Wilderness Conservation Foundation

Wilderness Conservation Foundation (EIN 20-5161835) is best understood as a small, closely-held operating conservation trust, not an active competitive grantmaker. Its own website describes direct ownership and stewardship of 30 acres on Saddle Peak and 10 acres off Mulholland Highway in Agoura Hills, CA, and it actively solicits cash and land donations rather than describing any grants program. Its IRS record backs this up: in the past decade it has made exactly one recorded grant — $120,000 to the Rushford Lake Foundation in New York in FY2021, categorized simply as "operating capital," with $0 in grants paid in FY2022, FY2023, and FY2024. Governance is minimal and uncompensated: CEO James A. Kay Jr., Secretary/Treasurer Kathleen Hock, and board member Diva Elizabeth Vela Varela have held the same roles across every filing reviewed, with zero officer compensation reported in any year. The foundation's own data flags itself as "preselected only" for grant recipients, and its application_instructions field is blank — there is no LOI process, portal, or published RFP. For first-time applicants, the realistic read is that this is a relationship-driven, not proposal-driven, funder: its one documented grant went to an out-of-state lake-conservation nonprofit with no obvious geographic or thematic tie to the Santa Monica Mountains mission stated in its own IRS filings, which strongly suggests the grant followed a personal or board connection rather than a programmatic fit review. Organizations with genuine alignment — trail preservation, native habitat restoration, or wildlife corridor work specifically in or near the Santa Monica Mountains, Agoura Hills, or Saddle Peak — have the strongest thematic case, but should not expect a formal review cycle. The most productive path is a warm introduction through the Southern California land-trust and conservancy community (e.g., organizations connected to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy or Santa Monica Mountains Fund) rather than a cold written proposal. Given $7.6M in assets but near-zero recent disbursement, grant seekers should treat this as a long-shot, low-volume prospect worth a light-touch relationship investment rather than a primary funding strategy.

The foundation's giving is small, irregular, and has gone effectively dormant. Total assets stood at $7,602,471 in FY2024, up from $5,756,910 in FY2021 and just $2,060,383 in FY2014 — growth driven almost entirely by two outsized one-time contributions in FY2016-FY2017 (reported externally at roughly $1.4M-$2.3M) rather than by grantmaking success or investment performance. Annual giving figures from the data show extreme volatility: FY2023 total giving was $25,994; FY2022 was just $8,910; FY2021 spiked to $158,676 (including the sole $120,000 grant paid that year); FY2020 was $39,934; FY2019 was $37,799; and earlier years (FY2012-FY2015) ranged from $4,681 to $14,309. Critically, grants_paid was $0 in FY2022 and FY2023, and not reported (null) in FY2024, despite $36,744 in FY2024 revenue and a $7.6M asset base — implying most "total giving" in non-grant years covers direct program/operating costs (e.g., the $38,193 program expense line for land preservation) rather than third-party grants. The only itemized grant in the dataset is $120,000 to Rushford Lake Foundation (NY) for "operating capital," 100% of tracked grant dollars and 100% of tracked grant count — meaning there is no diversified program-area or geographic breakdown to analyze; one recipient, one state (NY), one purpose category. Officer compensation is $0 across every filing year, reflecting an all-volunteer, low-overhead structure typical of a family-directed operating foundation rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. Grant seekers should not extrapolate a "typical grant size" from a single $120,000 data point — it may reflect an unusual one-off commitment rather than a repeatable award tier, and the foundation's own recent pattern (two straight years of zero grants paid) is the more statistically reliable signal of current behavior.

Wilderness Conservation Foundation sits in a cohort of similarly small, asset-light environment-focused private foundations, based on the top five NTEE Environment-category peers by asset size:

All six foundations cluster tightly in the $7.1M-$7.8M asset range, suggesting Wilderness Conservation Foundation is a mid-sized player within a group of small, likely family-directed environmental foundations rather than an outlier. None of the peers have public grantee or application-process data available in this dataset, which is itself consistent with a pattern common to this asset tier: closely-held foundations that give quietly, infrequently, and largely to pre-identified recipients rather than running open competitive programs. Grant seekers should expect all six to require a personal introduction rather than a cold application, and should not assume asset size in this range correlates with meaningful annual disbursement — Wilderness Conservation Foundation's own $0 grants-paid years despite $7.6M in assets illustrate the gap between endowment size and active giving capacity at this scale.

No news coverage, press releases, leadership changes, or program announcements for Wilderness Conservation Foundation were found in web searches covering 2025-2026 — the organization appears to maintain no public communications presence beyond its own static website and required IRS filings. The most recent financial filing on record (FY2024) shows $7,602,471 in total assets, $36,744 in total revenue, and no grants_paid figure reported, continuing a pattern of inactivity that began after FY2021. Leadership has been stable and unchanged across every filing period examined: James A. Kay Jr. as CEO, Kathleen Hock as Secretary/Treasurer, and Diva Elizabeth Vela Varela as board member, all serving without compensation. The last substantive grantmaking event on record is the $120,000 grant to Rushford Lake Foundation in New York in FY2021. The last major financial event of any kind was the pair of large one-time contributions received in FY2016-FY2017 that roughly tripled the foundation's asset base and set its current endowment trajectory. Absent verified 2025-2026 news, the honest characterization is that this foundation has been quiet on both the public-relations and grantmaking fronts for at least three consecutive fiscal years, and prospective applicants should not expect a recent shift in priorities, staffing, or funding capacity to change that picture.

Treat this foundation as effectively closed to unsolicited applications. Its own data marks it "preselected only" for recipients, its application_instructions field is blank, and its website describes no LOI process, portal, deadline, or RFP — it instead solicits donations and land gifts rather than accepting funding requests. Do not spend time preparing a formal grant proposal package; there is no published mechanism to submit one. Instead, the highest-leverage move is relationship-building: the foundation's sole documented grant ($120,000 to a New York lake-conservation nonprofit in FY2021, with no obvious geographic overlap with its stated Santa Monica Mountains mission) suggests giving decisions follow personal or board-level relationships rather than mission-fit review, so a warm introduction from someone connected to CEO James A. Kay Jr., Secretary/Treasurer Kathleen Hock, or board member Diva Elizabeth Vela Varela is far more likely to succeed than a cold contact. Organizations working on trail preservation, native-plant restoration, or wildlife habitat specifically in the Santa Monica Mountains, Saddle Peak, or Agoura Hills corridor have the clearest thematic alignment with the foundation's stated purpose and should lead with that specificity if they do make contact, since the foundation's own land holdings are in that exact footprint. Given two consecutive years (FY2022-FY2023) plus a null FY2024 with no grants paid, do not assume there is an active annual cycle to time an approach around — the safest read is that grantmaking here is opportunistic and infrequent rather than scheduled. A common mistake would be to mass-submit a standard LOI expecting a portal-style response; there is no portal, and the foundation's all-volunteer, zero-compensation governance structure means outreach is more likely to reach a real person (the CEO or Treasurer directly) than a program officer. Frame any approach in terms of direct land stewardship and habitat outcomes — buckwheat, ceanothus, oak woodland, and wildlife corridor language mirrors the vocabulary on the foundation's own site — rather than generic conservation-grant boilerplate.