Exploring collaboration can strengthen land trusts, boost their impact, and enhance long-term sustainability—but knowing where to start is crucial. This resource set provides an overview of collaboration opportunities, key considerations when exploring partnerships, and an interactive workbook to assess your land trust’s readiness and compatibility for mergers. By creating detailed profiles pre- and post-merger, land trusts can clearly evaluate potential benefits, challenges, and strategic alignment, ensuring successful collaborations that advance their conservation mission.
“State of the Lands: Results from the 2023-24 Connecticut Land Trust Census” presents the findings of a groundbreaking effort to document land conservation activities, understand future priorities, and identify ways to better support land trusts. The insights gained from this census will guide CLCC’s future priorities and strengthen its support for the land trust community in Connecticut.
Understanding nonprofit governance is crucial for land trusts, and the Connecticut Nonstock Corporation Act provides the legal foundation for how nonprofits operate in the state. This resource links directly to the full text of the Act, offering guidance on board responsibilities, member rights, and organizational compliance. Whether you’re forming a new land trust, updating bylaws, or navigating governance questions, this is a key reference for ensuring your organization stays legally sound.
Strong policies are the foundation of a well-run land trust. CLCC’s Sample Policy Library provides a collection of ready-to-use templates covering governance, land stewardship, financial management, and more. Whether your land trust is refining existing policies or drafting new ones, these samples offer a valuable starting point to ensure best practices and compliance with Land Trust Standards & Practices. Use this resource to streamline policy development and strengthen your organization’s operations.
Diversifying organizations through their boards, staff, and committees is essential for reflecting community diversity and enhancing decision-making. These resources provide insights on inclusive conservation, outline change processes for racial equity, offer roadmaps to inclusivity, guide on hiring diversely, and discuss barriers to organizational change. Together, they can be used to create environments and organizations where diverse perspectives are valued and drive forward the mission of land conservation.
If your land trust’s board meetings are bogged down with reports and updates rather than meaningful discussions, this Inverted Board Agenda approach can help refocus meetings on strategy and mission-driven decisions. By starting with a Mission Moment and a Strategic Issue Discussion, board members engage with the heart of the organization before diving into necessary votes. Routine reports are bundled into a Consent Agenda to streamline the meeting, while updates and announcements are saved for the end. This structure ensures that board meetings are more engaging, productive, and aligned with your land trust’s long-term success.
CLCC’s Land Trust Board Member Boot Camp is a five-part series that covers the essential roles, functions, and responsibilities of land trust board members. Originally produced in 2021, the content remains relevant and useful for those who are new to land trusts or board service, or for those in need of a refresher.
A collaboration of the Land Trust Alliance and Connecticut Land Conservation Council, the Connecticut Risk Management Initiative was created help land trusts ensure the permanency of their work by understanding and identifying risk, and assessing current risk management strategies through a series of online training sessions. Risk management is all about helping land trusts cope with uncertainty, and includes examining areas of potential risk within the organization including governance, financial practices, land transactions, stewardship, and programming.
Land trusts around the country provide access to nature, offering a valuable service to people in the form of health and wellness benefits gained from being outdoors. These benefits are well documented, from better overall health through exercise to reducing stress levels in the calming presence of nature. But land trusts need to ask: “Who are we leaving behind?” This guide addresses that question with regard to one group — people with disabilities — and provides practical ideas for incorporating inclusion into your land trust’s programming and organizational culture.
In an evolving landscape, nonprofits are increasingly exploring mergers and sustained collaborations to enhance impact and sustainability. This primer, developed by the New York Merger and Collaboration Fund (NYMAC), offers valuable insights from over 50 collaborations, highlighting benefits such as program expansion, financial stability, and strengthened leadership. It introduces the MAKER Framework—Mission, Assets, Keepers, Event, Reality—to guide organizations through self-assessment and strategic planning. Whether you’re considering a merger or another form of partnership, this resource provides practical guidance to navigate the process effectively.
Together, land trusts have established a set of guidelines for how to run a land trust responsibly: Land Trust Standards and Practices. These guidelines describe how to operate a land trust legally, ethically and in the public interest, with a sound program of land transactions and land stewardship.
Land trusts developed the first Standards in 1989 and revised them most recently in 2016-2017. Hundreds of conservation leaders contributed to the 2017 revisions, so these guidelines represent the experience of diverse land trusts from across the country. More than 1,000 land trusts have adopted the Standards.
Collaboration takes many forms, from informal partnerships to fully integrated mergers. Below are resources to help you explore the spectrum of inter-organizational collaboration, highlighting different models—such as networking, coordination, strategic alliances, and mergers—each requiring varying levels of trust, shared resources, and institutional commitment. Understanding where your land trust falls on this continuum can help identify the right approach to maximize impact, streamline efforts, and build stronger conservation outcomes. Whether you’re considering a simple partnership or a deeper integration, this resource provides a roadmap for effective collaboration.