Support from the Business Community

The charge that the Conservancy is too cozy with corporations is not news. It has been made time and again, stemming from a myopic notion that there is an unbridgeable chasm between conservation and industry – and never the twain shall meet. But in all our actions, we seek to break down this stereotype and find common ground that can advance conservation. In fact, the Conservancy occupies a unique niche in the conservation movement, what some have called "the radical center." As one journalist has said of our work: "The Nature Conservancy judges its success by how many times its victories are not reported as victories, by how many times its fights are not perceived as battles by the participants."

Our long history of working with business is no secret. We accept their financial and land donations; we create collaborative ventures that further both our interests. Most of the conservation community recognizes and applauds the role we play, and many Conservancy members support us because we work with corporations, not against them. Only the Conservancy can and does enjoy the support of both the chairman of General Motors and a founder of Earth First!.

We do not apologize for our partnerships with the corporate world. They, along with partnerships with local communities, private landowners and government agencies, are essential to protect and restore entire functioning landscapes. In 1973, the Conservancy broke new ground when we received a donation of 49,000 acres in the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia from Union Camp Corporation–land that is now part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Ever since, we have continued to push the envelope to develop creative partnerships with corporations that result in tangible, lasting conservation.

Business Sector Giving to The Nature Conservancy

The Post’s series wrongly implies–through its graphic treatment as well as text–that The Nature Conservancy is either controlled or at least is manipulated by extractive industries. The facts show the opposite: in four out of the past five fiscal years, corporate donations represented less than 10 percent of the Conservancy’s total support and revenue. Instead of using this figure, the series reports that the Conservancy received $225 million from corporations last year–"approaching the amount given by individuals." Although technically accurate, this distorts the reality. More than half of the $225 million that year was in the form of a one-time gift of a large conservation easement, now set aside as open space for the people of Orange County, California. Of the total $225 million, more than $199 million was in the form of gifts of land and conservation easements from corporations.

Cause-related Marketing

When a company advertises the name and logo of a nonprofit organization on its products, the organization receives a financial contribution as well as expanded name recognition, and the company can be viewed in a favorable light by the public for having supported the nonprofit cause. This well-established venture is called "cause-related marketing." Revenues from these types of agreements have brought in more than $10 million to the Conservancy in the past five years and the exposure has brought our conservation message to millions of people. The Post series neglected to put cause-related marketing in the proper context, leaving the impression that the Conservancy is the only nonprofit organization engaging in such co-branding, when in fact dozens of nonprofits from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to the American Cancer Society to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) engage in cause-related marketing. Additionally, the Conservancy follows the Better Business Bureau's "Standards for Charitable Accountability," which includes guidelines for the use of cause-related marketing.

The Post indicated that in pursuing corporate contributions, the Conservancy allowed its logo to be used on brands of toilet cleaner produced by S.C. Johnson. The facts are different. Through a cause-related marketing partnership with S.C. Johnson, the company ran a special coupon section in Sunday newspapers around the country in which the company promised to donate 10 cents from every coupon redeemed to the Conservancy–up to $100,000. The advertisement featured the Conservancy's logo and included a variety of S.C. Johnson products, but the logo did not appear on the coupon or on the products. The ads ran once each fall from 1995 through 1999. The total proceeds to The Nature Conservancy from this partnership were $465,000.

International Leadership Council

Our International Leadership Council (ILC) is a corporate forum focusing on the challenges confronting biodiversity preservation, habitat conservation and natural resource management. These issues lie at the heart of a growing number of corporate responsibility programs. The ILC brings together companies from many industries–finance, manufacturing, forestry, consumer products, information technology, etc.–to seek solutions to conservation challenges through cooperative partnerships between the business community and the Conservancy. We want America's largest corporations to participate in this group; they have a large and significant opportunity to make enduring contributions to biodiversity conservation. The ILC has no governance responsibility for the Conservancy.

Climate Change

The Post implied the Conservancy had reluctantly taken up the issue of global warming and climate change only in the winter of 2001. In fact, the Conservancy was in the forefront of the movement to set aside forests as a mechanism to offset atmospheric carbon emissions, with our first "climate-action project" taking place in Belize in 1994. Working with governments and industry, the Conservancy created climate-action projects as an innovative conservation tool to protect threatened forests, especially in the tropics, and to reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Climate-action projects help abate the long-term threat of climate change by protecting standing forest, which acts as a "sink" that captures and stores atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The Post series neglected to report that the $10 million contributed by General Motors toward a "pollution credits" plan actually funded an important climate-action project whereby the $10 million was used to acquire and restore 30,000 acres of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. The Post also implied that we let our relationships with GM and other corporations cloud our perspective and get in the way of taking a public stand opposing proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But those who know us know we do not take vocal, public stands advocating one position or the other. This would compromise our "radical center" position. We leave outspoken advocacy to fellow conservation groups.