Diamond in the Rough - Family Foundation Crosses Border to Help Conservation Movement

Working from the understanding that North America's conservation challenges respect few boundaries, the Arthur B. Schultz Foundation is expanding its grant activities above the 54th parallel.

The story - and new direction - of the Schultz Foundation mirrors that of many of today's family foundations. The family patriarch, Arthur, was an immigrant from Norway who struck it rich and wanted to give others "the same entrepreneurial chance to make a go of it," says his son Eric Schultz, the current Executive Director.

Like other foundations it's time for energetic heirs - with their own granting priorities - to move into key decision-making positions. What started out purely as an internationally-driven organization has shifted focus to include environmental conservation and wilderness access programs for the handicapped.

Throughout its history the Arthur B. Schultz Foundation has given away an average of about $357,000 a year. "We've given away far more than our five percent requirement historically."

Schultz says a recent move to Wyoming was intended, "in large part to put ourselves right in the middle of the conservation efforts coordinated up here." Most of the foundation's activity is currently centred around the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Canada is part of what has become a northern migration for the foundation.

"It's a vast area and it really represents the only truly intact inhabited mountain ecosystem left on earth ... there's no where else that hasn't lost major species while retaining significant habitation and development around it."

The foundation's Canadian conservation program is, "an effort to preserve that balance."

To date, they have made only two forays north. Last year the foundation gave the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture a $2400 donation for its 2003 Sustainable Mountain Communities Conference.

Another recipient was the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, based out of Canmore, Alberta. They received a $5000 grant to support their diverse North American-wide network of over 160 organizations, which work together to maintain and restore the unique heritage of the region.

Eric says he's, "looking to make new contacts in Canada actively as we speak" and spent time up in British Columbia recently, "meeting a lot of the players."

Although he's clearly excited about the conservation side of the foundation's agenda, after suffering a spinal cord injury several years ago, Eric was the one to push recreational and backcountry mobility programs for the disabled.

But they haven't dropped their international focus, recently funding a program to get wheelchairs to the third world. Schultz notes that while people in the developed world worry about improved access and convenience for the handicapped, people in the third world just need wheelchairs - at least 20 million of them to be precise.


BIG Picture: The Schultz foundation's wilderness conservation, international micro-enterprise and handicapped programs are all considered equal programming. But when you want the inside track on what's hot and what's not inside a foundation, you've got to talk to the boss. "From a budgetary perspective," notes Eric Schultz, "I'm more interested in the conservation program."

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