Planning for Acquisition


The Foundation seeks and will consider funding opportunities to support planning projects that identify important natural areas and wildlife habitat and develop shared priorities among land conservation partners to help protect them.

Please see How to Apply to learn about preparing your Letter of Inquiry Application and to get the latest information on deadlines.

Application Deadlines:Letters of Inquiry are due January 15, or July 16, 2013.  

Review Process:
4 months. The Foundation evaluates Letters of Inquiry against the funding criteria below. Within two months of the above deadlines, a committee of the Foundation's Board of Trustees will invite some or all of the applicants to submit Full Proposals for consideration by the Board of Trustees that announces grants in early May and early November. The Foundation's review process is competitive.

Available Support:

The Foundation will award a limited number of individual grants to support planning projects in which the ultimate goal is land acquisition and protection. While funding levels may vary depending on the project proposed, the average level of previous grants awarded under this Program is $50,000. A match is preferred, but not required. Support is available for a range of project durations with the longest being two years. Applications submitted on behalf of project teams made up of multiple organizations and agencies are preferred over those submitted by an individual organization.

Restrictions: The Foundation support should not be used to replace or duplicate public funding for planning. The Foundation will not provide funding for the following: reoccurring operating costs; political campaigns or lobbying; and capital or endowment campaigns.

Funding Guidelines

Criteria

The Foundation evaluates requests for support under its Planning for Acquisition Program against the following criteria:

  • The Foundation typically reserves its planning grants for projects that develop new plans that identify conservation priorities in areas of the state where such collaborative maps and related planning activities do not currently exist.

  • The proposed planning activities should be designed to lead directly to on-the-ground transactions to acquire and protect key natural areas that would not have occurred without the project.

  • Projects should lead to acquisitions in the near future as opposed to being multiple steps away from action.

  • Related to the previous two criteria, all projects must include a group of users committed to the protection of natural areas identified during the proposed planning activities.

  • Most successful applications under this program propose collaborative projects in which the work is completed by a project team, often involving both public agencies and private conservation groups.  Project budgets submitted with the application reflect this collaboration.

  • Planning projects that are designed to position groups to apply for Foundation support under its Land Acquisition program or access funds from other sources are preferred.

  • Some planning projects that result in actual maps of conservation priorities.

  • Most projects supported result in a plan that, at the minimum, identifies and prioritizes land acquisition goals and, at best, divides up priorities within a given planning area between participating groups to increase likelihood of success.


Priorities

  • Collaborative projects that map out acquisition priorities and divide responsibilities among land protection partners within Conservation Opportunity Areas (COAs) of the Illinois Wildlife Action Plan.

  • Projects in which land acquisition will be planned as a strategy for achieving specific objectives of larger resource improvement efforts (i.e. watershed improvement plans).

Please see How to Apply to learn about preparing your Letter of Inquiry Application and to get the latest information on deadlines.