In March 2026, the Land Trust Accreditation Commission released an updated version of the Requirements Manual, which translates the Land Trust Standards and Practices into specific, reviewable requirements used in accreditation, helping land trusts understand what documentation and practices demonstrate compliance.
While the Commission made eight total changes, this post highlights four. Visit the Accreditation Commission website to download the latest Manual and read about all the updates.
Below, Gathering Waters identifies some key changes made in the Manual.
Two of the revisions respond to the IRS regulations regarding syndicated conservation easements:
Indicator Practice V.1: Written notification to potential land or conservation easement donors includes a statement that the land trust is not providing individualized legal or tax advice to the landowner.
This revision explicitly states the language that land trusts must include in their communications with prospective landowner partners, as required by the IRS Listed Transactions Regulations.
Indicator Practice V.4: Land trust evaluates each transaction and takes actions to resolve substantial concerns with the appraisal, appraised value, or other terms of the transaction to ensure the land trust does not knowingly participate in potentially fraudulent or abusive transactions, including:
- Declining to participate in a transaction with a pass-through entity of unrelated parties that either was prohibited by the Standards or would not be treated as a qualified conservation contribution under law.
This indicator is updated to include the prohibitions within the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act, and reinforces the land trust’s responsibility to independently evaluate each transaction and decline to participate where the structure or parties involved raise concerns under the Standards or applicable law, not just where valuation issues are present.
The following two revisions address core operational practices related to stewardship and financial management, reinforcing the importance of clear documentation and alignment between organizational practices and stated commitments.
Indicator Practice I.3: Monitoring or inspection reports include the following:
a. Monitoring/inspection date—including for remote monitoring the date an image was captured, the data source, and either a copy of the image or the permanent storage location of the image.
d. Observations related to property’s condition and conservation values – if this includes photos, those photos are documented with date and included with the report or their permanent storage location is indicated in the report.
This revision clarifies practices needed to create and maintain records in such a way as to allow them to be offered as evidence when the land trust defends an easement in court.
Indicator Practice III.3: Financial records show contributions received and/or awarded are appropriately classified, tracked, and used in accordance with donor/grantor materials or communications.
This revision reinforces the importance of language choice in fundraising. A land trust’s communications with its donors set expectations about how contributions will be used. For example, if the land trust references an “endowment” in a donation request, any funds donated in response to that request must be perpetually restricted for use as principal in the endowment.
Details about all of the changes to the Manual, including a summary of the changes and when they will go into effect, are on the Accreditation Commission website.
For questions or guidance on how these updates may affect your organization, or how to update your policies and procedures, please reach out to the Land Conservation Law Program for support.
For land trusts seeking accreditation, the current application cycle is closed. Information about 2027 accreditation applications will be posted on the Commission website in late April 2026.