SWMLC Strategic Plan 2024 - 2027

mission

Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy protects, restores, and cares for vital lands and waters for people and wildlife – now and for generations to come.

vision

We envision a healthy network of protected lands and waterways for people and wildlife.

How far we’ve come

Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy (SWMLC) is a Kalamazoo-based nonprofit organization, established in 1991 and serving the counties of Allegan, Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, and Van Buren. This nine-county service area includes a diversity of cities like Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Coldwater, Hastings, Kalamazoo, New Buffalo, South Haven, Three Rivers, as well as many rural communities.

Southwest Michigan has an incredible and diverse landscape. Since SWMLC’s start, our board and staff have worked with caring and committed members, donors, volunteers, partners, and landowners to protect over 19,000 acres (nearly 30 square miles!) of these special places including: dunes, waterways, forests, wetlands, savannas, and farms. We protect land in three ways: 1) We work with willing landowners to place conservation easements on private land, 2) We own and manage land as public nature preserves or wildlife refuge areas; and 3) We assist government  or non-profit partners in their own conservation efforts.

We have protected 203 properties to date and currently hold 113 conservation easements on privately owned land. We provide public access to nature on 18 preserves, including community favorites like Bow in the Clouds (Kalamazoo Co.), Hidden Pond (Barry Co.), Kesling Nature Preserve (Berrien Co.), Pilgrim Haven Natural Area (Van Buren Co.), Wau-Ke-Na, W.E. Smith Preserve (Allegan Co.), and Spirit Springs Sanctuary (Cass Co.). We also own 38 wildlife refuge areas and manage them to protect biodiversity, habitat, and water quality. And we have protected an additional 1,200 acres of land by working in coordination with conservation partners to create public natural areas that are owned by these community groups.

As an organization dedicated to protecting these lands forever, we take the business side of our mission very seriously. We were accredited in 2012 by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, an independent program of the national Land Trust Alliance, then re-accredited in 2017 and 2024. Accredited land trusts meet national standards for excellence, uphold the public trust, and ensure that conservation efforts are permanent. Our small staff seeks to make the deepest impact we can with what we have, working closely with volunteers to steward the properties we own. We host hikes and nature-based experiences on protected land and often partner with government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and schools in our service area. Our community’s gifts of time, talent, and financial support make our work possible.

In addition to community needs, our work is driven by science and ecology. In 2020 we developed an exciting new conservation roadmap we call Nature’s Network to help us answer the question: “Where should we protect land to make our region resilient in the face of climate change?” Using a mapping model and measuring water quality, biodiversity, and habitat connectivity across southwest Michigan, we can now see where protecting land will give us the “biggest bang for our buck” for conservation, and help to ensure our region’s native plant and animal species will survive far into the future. Our next step is to map community needs to help us determine where we should protect land for the greatest benefits for people with the greatest need.

Looking toward the next 3 years, SWMLC will be focused on the following goals (you may click to skip ahead to each one):

Priority 1.   Protect More Land

Priority 2.   Steward and Restore Land, Water, and Biodiversity

Priority 3.   Preserve and Improve Access to Nature

Priority 4.   Secure Financial Sustainability

Priority 5.   Ensure Healthy Governance and Operational Excellence

protect more land

As a small organization with a large service area, we are ambitious but also realistic about the impact we can make. To stay focused overall, we’ll keep protecting significant lands using Nature’s Network to identify “biodiversity hubs” and “conservation corridors” that create huge benefits to ecology and help ensure resiliency in the face of climate change. We’ll be proactive by defining the conditions under which we says “yes,” “no,” or “not right now” to working on projects and suggest alternatives to landowners for protecting those places. At the same  time, land protection can be unpredictable and time-sensitive, so we’ll keep space to respond to these opportunities. In the near-term, we will continue to protect lands we have committed to while clarifying our focus and expanding our goals for future efforts. This includes defining where we might protect farmland and provide public access to nature – for outdoor recreation; community classrooms; and for people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to enjoy the many benefits nature provides. Then, we will invest more time and energy in those new areas of focus, while remaining open to other land protection opportunities.

