In collaboration with the Land Trust Council, Gathering Waters distributed a survey to member land trusts in March 2019 in order to gauge needs and opportunities. Survey results will inform the Land Trust Council’s priorities and Gathering Waters’ future programs and services.
Thank you to the 121 of you who responded, representing 30 land trusts! You rated the importance of particular topics for the Land Trust Council to focus on, indicated your level of interest in a range of shared services, and gave us your opinion on communication channels for receiving information from Gathering Waters and for facilitating communication among land trusts.
The choices offered in the survey instrument were based on topics and services previously identified by member land trusts, including suggestions for sessions at our annual conference. These topics and services represent new or additional areas of potential focus to support land trusts and land conservation in Wisconsin, and are not intended to replace fundamental services and training opportunities that Gathering Waters already provides.
Based on the initial review of survey results, the Land Trust Council intends to prioritize the following in discussions this year:
- Developing a model conservation easement for Wisconsin.
- Identifying climate mitigation strategies for land trusts, including best practices for siting renewable energy, and appropriate language in easements.
- Developing additional GIS services.
- Convening attorneys and land trust practitioners to develop strategies for recruiting additional legal expertise to represent land trusts and landowners in conservation transactions.
Another topic that ranked highly was understanding strategic collaboration options and implications (e.g., partner, subsidiary, merger or acquisition models). This is an area that Gathering Waters is already paying close attention to, and we plan to develop summaries of recent Wisconsin land trust experiences as a complement to the Land Trust Alliance’s national guide on mergers, among other learning opportunities.
The survey indicated that Currents (Gathering Waters’ e-Bulletin for land trusts) and our eNews are the most common means of receiving information from Gathering Waters, and we will continue to offer valuable and timely content and resources through these email channels. We encourage our land trust members to remind their staff and board members about these digital publications and to ensure that they are signed up to receive them.
In order to facilitate information sharing among land trust practitioners, we will also pursue the creation of a listserv or a similar platform to enable land trust staff and board members to interact with one another.
As we prioritize these topics, shared services, and communications efforts, Gathering Waters and the Land Trust Council will continue to track the other areas that respondents rated highly, and we encourage our land trust members to be in touch with their thoughts, questions, or concerns.
Want to find out more about what land trusts said on the survey, and compare your responses with others? Download the survey results.
