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WHO WE ARE
Who We Are

Mission & History About The Conservation Alliance: Protecting Wild Places for #OurWildFuture
Board and Staff from Conservation Alliance

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Mission & History

Our Mission
We harness the collective power of business and outdoor communities to fund and advocate for the protection of North
America’s wild places.

Our Vision
A planet where wild places, wildlife, and people thrive together.

Our Values
We are catalysts. Providing a link between businesses and the conservation community, we enable and inspire our
colleagues to work together to protect the wild places vital to their business.

We represent strength in numbers. We recognize that our greatest strength is our collective nature. Our members are
competitors who come together around a common purpose.

We embody simplicity and effectiveness

effectiveness. We are laser focused on providing resources to grassroots conservation
projects. We strive to find the best conservation partners who will succeed given adequate support, and we measure that
success in terms of measurable, on-the-ground protection for wild places.

We are responsible. As a group of outdoor industry and associated businesses, we have a responsibility to invest in
protecting the places that are important to our colleagues and customers.
.

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Organizational History
The Conservation Alliance is a group of like-mind companies that disburses its collective annual membership dues to
grassroots environmental organizations. We direct our funding to community-based campaigns to protect threatened wild
habitat and outdoor recreation. The Alliance was founded in 1989 by outdoor industry leaders REI, Patagonia, The North
Face, and Kelty, who shared the goal of increasing outdoor industry support for conservation efforts. We now have more than
260 member companies, and plan to disburse more than $2 million in 2021.

Since its inception in 1989, the Alliance has contributed more than $27 million to grassroots conservation groups throughout
North America. The results of our funding have been remarkable. Alliance funding has helped save 73 million acres of
wildlands; protect 3,576 miles of rivers; stop or remove 37 dams; designate five marine reserves; and purchase 18 climbing
areas. We follow a rigorous grant proposal review process that ensures our grants go to organizations that can succeed given
the necessary financial resources. Click here for a list of our grantees and success stories.

Our goal is to grow the Conservation Alliance such that our annual grant budget exceeds $5 million. Though the vast majority
of those funds will always come from our member companies, we invite you to add your resources to our grant fund. We all
believe in conservation, but don’t always know which organizations are doing the most effective work. By supporting The
Conservation Alliance, you will invest in an array of the most compelling conservation projects in North America. Your
donation to the Alliance will help increase our grant fund, and support ever more effective conservation groups.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Our vision for ourselves, our organization, and our role in conservation
.

Our Why
The Conservation Alliance represents a coalition of businesses that fund and advocate for the protection of North America’s
wild places. Through our work, we consolidate and redistribute power in the form of financial grants and political influence to
grassroots environmental organizations working to permanently protect the outdoor spaces we love.

The collective nature of our organization is our greatest strength. We bring together voices across various industries and
advocate with a unified message on behalf of shared environmental values and business interests. We have been advocating
for wild places for more than 30 years, and we know that success happens when a diverse coalition of voices and
perspectives comes together and champions solutions that balance the best interests of the land and water, wildlife, and
people.

When there are systems or structures in place that amplify some voices while excluding others, we can’t do our best work.
We know such systems exist within the environmental movement, because organizations with power and influence have
historically been predominantly white. We are committed to changing these systems through our grant program, advocacy
efforts, and partnerships, and by doing so, making a positive impact on the environmental movement and the communities we
serve.

Our Vision
We envision a world where wild places, wildlife, and people thrive together. Protecting vast landscapes supports climate
resiliency and biodiversity by preserving carbon stores and critical habitat. Humans need wild spaces and rivers for recreation
and well being, and businesses and communities thrive from access to outdoor recreation, clean water, and healthy forests.
When people experience nature—whether it’s along the river that flows through their community, in a designated mountain
wilderness, or in an untouched landscape—they become advocates for the outdoors and protecting wild places.

Therefore, our vision of a successful conservation movement is a coalition of everyone—where the people we’re partnering
with and advocating alongside represent the diversity of our country in every way possible. We envision a movement that
values and incorporates the traditional knowledge and stewardship practices of indigenous peoples who have been present
on the land for millennia, and still are. We believe in protecting land and water for their myriad benefits, from climate resiliency
to close-to-home outdoor access.

Our Journey and Commitments

In order to achieve our vision, we must actively work to create systems of inclusion within ourselves as individuals, within our
organizational culture, processes, and programs, and through our role in a greater conservation and environmental
movement. This work takes time and consistent, life-long commitment.

As a coalition of business leaders and conservationists, we feel an acute urgency to demonstrate our sincerity through our
actions. Yet, we understand that meaningful and lasting change begins with gaining clarity and alignment on our intended
outcomes and how to get there. We strive for a blend of humility, patience, and determination as we work to transform
ourselves, shift our culture, build upon our 32-year organizational history, and connect with networks and communities who
have not been part of our alliance in the past. We know that our vision and path forward will evolve, and we commit to being
transparent in both our mistakes and successes. We welcome the guidance and feedback of our members, grantees,
supporters, and those we have yet to meet.

We’ll have made meaningful progress when we share ownership of our mission with our partners and communities, broaden
access to decision-making power over funding and project priorities, and when we expand and diversify access to our
financial resources and political clout. This will require an ongoing practice of evaluating and letting go of existing beliefs,
processes, and control, and reimagining what conservation and being a conservationist truly mean.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

What these terms mean to us in the context of our work
.

Justice
Hold ourselves accountable for using our power and privilege to address systems of bias and exclusion inhibiting our
collective work.

Equity
Create the conditions necessary to expand access to our resources, opportunities, and the work we do.

Diversity
Actively recognize and value the ways in which different backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences contribute to our
work and the conservation movement.

Inclusion
Create systems that invite a variety of voices and perspectives by engaging with openness and curiosity, actively removing
barriers to participation or access, and seeking out those who might be missing from the conversation.

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