Environment : Environmental Protection and Conservation
Sustainable Conservation
Because the environment is everyone's business
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This rating was published 02/01/2020 and includes data from FY2018, the most recent 990 received at that time.
Impact Information
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Financial
71.17
Accountability & Transparency
100.00
This rating was published 02/01/2020 and includes data from FY2018, the most recent 990 received at that time.
All data for Financial Performance Metrics calculations was provided by Sustainable Conservation on recent 990s filed with the IRS.
Official Charity Response
As Sustainable Conservation has grown our programs, and the budget and infrastructure needed to support expanded efforts to solve California’s most pressing environmental challenges, our Charity Navigator rating has shifted. We’d like to explain why and assure you that we are in fact positioned more strongly than ever – thanks to strategic decisions designed by Board and staff – to leverage charitable donations and drive meaningful conservation change for our Golden State.
Based on our financial records of 2018, the latest year evaluated by Charity Navigator as of February 2020, we received a two-star rating for the first time. This change is not alarming, and due to the following reasons:
• Our 2018 program expenses were lower than the year prior because of an $800,000 USDA Conservation Innovation Grant we strategically expended in 2017 to prove the effectiveness of innovative irrigation technology for protecting water quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from California dairies. Due to this significant, one-time grant, our program expenses decreased in 2018; in turn, our Charity Navigator score for program expense growth during this period decreased.
• We also successfully completed our multi-year Making Big Ideas Work fundraising campaign in 2015 to scale the impact of several successful programs even though we knew we would spend down assets after building them up, thus decreasing our score.
Our team will always seek major funding opportunities that align with our work.
Both the Conservation Innovation Grant and our Making Big Ideas Work Campaign have yielded great environmental benefits for California. The Conservation Innovation Grant demonstrated a pioneering technology that helps protect water quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and that is now being installed on dairies across the San Joaquin Valley thanks to our pilot program and active promotion. If this system were adopted on all dairy corn silage acreage in California, dairies would save enough water to support nearly a half-million Golden State households over the course of one year, and reduce enough greenhouse gases to match the annual carbon footprint of 85,000 cars.
The Making Big Ideas Work Campaign enabled significant growth for our programs – including our Accelerating Restoration Program, which expedites federal and state permitting for badly needed habitat restoration across the state, and our Water for the Future Program, which replenishes our groundwater stores by capturing precipitation during wet seasons in our underground aquifers for use in dry years.
We will continue to make strategic and prudent decisions that support our mission and our long-term financial health – as well as generate the impact our donors expect.
For more information please contact:
Robyn Carliss, Creative and Communications Director, rcarliss@suscon.org / 415-857-9157
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