Environmental Venture Trust

The Tahoe Fund Environmental Venture Trust is a new approach to philanthropy in Tahoe. Like a traditional venture capital fund, the Tahoe Fund Environmental Venture Trust provides seed funding for a variety of innovative early-stage environmental projects that will help solve the environmental challenges facing Lake Tahoe. The returns will be purely philanthropic.

Based on our experience, we know that many worthwhile projects require initial seed funding to put them in a strong position to receive significantly more funding down the road.   By providing early-stage funding we can help kick start innovative pilot projects and get new projects off the ground.

Risk is inherently involved in venture funding, but the rewards can be incredible. Through our Projects Committee, we will closely vet new project ideas utilizing the following principals:

• The greatest possibility to improve the Tahoe environment and to attract significantly more funds in the future.
• Projects deemed to have good potential that have no other source of funding for this early-stage.
• To avoid projects that could be perceived as controversial or that duplicate any other project resources in the Tahoe Basin.

The seed investments will be modest in size. We will look for projects with great capacity for leverage of the initial seed funds through future public funding sources. It is possible as the projects advance they could also be considered for greater fundraising efforts by the Tahoe Fund.

Our first investment was a UV Light Pilot Project that analyzed the use of UV-C light to treat aquatic invasive weeds in Lake Tahoe. Our initial investment of $10,000 was leveraged for a $260,000 grant from the California Tahoe Conservancy. To learn more about the project please click here.

This is just one initiative of the Tahoe Fund, as we continue to inspire the private community to support shovel-ready projects around the Tahoe Basin.

We invite you to join us in our efforts by joining the Environmental Venture Trust with a tax-deductible donation. This initiative was launched with the support of a $25,000 matching grant from the Robert and Dorothy Keyser Foundation. Thanks to our many donors, for helping us meet the match to spur innovation in Tahoe!