NCLC’s partner program seeks to strengthen the capacity of the land conservation community through collaboration, support, and, when needed, technical guidance.

NCLC’s Strategic Plan outlines NCLC’s priorities and underscores our commitment to safeguarding the region’s vital natural resources and remarkable beauty. The plan focuses on accelerating the pace, scale, and quality of conservation with an approach rooted in collaboration and partnership inspired by the feedback provided directly from partners in the winter of 2023-2024.

These resources, as well as a Partner e-Newsletter, are based on the suggestions and needs of partners communicated directly to NCLC. NCLC shares this information in a variety of ways to ensure that all land trusts in our region and surrounding areas learn about opportunities available to partners in the region.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

• Acquisition Grant Program for Partners
• Building Resiliency on Northwest Connecticut Farmland grant program

PARTNER RESOURCES

Lens Discounted Access

Aerial monitoring saves land trusts significant resources as they do not need to physically travel to and walk properties to conduct annual inspections. The imagery also enhances the inspection process by ensuring that a land trust can visualize the most difficult-to-reach areas.

Upstream Tech offers the best platform for aerial monitoring available to land trusts, called Lens. Upstream Tech and NCLC have established a new partnership to make Lens accessible to NCLC’s partner land trusts in Northwest Connecticut with a 50% discount on an independent subscription to Lens for eligible partner organizations. Land trusts may join the program if they meet eligibility criteria. Each participating organization must:

• • Operate as a nonprofit land trust
  • Serve a geographic focus within NCLC’s service area
  • Have an annual operating budget of $750,000 or less

If your land trust would like to participate, please email amanda@ctland.org to receive a discount code to enter when registering. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you aren’t sure and need more information, including best practice guidelines for compliance with land trust accreditation.

Small Area Land Trusts (SALT)

Small Area Land Trusts (SALT) is a free, informal grassroots consortium of conservation organizations that meets twice per year. It began 15+ years ago. It provides a forum for informal discussion and information sharing that participants value and enjoy. It is a partnership opportunity, not an organization promoted to the public.  

SALT is co-chaired Amanda Branson (NCLC) and Rebecca Neary (Warren Land Trust). Please email both chairs to share your suggestions for discussion topics, add or remove people from the mailing list, or to volunteer to host. Your input helps to ensure the discussion will be meaningful to you and your organization.

SALT Resource: Land Trust Event Sharing

In response to discussion during SALT meetings and with partners, NCLC explored several ways to provide partners with an easy way to share their events with each other. The simplest is to use a Google sheet. Ground rules for using the SALTies Shared Events Google sheet:

• • This is not intended for public use. It is intended as a tool for partner land trusts to see what public events others are planning for inspiration and conflict checking.
  • There is no requirement to participate.
  • Each organization must enter their own events.
  • Do not change the column headers.
  • Do not change or edit event entries from other organizations.
  • Mistakes happen. Understand that event entries may be inadvertently deleted or changed.

Please email amanda@ctland.org for the link to the shared Google sheet.

EVENTS

Meet Your Greens is Northwest Connecticut’s Green Drinks happy-hour network, providing opportunities to make connections and exchange news. Based on the popular Green Drinks in Connecticut and nationwide, this informal gathering offers time for a broad group of participants to brainstorm ideas and plant seeds for collaboration. All are welcome, and no reservations or RSVP is necessary. The latest Meet Your Greens event details are available here.