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NFWF Testimony - Page 2 



The Chairman has asked us to assess our effectiveness in consersdng and restoring the nation's 

 fish and wildlife resources. For the record, the Foundation has been an unmitigated success on 

 several levels. First, the 785 projects that we have funded have made extremely important on- 

 the-ground contributions to fish and wildlife conservation. Second, many of the projects we have 

 funded have become institutionalized and are now ongoing programs within the federal and state 

 natural resource agencies. Finally, by not funding lobbying or litigation, we have improved the 

 effectiveness of our partners. We bring people together to craft solutions that work and that 

 withstand the test of time outside the traditional realm of polarized advocacy that plagues so many 

 environmental issues. I think we are an organization in which Congress can genuinely take 

 pride. 



To better demonstrate these successes, I will elaborate on how the Foundation operates and use 

 some of our projects to illustrate what we have been able to achieve. 



In pursuing its conservation mission, the Foundation has three tenets at the heart of its operations: 

 1) to seek out and fund innovative on-the-ground projects that can be models for conservation 

 activities across the nation; 2) to stay lean, flexible and minimize operational overhead- in other 

 words, not become another environmental bureaucracy; and 3) to achieve maximum financial and 

 policy leverage in return for our investments. 



The Foundation is committed to maintaining its cost effectiveness. The Committee should 

 understand that no portion of federal matching funds is applied to the Foundation's operating 

 budget. The operating costs of the Foundation are met solely with contributions from 

 private sources, including individuals, foundations, and corporations. The Foundation has a 

 stated commitment to hold administrative overhead at less than five percent of our total budget. 

 As a measure of our operational efficiency, during FY 1992 and 1993, 96 cents out of every 

 dollar went directly to the ground in grants while only 4 cents went to the Foundation's operating 

 costs. 



The heart of the Foundation is our matching grant program. To the extent possible, we seek to 

 use our grants to fund conservation activities that are prototypes: projects that build partnerships 

 between the public and private sectors and initiate innovative solutions to resolve long-term 

 conservation challenges. As I stated, we do not fund lobbying or litigation activities. Lots of 

 other groups do this. Instead we work with our partners to promote proactive, investment-based 

 conservation programs focused on solutions. 



The Foundation has five major initiatives under which grants are awarded: 1) North American 

 Wetlands Partnership, 2) Fisheries Management, 3) Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation, 4) 

 Conservation Education and Leadership Training, and 5) Wildlife and Habitat. A description of 

 each initiative is presented in the Foundation's 1992 Annual Report, also included for the record. 



I will cite some specific projects that may interest the Comnuttee and that illustrate what our funds 

 are achieving: 



Wetlands Conservation and Restoration: The Foundation used its first Congressional 

 appropriations to help jump-start the North American Waterfowl Management Plan and we 

 continue, to this day, to be a driving force behind implementing this ambitious program's efforts 

 to protect North American wetlands. As a founding partner in the Plan, the Foundation has 



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