The Nanticoke River is the healthiest of all the major tributaries of the Chesapeake watershed. The Nanticoke Watershed Alliance is made up of 44 Partners in Conservation. In 2005, the board decided that the organization could and should do more, and thus began their journey into organizational capacity building.
Atchafalaya Basinkeeper has always gotten a lot done, but they were spending so much time protecting their watershed that very little went into securing the budget from one year to the next. With assistance from River Network's Diana Toledo, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper increased their business donations from $3,500 in 2009 to about $35,000 in 2010.
The North Fork John Day Watershed Council views its strategic plan as the channel which guides their active stream of activities. In developing their strategic plan, the organization needed a framework that would be stout enough to to withstand major events, robust enough to encourage activity and sinuous enough to connect with all of their diverse undertakings.
The Bad River watershed is a large, sparsely populated and beautifully forested area in northern Wisconsin. Over the years, the Bad River Watershed Association has proven resourceful and have tapped many different sources for capacity-building assistance, increasing the size of the small staff beyond what other rural groups have been able to sustain.
In December 2008, the last of 120,000 cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment were removed from 1.5 miles of the Kalamazoo River near Plainwell, Michigan. This represents 2% of the lands included in the Superfund project. “In the short term, this is a good thing,” said Jeff Spoelstra of the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council (KRWC).
How is the global downturn affecting fund raising for river groups? Our experience is that groups with strong individual donor and pledge programs appear to be least affected. Idaho Rivers United, with a home office in Boise, Idaho, is an example of one such group.
