FIELD NOTES BLOG

Environmental Philanthropy

Rebecca Rankins
February 8, 2024

Nonprofit organizations rely on donor dollars, most of the time from individual or business donors, to help sustain the organization’s mission. Nonprofits, like Severson Dells Nature Center, have an engaged community looking to support an idea, a group of individuals, or nature education, in our case.

 

An organization called Climate Switch (focused on helping guide us towards a more sustainably life) released a report utilizing data from 2020 giving trends from “ IRS tax returns, ProPublica’s non-profit API, and foundation grant data.” The results were interesting, so I thought it we could to take a “behind-the-scenes” look into environmental giving.

 

The facts are this: environmental giving is one of the most least funded causes in philanthropy. In 2020 , roughly 2% of charitable giving was designated towards environmental causes. Roughly $471B was given to nonprofits in 2020, but only $8B was given to environmental nonprofits. To add an additional layer onto this data, Climate Switch notes that the “environmental” category of nonprofits also sometimes includes animals and does not specify the type of environmental cause such as gardens versus environmental education versus land trusts. Due to this, giving can be even less to organizations who are similar to Severson Dells Nature Center’s mission of environmental education. Of the $471B, it is very possible that less than $1B makes its way to environmental education.

 

The “why” behind this isn’t as clear as the data. I could ponder all of the reasons why this data presents the way it does, but instead I’m more interested in the reasonings behind why people do decide to donate.

 

If you’ve read this far, please let me know! If you donate to Severson Dells Nature Center or support our programs, I would love to know more behind that. Here is an anonymous survey where you can help us make sense of environmental giving here at Severson Dells Nature Center. If you’d rather reach out to me directly, please do at becca@seversondells.org ! I’d love to hear from you.

RECENT ARTICLES

By Emma Zimmerman August 26, 2025
When I started at Severson Dells nearly two years ago, I never would have believed I’d still be here today. What was supposed to be a short detour turned into one of the meaningful positions I have served. These years have flown by, and as I sit down to write this farewell, I keep circling back to my early days here. It feels important to revisit that beginning, because in so many ways, it shaped everything that followed.
By Shannon Osadjan August 26, 2025
While my time at Severson Dells is coming to an end, my time and experience as a junior naturalist is just beginning. When I accepted this job position, I was a recent college graduate who was ready to get into the environmental work force but didn’t know where to start. Here I am, a year later, and I feel ready and excited to take on whatever comes my way. Last September, when I first started working here at Severson Dells, I didn’t know what to expect. I had never been an educator before and I was nervous about my skill-set, but I pleasantly surprised myself. I found myself enjoying teaching, and the goofy experiences and questions that came with it. When I started here, my biggest goal for myself was to become better informed about the ecology of Rockford, and being more aware and able to identify what’s growing around me. A year later, I am proud of myself and how much I have learned. Because of my schooling background being in geology, I already had a familiarity with looking at the outside world in a different lens. I know how to look at the geology and the basic layout of an area to understand the depositional environment, or what the land most likely looked like back in the day. However, being at Severson Dells for the past year has shown me how to appreciate nature and the outdoors in a new way, in a biological sense. I now know how to look at the ecology of an area and see how the plants are working together, and how this compliments what the birds and the bugs are doing, and how the trees play a role too, and this cycle keeps going. I knew forests were interconnected, but I feel like I truly get it now. It’s helped me to connect the pieces of nature that I wasn’t aware of before, and put them all together now to see a new, bigger picture. Severson Dells is a place I will always hold dearly to me. The experiences I had, the challenges I overcame while being here, and the personal growth I’ve been able to experience: all of this helps shape my love for this lovely forest preserve here in Northern Illinois. I want to be sure to express my appreciation for the staff here at Severson Dells Nature Center, and the kindness they always treat everyone with. The people here are always so willing to help me with learning new skills, diving into intimidating science topics, and trying to help foster that curiosity that everyone has inside of them. As I close this chapter, I feel inspired and grateful for the connections I’ve made, and ready for what the future has in store for me.
By Sydney Sherbitsky August 26, 2025
I’m sitting at my desk listening to the distant chatter of kids outside and the excited murmuring of my coworkers. I am surrounded by tokens of memories - a sticker from the rot museum and a walnut shell owl I made with campers. On my computer screen, a half edited video about the Grove. In my desk drawer, a stack of lesson plans I once felt nervous to teach, but I now know by heart. Next is the bigfoot code from the cryptid hike, handwritten notes from my coworkers, and the spot where my notebook lives. This notebook has been with me from the start of this position and is full of the many things I have learned at Severson Dells. As my time here comes to a close, I flip back through the pages and reflect on what the past year has taught me…