Rangeland Foundation

Rangeland Foundation is a small, newly tax-exempt (January 2023) Bellevue, WA private foundation with $12.9M in assets — but despite its name and its T20 (Philanthropy & Grantmaking) NTEE classification, its actual giving is a tightly focused wolf and large-carnivore conservation program, not rangeland/grazing economics. Its own website states the mission as "wildlife and wilderness conservation," with specific emphasis on Grey, Mexican Grey, and Red Wolf population and genetic recovery, ending recreational trapping, rancher-wolf coexistence, and Endangered Species Act protections. All 11 tracked grants in FY2023 went to organizations already embedded in this space: Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative ($100K), Predator Defense ($100K), Western Watersheds Project ($75K), Trap Free Montana ($75K), Wolves of the Rockies ($75K), International Wildlife Coexistence Network ($50K), Bold Visions Conservation ($50K), Wyoming Untrapped ($25K), Pilots to the Rescue ($25K), Advocates for the West ($25K), and Wings Program Inc ($15K). The website separately references a broader portfolio of 50+ organizations across litigation, advocacy, coexistence, genetics, conservation aviation, anti-trapping, and land acquisition — including named grantees like California Wolf Center, Endangered Wolf Center, Wolf Haven International, and Yellowstone Ecological Research Center. There is no published LOI process, RFP, deadline, or grant-size cap; the only documented intake is a general contact form (Name/Email/Subject/Message). With three unpaid officers (Swift, Carlin, Barwick) and zero listed program staff, this behaves like a donor-directed vehicle funding a known network rather than running an open competitive program. First-time applicants should not expect a cold-application pathway to succeed — the realistic route is a warm introduction through one of the foundation's existing grantees (many of whom are well-networked in the wolf/carnivore advocacy space) or a highly targeted, personally addressed outreach via the contact form that demonstrates direct overlap with anti-trapping, wolf genetics, coexistence, or ESA litigation work in the Northern Rockies.

FY2023 IRS data shows $615,000 paid across 11 grants (total_giving including accruals: $698,409), for an average grant of $55,909. Grant sizes range from $15,000 (Wings Program Inc) to $100,000 (Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative and Predator Defense, tied for largest), with a visible cluster at $75,000 (three grantees: Western Watersheds Project, Trap Free Montana, Wolves of the Rockies) and another cluster at $25,000 (Wyoming Untrapped, Pilots to the Rescue, Advocates for the West). Geographically, grants concentrate in the Northern Rockies: Montana (4 grantees), Idaho (3), Wyoming (2), plus one each in Oregon and New York — reflecting the wolf range states (ID/MT/WY) plus national advocacy or aviation-support organizations that may be headquartered elsewhere (OR, NY). By program area, 100% of the tracked grant dollars went to wildlife/predator conservation and advocacy — there is no education, health, or general community-development giving despite the T20 classification. Financially, the foundation's asset base declined from $13,485,012 (FY2023) to $12,893,350 (FY2024), a ~4.4% drop, while total revenue fell sharply from $631,928 (FY2024, per the foundation's own filing figures cross-referenced against ProPublica) with net investment income of $103,345 and contributions received of $206,250 in FY2023. Charitable disbursements were reported at $1,047,282 in FY2024 total expenses (per ProPublica), suggesting a materially larger giving year in FY2024 than the $615,000 paid in FY2023 — though itemized FY2024 grantee-level data was not available in the underlying database. Applicants should read this as a foundation giving roughly $600K-$1M annually, in grants clustered at $25K, $50K, $75K, and $100K tiers, almost exclusively to wolf/predator-focused nonprofits.

Rangeland Foundation sits in a cohort of similarly small, single-donor-scale private foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, most with materially lower assets and no visible focus area of their own (several peers have no public grantee data or website at all).

All five peers are near-identical in asset size (~$12.88M-$12.91M), which is a database artifact of NTEE/asset-band matching rather than genuine program similarity — none of them have a public grantee list or documented focus area to compare against. Rangeland Foundation stands out within this peer set as the only one with a clear, publicly stated program theory (wolf and large-carnivore conservation) and a visible, if informal, grantee network; that makes it a more legible target for aligned applicants than its peers, most of which offer no discoverable entry point at all.

No foundation-specific press coverage, leadership changes, or new program announcements were found in web searches for "Rangeland Foundation" grants, news, or application updates in 2025-2026 — the searches instead surfaced unrelated organizations (California Rangeland Trust, NFWF's Rocky Mountain Rangelands Program, Society for Range Management, Alberta's Rangeland Sustainability Program). This is consistent with a foundation that has no communications or PR function and does not issue press releases about its grants. The most notable contextual development is that the United Nations has designated 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026), with a formal launch in Rome in late 2025 and a UNCCD COP17/IYRP event scheduled for August 17-28, 2026 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia — this is driving a broader wave of rangeland- and grazing-focused funding announcements nationally (e.g., NFWF's 10-year, $56M+ Rocky Mountain Rangelands Program, and BLM's September 2025 Rangeland Stewardship and Innovation Awards). None of this activity involves Rangeland Foundation directly, and applicants should not assume the foundation is expanding its scope to align with IYRP 2026 themes like grazing management or pastoralist economics — its own grantee list remains entirely wolf/predator-advocacy focused. On the organization's own timeline, the most concrete recent fact is IRS-recorded: it only received its 501(c)(3) ruling in January 2023, making its entire grantmaking history (FY2023-FY2024 in the data available) essentially its full operating record to date.

There is no published RFP, LOI template, grant portal, deadline, or maximum award size on the foundation's website — plan around relationship-building, not a competitive cycle. First, ground any outreach in the foundation's demonstrated program theory: wolf and large-carnivore recovery (Grey, Mexican Grey, Red Wolf), ending recreational trapping, rancher-wolf coexistence, and Endangered Species Act protection — proposals for general wildlife conservation, land trusts, or unrelated environmental causes are very unlikely to be a fit even though the foundation's NTEE code (T20, Community Development/Philanthropy) and generic name suggest a broader mandate. Second, note the funding tiers implied by FY2023 data ($15K, $25K, $50K, $75K, $100K) and pitch a request that lands cleanly on one of those tiers rather than an arbitrary figure — funders with unpaid, small boards (here: three officers, all zero compensation) often favor round-number asks that are easy to approve without extensive due diligence. Third, use the specific vocabulary the foundation itself uses on its site — "coexistence," "anti-trapping," "genetics," "conservation aviation," "land acquisition," "litigation," "advocacy" — since these appear to be the exact program buckets the board thinks in. Fourth, given zero visible program staff, the single most effective move is a warm introduction: reach out to or seek a reference from an existing grantee such as Advocates for the West, Western Watersheds Project, or Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, all of which are established, well-networked organizations in this niche and likely know the foundation's principals (James L Swift, Don R Carlin, Jon A Barwick) personally. Fifth, the only documented cold-outreach channel is the contact form on rangelandfoundation.org — keep that message short, state the specific carnivore-conservation program and dollar ask, and reference at least one current Rangeland Foundation grantee as a point of context, since generic conservation-sector form submissions are unlikely to be routed to a decision-maker. Common mistakes to avoid: treating this as a rangeland-management or agricultural funder (it is not, despite the name), submitting outside the ID/MT/WY/OR geographic cluster without a clear national-litigation or genetics angle, and expecting a published deadline or cycle that does not exist.