When the Genius Met the General

When Pat and Rich launched The Conservation Fund in 1985, the same year that Pat won a MacArthur Fellowship (the “genius” award), they brought that entrepreneurial and aggressive spirit with them. They chose the name The Conservation Fund to be explicit about the critical role bridge financing could play in conserving land on behalf of public agencies. You see, public agencies often do not have their funding ready when landowners want to sell. The Conservation Fund was in large part established to bridge that gap – to step in and buy the land and hold it until the public agency had the money to buy the land back from The Conservation Fund for permanent protection.

Getting to Scale

During the first year of our operation, we completed two projects protecting 450 acres of land. By the end of 2020, the power of their vision was clear: we had completed more than 3,500 projects protecting more than 8.4 million acres across all 50 states.

What has made this possible is the permanent capital that we have raised to buy land. We call it our Revolving Fund because it is constantly at work – as soon as the money comes back from one project it rolls immediately into the next.  It is by far the hardest working capital in conservation and it is the lifeblood of our work.  In the earliest days of The Conservation Fund, the Richard King Mellon Foundation and one of our founding Board members, William I. Spencer played enormous roles in helping to bring the Revolving Fund to life.

The Richard King Mellon Foundation provided The Conservation Fund with its first major gift to the Revolving Fund. As one of the nation’s top land conservation funders, its legacy is etched across every state in the nation – with over 4 million acres protected across America.

Bill Spencer was president of Citibank from 1970 to 1982 and an ardent conservationist. As he did their banking, Bill knew that many large industrial companies had surplus, nonperforming real estate assets on their books and that if they donated them to The Conservation Fund they could get a significant tax deduction. The idea was that The Conservation Fund would then sell these non-conservation properties and use the proceeds to build the Revolving Fund.

The combination of gifts from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and donations of surplus corporate real estate – what we now call Giftlands – proved the winning ticket.  Spurred on by these early gifts, The Conservation Fund has raised more than $150 million for the growing Revolving Fund.  That pool of money, recycled as it is from one great project to another, has conserved more than $7.3 billion of land – an incredible return on investment.

A Caucus in the Hall

One Giftland in particular stands out as the purest example yet of what it was like when the Genius met the General. Early in 1985, not long after The Conservation Fund opened its doors, Bill Spencer introduced Pat to the CEO of Pfizer Corporation. Their initial phone conversation had gone well, and the company had zeroed in on donating to The Conservation Fund its entire talc mining division in southern California. This required a face-to-face meeting, so on a sunny spring day, Pat and Rich flew to New York to try and close the deal.

They arrived at the company headquarters and were ushered into an austere and well-appointed conference room. Soon after a team of dark-suited executives entered the room, and the negotiations began.  Back and forth they went, discussing detail after detail.  The stakes were high as this would, if consummated, be the largest corporate gift for conservation to date. Back and forth they went, making headway and giving ground – like evenly matched teams facing off on the field.  Finally, after a short break in mid-afternoon they reached a deal!

The lead executive from Pfizer came back in the room and said to Pat and Rich, “Congratulations! By the time you get back to your office in Arlington, Virginia, the paperwork will be on your desk.  Sign it and send it right back.  We’re going to fax it to you as soon as you leave.”

Instead of celebrating, Pat looked at Rich, then back at the executive and said, “Gentlemen, this is outstanding, but would you excuse us for just a minute while we caucus in the hall?”

“Certainly,” came the reply, after a somewhat puzzled pause.

Pat and Rich went into the hall, and Pat turned to Rich and said, “Thanks to your great work, we’re going to get this gift.  But how are we going to sign the documents?  We don’t own a fax machine…”

Well, they walked back into the conference room, thanked everyone profusely, and then Pat said, “There’s just one problem.  We can’t sign the documents; we don’t have a fax machine.”

The executives looked at each other, then the lead executive said, “Would you excuse us for a minute while we caucus in the hall?”

“Certainly,” said Pat.

The executives all filed out into the hall and Pat and Rich could hear their hushed whispers. All of a sudden, things weren’t looking so great.

But then the executives filed back into the conference room and the leader said, “It’s all fixed.  By the time you get back to your office we will have had a new fax machine installed in your office and you can sign the documents and send them back!”

Ambition We Shoulder Proudly

When The Conservation Fund launched in 1985, it was a new kind of organization.  Entrepreneurial, nimble, lean, creative, risk-taking, no membership, no advocacy, no endowment, every dollar focused squarely on transactions – the business of conservation. In fact, it remains the only nonprofit chartered for both conservation and economic development. The vision and ambition that Pat and Rich brought to their new venture was groundbreaking. And it remains so today.

And now with the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act last year, after more than three decades of advocacy leadership by Pat and others, we are poised to do even more. From the redwoods of California, to the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, to the vast forestlands of New York, to the ancestral community of Chief Powhatan in Virginia and the Freedom Riders Trail in Alabama, we continue to build on Pat’s and Rich’s conservation legacy.

Over the last three and a half decades, The Conservation Fund has become the most efficient and effective conservation organization in America. It has given me and nearly 200 other top professionals a platform to express our own visions for conservation. Every day we have the privilege of continuing this work, and as Pat and Rich formally retire this month, we at The Conservation Fund will carry their legacy forward. We are humbled by their courage and leadership and we are honored to follow in the footsteps of these two great Americans – the Genius and the General.

Thank you both, for everything.