very tight budgets. We look for opportunities to leverage the effectiveness of our grants through collaboration and synergy. We strive to build a community where we can learn from each others' successes and failures.
- Risk-Taking Pursuing innovative, unproven approaches increases the level of risk both for the foundation and its grantees. We believe such risks are worth taking.
- High Performance Small organizations with limited resources must make the most of what they have. We strive to be as efficient as possible in our own workings and look for the same from our grantees.
- Effective Leadership We believe that, to a large degree, an organization can only be as effective as its leaders. We support our grantees with resources to improve the quality of their leadership.
- Responsiveness Now more than ever, responsiveness, flexibility and nimbleness characterize the best organizations. We strive to exhibit these qualities in our work and cultivate them in the groups we support.
Methods
- Our primary means of achieving our goals is to provide grants, in the form of general operating support and program-specific funding, to nonprofit organizations whose work aligns with our vision and goals.
- We strive to add value to the work of our grantees by convening leaders, offering training opportunities and sharing lessons and ideas across the region. We encourage our grantees to evaluate their efforts and to invest in consultants and technical experts as needed. We initiate research projects when we identify crosscutting challenges that are best pursued outside of the scope of a traditional grant.
- To maximize the impact of our limited grantmaking dollars, we collaborate with other grantmakers to ensure that sufficient resources are available to achieve success. Where possible, we encourage the groups we support to collaborate with each other to increase the effectiveness of their efforts.
Goal: Building the Will of Communities and Policy Leaders to Protect Our Region's Air, Land and Water
Our highest priority is to build the will of communities and policy leaders to protect our region's air, land and water.
Public opinion research tells us that the vast majority of the public embraces strong conservation values. They want clean air, land and water. Yet every week we receive dozens of compelling pleas asking for help in urgent battles over natural resources.
We are a small foundation and must invest our resources wisely. We cannot fight every fight, no matter how urgent or worthy. As such, we invest in programs and organizations connected to the longer-term strategies needed to build an enduring ethic of conservation in our region.
Such an ethic would mean that regional policymakers respond to the public's commitment to policies and programs that support clean air, land and water. For every grant proposal that we consider, we will ask: How does this build toward that prevailing ethic?
Funding Areas
Conservation Policy
Our Conservation Policy program is aimed at achieving policy gains at the state (or provincial) and local levels. Strategies to advance this goal vary by state and province, with the overarching theme being a commitment to support policies that ensure the protection of our region's air, land and water.
We encourage groups collaborating on common policy priorities to take their work to a higher level of effectiveness by deepening their connection to public concerns and holding policymakers accountable to an informed and engaged citizenry. In places where such collaborations are not underway, we look for opportunities to bolster public support for strong conservation policies. We expect conservation advocates to advance successful policies by building their base of support and demonstrating a conservation mandate to decisionmakers in the region. Grants in this program typically range from $20,000 to $50,000.
Place-based Conservation
Our Place-based Conservation program recognizes the powerful connection that people have to the critical landscapes that support the Northwest's ecosystems and communities. The work of our long-standing Endangered Ecosystems program now falls under the framework of Place-based Conservation. Priorities for funding are grounded in the science of conservation biology, as well as the social and political sciences, with an emphasis on pivotal communities where our investments will have an impact beyond the immediate landscape. All of our investments in this program are made with an eye toward serving the larger goal of engaging citizens and communicating their interests to decisionmakers. Grants in this program typically range from $20,000 to $50,000.
Conservation Capacity
Our Conservation Capacity program is designed especially to support efforts that improve the ability of the environmental community to address communications, bolster legal strategies and strengthen capacity within the conservation community. This program area has two tracks: 1) to support service providers that offer communications, technology, leadership and legal support to conservation advocates; 2) to support strategic research that enables groups to stay on top of the latest trends in the region and in non-profit management, capacity and advocacy. This program also provides support to test key research findings through seed grants and/or pilot projects. Grants in this program typically range from $10,000 to $50,000.
The Catalyst Fund
This grantmaking initiative supplements the Brainerd Foundation's other funding areas by providing additional support for organizations to develop and implement new strategies that will advance a prevailing conservation ethic in the Northwest. It is aimed at helping conservation advocates build the will of communities and policy leaders to protect the air, land and water of our region.
Funded through a special allocation from the foundation's endowment, the Catalyst Fund includes three core elements: research and planning, innovative approaches and learning partnerships. Grants from this fund range from $100,000 to $200,000 over two years. Application for Catalyst Fund grants is by invitation only.
The Grassroots Fund
This new fund was established to strengthen the Northwest conservation community at its roots. Grants from this fund are typically made to small organizations confronting critical challenges on the ground in their communities. Working directly within the landscapes where they live, these groups have important perspective and knowledge that gives them unique leverage at the local level.
We expect organizations requesting support: to demonstrate leadership, offering innovative approaches at the grassroots level; to work in geographies or on issues that build on the Brainerd Foundation's strategies and goals; to be connected to or collaborative with other organizations, campaigns or coalitions in the region; and to have an annual budget where a small grant can go a long way. Grants range from $1,000 to $10,000 and are awarded year-round at staff discretion.
The Opportunity Fund
This continuing fund is earmarked for organizations confronted with a timely opportunity to carry out important work in support of a policy issue impacting critical ecosystems or related to significant policy debates in the Northwest. We are specifically interested in meeting needs that pertain to outreach, but monies from this fund can also be used for emergent litigation, applied research and other unexpected needs. Priority is given to requests that fit into a broader strategy in the state or region. Grants range from $250 to $3,000 and are awarded year-round at staff discretion.
Measures of Success
As a result of these investments, we expect to see:
Policy gains at the state (or provincial) and local level
- Successful adoption of policy priorities identified by state and provincial level advocates.
Protection of critical landscapes
- Strong community-based support for protecting or restoring critical landscapes in pivotal parts of the region.
- Collaborative efforts between allies or among diverse communities (such as ranchers, conservationists, government agencies, and fishing and hunting communities) that lead to place-based conservation gains.
A growing conservation mandate
- Voter education and policy groups that achieve higher levels of voter engagement and increased levels of support from their communities.
- Increasing decisionmaker support for policies that protect our air, land and water.
- Growing recognition that conservation advocates reflect mainstream public concerns to which decisionmakers must be accountable.
More effective conservation advocacy
- Healthy organizations with sufficient resources and capacity to achieve their goals.
- Communications and outreach strategies that successfully engage target constituencies.