Form 990 for tax year 2023

Totals

Total revenue

$19,543,568

Total expenses

$27,141,818

Contributions and grants received

$16,252,712

Grants paid

$18,783,718

Program service revenue

$0

Investment income

$2,641,815

Other revenue

$649,041

Total assets, end of year

$300,985,916

Total liabilities, end of year

$10,639,473

Net assets or fund balances, end of year

$290,346,443

Program services expenses (Part IX)

$25,849,620

Management and general expenses

$1,292,198

Fundraising expenses

$0

Program service expenses (Part III)

$25,849,620

Program services were 95.2% of total expenses calculated — Part IX's program-services column over total expenses, both as filed.

Line items

Every line the filer filed in Parts VIII, IX and X, as filed and in filed order. Blank columns are left out, and the lines are not forced to add up to the totals above.

Mission and programs · 2023

• The Endowment advances its mission using a "theory of change" that focuses on three areas: retaining and restoring healthy working forests; promoting and capturing multiple value streams using market-based tools; and enhancing community capacity, collaboration, and leadership. The Endowment deploys its work through five primary initiatives, each of which supports several programs or projects. I. Ecosystem Markets: Monetizing non-traditional forest products. The Endowment continues a focus on water as an ecosystem market. The Endowment is partially funding coordinators across the country who work with local partners to seek State Revolving Fund loans for forested watershed protection and management, which will help keep drinking water supplies clean and affordable. The Endowment is also exploring opportunities for biodiversity credits for landowners as another source of revenue that will contribute to conservation goals. II. Forest Retention and Health: Retaining/expanding and ensuring health of forests. This is a wide-ranging initiative that includes serving as cross-border convener for more strategic collaboration between Canada and the U.S. Other work includes corporate partnerships to protect bottomland hardwood forests, the Department of Defense's base buffering program and innovative financing approaches for forest management and retention. Each is designed to aid in retention and restoration of healthy working forests. A corporate partnership provides funding for conservation of high-value bottomland hardwood forests in North Carolina and Virginia; this program is a model for public-private partnerships. The Endowment works with local conservation partners to take advantage of USDA funds through the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Their Regional Conservation Partnership Program awards finance conservation easements that protect forests that are important for the environment and that sustain local jobs and economies. III. Traditional Markets: After successful work that led to the creation of two commodity check-offs - Softwood Lumber Board and Paper & Paper-based Packaging Board -- more recent work has included supporting initiatives to advance public understanding of the benefits of working forests and the role they play in climate solutions. We are also continuing to develop blockchain solutions through a program called ForesTrust, which seeks to track the supply chain of timber and forest products from forests to end-product, which helps alleviate issues involving illegal logging. IV. Future Markets: The Endowment is partnering with the USDA Forest Service and emerging producers to advance commercialization of cellulosic nanomaterials. This multi-year initiative engages partners to fill knowledge gaps facilitating new products and applications while placing a primary interest on ensuring human and environmental health and safety. Work continues to advance mass timber applications to support tall wooden buildings, including advancing the carbon story of forest products. The Endowment is investigating potential benefits and concerns associated with forest carbon. In response to an increase in public and private investment in carbon management and climate smart forestry on private forest lands, the Endowment is funding programs and workshops to better understand and quantify landowner capacity and willingness to adopt carbon management practices and the implications for other forest land uses (e.g., wood products). Through the US Biochar Initiative project, we work with partners to increase applications, market, and production of biochar with the ultimate goal of carbon being buried in the ground, allowing carbon credits to be realized. The Forest & Wood Carbon Data Platform launch in 2023 created a single U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-sponsored platform with multiple user-friendly tools providing transparent, high-integrity forest and wood product carbon data throughout the value chain. The platform will include six measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) tools that align with a U.S. Forest Service (USFS) objective to serve as the primary source of information on carbon and carbon flows across U.S. Forest lands, harvested wood products, and end-use life cycle assessment. V. Asset Creation: We continue to support the Sustainable Forestry and Land Retention (SFLR) network and their goal to use forests and forest-based assets to create economic opportunity for African American landowners. American Forest Foundation is now the SFLR fiscal agent. SFLR is a multi-year program in partnership with the USDA Forest Service and NRCS across eight southern states and has successfully seen 1,500 black families move their lands into the forest management pipeline. We are applying the applied learnings for our work with the SFLR network to explore Hispanic/Latino landowners and their ability to generate wealth for their families and communities. We continue to work with the Economic Development Administration in New England in partnership with the Northern Forest Center to assist in finding local economic solutions to help offset the impact of the closure of much of the region's pulp and paper production.

  Expenses $25,849,620 · Grants $18,783,718

As filed on the 2023 return.

Listed in Part VII

Compensation is as filed in Part VII: reportable pay from this organization and from related organizations, other compensation, and hours per week. The total, marked calculated, is our sum of the three dollar columns, with a blank column counted as $0; the form itself has no total. On a Form 990-EZ the columns are Part IV's instead, and on a Form 990-PF Part VIII's — compensation, contributions to benefit plans, and expense account — and the total sums those. A Schedule J breakdown is as filed: base pay, bonus, other, deferred compensation and nontaxable benefits from this organization, with any from related organizations beside each, and the filer's own total. It is shown with the Part VII listing of the same name on the same return. The form gives no key between the two, so that pairing is ours, and is marked matched by us.

Schedule J

Part I's answers as filed. A line not listed was left unanswered; on lines 1a and 3 that means the box was not checked.

Grants on this return

• Working Forest Initiative

  $500,000

  Traditional Markets

• Sappi North America Inc

  $414,111

  P3 Nano

• Northern Forest Center

  $411,961

  Economic Development Administration

• World Resources Insitute

  $387,965

  Conservation Finance

• University of Maine

  $386,408

  P3 Nano Research to Commericalization; Economic Development Administration

• The Nature Conservancy

  $375,000

  Conservation

• The Sierra Fund

  $350,342

  Carbon

• Blue Forest Finance

  $342,143

  Innovative Finance; Ecosystem Markets

• Bosland Growth LLC

  $339,009

  Scarred Mine Land; Forest Conservation

• United States Biochar Initiative

  $279,506

  Biochar

The 10 largest by cash amount. The API serves every itemized grant.

Taxable family on this return

Schedule R Parts I, III and IV, as filed. These record ownership and control, not shared board members or money moved.

Provenance

Return type

form_990

Tax year

2023

Filed

14 November 2024

IRS schema version

2023v5.1

Source object

202423199349306547

Check it against the return as filed: the GivingTuesday Data Lake hosts a public copy of the original XML.

The source document this was parsed from is served over the API, which is where bulk and document access live.