Steward and Restore Land, Water, and Biodiversity

We strive to honor the lands and waters that SWMLC has protected by taking care of them in the best way possible. Like getting a checkup from the doctor, we will continue our successful culture of visiting and monitoring every conservation easement and preserve each year to assess each property’s health and well-being, and any help they may need. Moving forward, we will care for our nature preserves more effectively with our limited funds by investing more in writing and following stewardship plans. Like a prescription for wellbeing, stewardship plans define each preserve’s natural features and describe how to best restore and keep them healthy. Goals for restoration are set, and our work is then measured in acres, species richness, and wildlife use to see how well our efforts are paying off. We will place a new emphasis on securing funds to support stewardship, helping us achieve restoration goals in more places, sooner. Last but certainly not least, this work is simply not possible without the generous time and energy of our army of volunteers, and we will continue our level of support, recruitment, and appreciation of these selfless community stewards.

Preserve and Improve Access to Nature

We believe that access to nature plays a major role in supporting the physical and mental health of communities, and our 18 public nature preserves directly enable this wellbeing. We can increase accessibility by rehabilitating trails, signage, and infrastructure on current preserves, and adding them to new preserves. Our public nature preserves are our primary physical connection to the community. By expanding these connections, we also create more opportunities to increase membership and contributions, support stewardship, and build community value for conservation. Over the next few years, we will assess the condition and use of our existing preserves to better understand how and when people use them. We can then develop goals and standards that provide consistently supportive experiences for visitors of all abilities and backgrounds. With an eye to the future, we also plan to create an “Access to Nature” map of southwest Michigan. Looking at population density, locations of currently accessible natural areas, and exploring what other barriers may keep people from realizing the benefits of nature, we can identify where and how to create new accessible preserves that benefit the most people across a larger cross section of our community.

Secure Financial Sustainability

As a local nonprofit, SWMLC relies on the generosity of individuals, corporate donors, state and federal grants, and private foundations to implement its mission. Since our start as an organization, we have secured almost $20 million in private individual gifts and leveraged over $5.5 million in public grant funding to protect nature in southwest Michigan. Over the next three years, we seek to support and grow our staff, meet the needs of our operating budget, and target focused land protection and stewardship by increasing the number of members and donors, as well as unrestricted gifts from individuals, corporations, and foundations. We intend to build and expand business relationships and develop a policy for recognizing gifts in our communications and on our protected lands. We will proactively communicate with donors about making current gifts to our endowment fund and future gifts by bequest. We will create a new Stewardship Fund with new funding sources, to increase our ability to care for our growing number of protected properties, with the flexibility to be used in any part of any preserve where care is needed most.

Ensure Healthy Governance and Operational Excellence

board of directors

Our strong and dedicated board will continue to grow as we align board composition with our strategic goals and the communities we serve. We will continue to evaluate the composition and needs of our board and board committees, adding new board members whose skills, demographics, and networks can help us to create connections within our communities.

We will actively incorporate the expertise, ideas, and connections of past board members into our work, including inviting them to participate in board committees.  We recognize the deep and broad knowledge of these individuals, as well as their passion, and seek to build this invaluable resource as we grow into the future.

Organizational Management and Staff Development

Our passionate, motivated, and professional staff will continue to manage the organization in strategic and meaningful ways. The team will evaluate the impacts of projects, programs, and activities through “traditional” outcomes like number of acres or miles of shoreline protected or restored. But we will also use new metrics that align with our strategic goals, such as impact in priority areas, community engagement, and tracking targeted financial support. By continuing to build a culture where staff are empowered, valued, respected, and fairly compensated for their work, we will create an ever-evolving and growing organization that will have the greatest positive impact possible for wildlife and people alike.

In the near-term, we will create and fill a new staff position focused on community engagement and volunteer coordination. We also plan to add staff for easement and preserve stewardship. We seek to diversify our staff by posting jobs in new places and exploring different ways to structure positions that advance diversity goals. And we will continue to support our staff with annual professional development opportunities.