Environmental Stewardship Foundation

Environmental Stewardship Foundation (EIN 94-3375380, Sacramento, CA) is not a conventional open-call grantmaker for nonprofits. It is the tax-exempt financial vehicle behind the Environmental Stewardship Award Program (ESAP), a nomination-based recognition award for U.S. cattle producers, administered by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) and National Cattlemen's Foundation since 1991. The eight names listed in our database as "past grantees" — Wine Glass Ranch (Pribbeno Family, Imperial, NE), Downey Ranch (Wamego, KS), Whispering Hills Farm (KY), and others — are past AWARD WINNERS, not nonprofit grant recipients, and no cash disbursement to a nonprofit applicant should be expected under this line.

The governance structure is a three-person, all-volunteer board (Peter Holton as President/Treasurer, James Duberg as Secretary, Mark Morse as Vice President), each reporting $0 compensation across every filed year — a lean, low-overhead entity by design.

Applicants cannot self-nominate or petition the foundation directly for project funding. The realistic path in is: (1) identify a cattle-ranching operation with a strong conservation story, (2) serve as or recruit a credible third-party nominator (NRCS field staff, university extension, breed association, conservation district, or a neighboring producer), and (3) build a complete packet before the roughly mid-February annual deadline (Feb 16, 2026 for the current cycle). Judging runs through a Selection Committee drawn from universities, conservation organizations, and federal/state agencies, moving from state/regional judging to seven U.S. regional winners, then to a single national winner named at NCBA's CattleCon (Nashville, Feb 2027 for the 2026 cycle).

For grant seekers whose actual need is project funding — water quality work, habitat restoration, land management cost-share — this foundation should be treated as a recognition and visibility opportunity for an aligned cattle operation, not a funding source. Organizations seeking cash grants for conservation programming are better served pursuing the peer foundations below or NCBA's broader sponsor network (Corteva Agriscience, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) directly.

Total giving has fallen sharply and consistently: $1,125,707 (FY2018) to $982,748 (FY2019) to $450,152 (FY2020) to $330,931 (FY2021) to $305,945 (FY2022) — a 73% decline over four years. Total assets tell the same story on a longer arc, dropping from $6,773,516 (FY2013) to $3,370,051 (FY2022), roughly a 50% contraction, consistent with a foundation drawing down principal rather than growing an endowment.

Revenue is almost entirely passive: net investment income of $199,051 accounted for 98% of FY2022's $202,556 in total revenue, and contributions_received is reported as $0 in every filed year — this entity raises no outside money and lives off portfolio returns.

Program-level expense lines from the most recent Form 990-PF show legal fees as the single largest cost at $346,273 ("incurred to protect and preserve the Foundation and assets"), followed by land maintenance and preservation at $57,280, and liability insurance plus property taxes at $23,990 — these three lines alone total $427,543, which exceeds the reported total_giving figure of $305,945 for the same period. That gap indicates legal and land-carrying costs, not grantmaking, are now the dominant claim on the foundation's spending, a materially different profile from a typical program-focused environmental funder. The fourth disclosed program is ESAP itself, described only in narrative terms (no dedicated dollar figure was broken out in the data available).

No grantee-level dollar data (median/range grant size, per-grantee amounts) is available in our records — the grantee stats fields are empty — which is consistent with ESAP being a recognition program rather than a program that issues itemized cash grants to a roster of nonprofit grantees. Geographic distribution likewise cannot be quantified from financial data; regional winners are drawn from seven defined NCBA regions covering the continental U.S., based on residency of the nominee's ranching operation rather than a funded organization's headquarters.

All six entities sit in a tight asset band of roughly $2.8M-$3.1M, making Environmental Stewardship Foundation squarely mid-pack by balance sheet size among this environment-focused peer set. Our data bundle does not include annual giving, focus-area detail, or application posture for the five peers (their grantee/financial fields were not populated), so no like-for-like giving comparison can be made honestly — a gap worth flagging to any researcher relying on this peer set. What does distinguish this foundation from a typical small environmental funder is structural, not financial: it operates as an award-recognition vehicle tied to a national trade association program rather than as an independent grant-review body, which none of the peer names (water conservation, wetlands, general environment) appear to replicate based on their naming and category alone.

The most concrete recent milestone is the August 6, 2026 announcement of the seven 2026 ESAP regional winners, covering cattle operations in Ohio, Tennessee, Minnesota, Texas, Oregon, Utah, and South Dakota; the national winner will be selected from this group and announced at NCBA's CattleCon in Nashville, Tennessee in February 2027. The nomination window for this 2026 cycle opened around October 2025 and closed February 16, 2026, requiring a typed application, one nomination letter, and three letters of recommendation.

The most recent national winner on record is the Pribbeno family's Wine Glass Ranch of Imperial, Nebraska (2025), following the 2024 national win by Downey Ranch of Wamego, Kansas — both drawn from the same annual regional-to-national pipeline. The program marks its 35th year of continuous operation in the current cycle (founded 1991), with NCBA CEO Colin Woodall serving as the program's public spokesperson.

No leadership changes at the foundation level were found in web research; the three-person volunteer board (Holton, Duberg, Morse) appears unchanged across the filing years in our data. No news specific to the foundation's own finances (legal matter driving the $346,273 legal-fee line, or the multi-year asset decline) surfaced in public search results — that remains visible only in the Form 990-PF data, not in press coverage. Sponsorship from Corteva Agriscience and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues without any reported change.

This is a nomination program, not an open grant application — the single most important tip is that a cattle producer's own nonprofit partner, conservation district, or advocate must submit the nomination; the producer cannot apply on their own behalf. Start by identifying a specific operation with a strong, documentable conservation record before touching the paperwork.

Build the complete four-document packet well before the deadline (Feb 16 for the 2026 cycle; expect a similar mid-February date in future years): the typed application form, one nomination letter, three letters of recommendation, and a signed Statement of Authenticity. Missing any one of these is the most common reason packets are considered incomplete.

Write directly to the six judged dimensions rather than a generic land-stewardship narrative: water management, wildlife management, vegetation management, air quality, soil health, plus leadership and business sustainability. The Selection Committee draws from universities, conservation groups, and federal/state agencies, so quantify outcomes (acres restored, species supported, water-quality metrics) rather than relying on qualitative description alone.

Use the sample winning applications from 2022, 2021, and 2017 posted on environmentalstewardship.org as a structural template — prior winners' packets show how judges expect evidence to be organized across the six criteria.

A common mistake is treating this as a single-shot opportunity: because previous WINNERS cannot reapply but non-winning nominees CAN be renominated in later years, persistence across cycles is a legitimate strategy, and nominators should plan to resubmit with updated evidence if not selected the first time.

Relationship-building runs through NCBA's state affiliate network (e.g., Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Montana Stockgrowers Association) rather than through the foundation directly — engaging a state cattlemen's association early can surface co-nominators and letter-writers with credibility in the judging process. For packet logistics or a hard-copy request, the program's contact channel is the ESAP team email listed on the application page.