For the most part, 2024 was a good year for the Foundation. It represented our first full year with a deeper Program Team, and we took the opportunity to reaffirm our Mission of protecting biodiversity and the wild places that nature requires to simply hang on in an increasingly changing landscape. We also reaffirmed our style of grant making that requires deep focus and ongoing commitment to geographies where we feel we can truly make a difference and help ensure perpetuation of biodiversity with on-the-ground leadership.
And while we were disappointed with the performance of our investments this past year, we did participate in this year’s strong equity market sufficiently so that we briefly touched the “high-water” mark for our assets. These asset levels allowed us to maintain our recent annual grant budget of $1,500,000 in 2024 and possibly look to increase this modestly in 2025.
With leadership from our Program Team, we did take the decision to transition away from our long-term funding in Alaska. This decision will allow us to increase our resources already being deployed to areas where, with hands-on engagement, we hope we can enhance our ability to make a difference for biodiversity. Now with the change of Administration in DC, we feel even better about this decision as the deep local engagement of our work will be even more important in the coming years.
In closing, and as always, we would like to express our thanks and continued gratefulness to all our grantees and the incredible work they perform each day in trying to make the world a better place.
John