Dear Friends, vital collaborators, and partners,
We’re excited to share with you our inaugural edition of the Klamath River Fund Newsletter.
Our goal and highest hopes are to use this medium as one way to share news and updates from the Klamath River Basin, the work of Tribal Nations and the communities who are continuing or beginning the restoration and revitalization of the river, the lakes, and its surrounding environments following the historic removal of four dams along the river.
We’ll be publishing this newsletter twice per year for our philanthropic partners. In the newsletter, readers can look forward to reading about the positive impacts of philanthropy, and ways the philanthropic community can support the efforts of Indigenous and community leaders, researchers, environmental specialists, storytellers, and more who are working or continuing to work to create positive healthy outcomes for the basin, its people and the Klamath River.
As a community foundation, our values and how we work in service to the health and wellbeing of the people of this region is our top responsibility. As a rural regional philanthropic institution, we dedicate time to developing and maintaining relationships so that we can honor the work of our communities by creating thoughtful partnerships that allow space to lift up successes, regional needs, shared learning, storytelling and to leverage resources around shared values. The Klamath River Fund, which was created with generous funding from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and joined in generosity to date by The James Irvine Foundation, Roundhouse Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, Tamalpais Trust and an anonymous funder, has now grown to nearly $12 million dollars that expands over multiple years.
We are so grateful for these partnerships and acknowledge the work is only just beginning. We look forward to continuing to build a circle of support for this important work. Dam removal is just the start of restoring the health and wellbeing of the Klamath River Basin and its people and communities, and we are honored to play in part in helping to lift up and bring resources to support that work.
Lastly and most importantly, this work as we know it today would not be possible without the people who came before us. The generational work of Tribal and Indigenous leaders and nonprofit organizations and foundations who have provided lived experience, technical expertise and funding has taken more than several decades to get us where we are today. We are honored to support the next decade of restoration and resilience efforts.
The Klamath River Fund is a program of the Humboldt Area Foundation + Wild Rivers Community Foundation. By investing with a place-based community foundation, larger foundations that operate on a national scale can make local, targeted change and develop deep connections to the people and communities who are closest to the work.
To learn more about the Klamath River Fund, visit us online at hafoundation.org/Klamath or contact us at klamath@hafoundation.org. I look forward to continuing our conversation.
Best wishes,
Gina Zottola
Vice President
Advancement & Philanthropic Innovation