Clean Up The Lake
We all know Lake Tahoe for its blue hues and unparalleled clarity, but what if we told you the lake has a dirty secret? After decades as one of the most popular recreation destinations in the country, a scary amount of trash is being discovered under the surface. Thousands of pounds of trash sit below Lake Tahoe’s surface, breaking apart and impacting aquatic habitats.
Tahoe Fund is excited to team up with Clean Up the Lake to remove trash around all 72 miles of Lake Tahoe with a SCUBA dive team of professionals and volunteers in 2021. This past summer, the team cleaned up 6 miles of Tahoe and recovered more than 2,000 pounds of trash.
Thanks to an amazing partnership with Tahoe Blue Vodka, which is made with crystal clear Tahoe water, every dollar contributed to this project will be matched by Tahoe Blue Vodka up to $100,000.
With private support, we can lead Lake Tahoe to a cleaner tomorrow, while educating everyone on the importance of environmental stewardship.
Thank you for helping us achieve this match to clean up this national treasure.
Tahoe Trails Endowment
Our vision is to create a balance between the human and natural environments in Lake Tahoe. One critical component of this work is the creation and maintenance of our trail system. We have helped complete more than a dozen new trails with our partners. With higher trail usage now than ever before, we realize it is critical that we also have a long-term plan in place to care for the trails everyone loves.
That is why we recently created a Tahoe Trails Endowment with a goal of ultimately growing it to $3M. Once we reach this goal, the endowment will be able to spin off enough funds annually to cover the costs of annual trail work in the Region. The Endowment currently holds more than $600,000.
While we are building the endowment, we are also working with our trail partners (Tahoe Rim Trail, Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association, Truckee Trails Foundation, US Forest Service, Nevada State Parks, etc.) to develop a Trails Master Plan that will layout a priority ranking for trail work. This will allow everyone to think and plan long-term.
Funding new trails is somewhat easy in Tahoe. Everyone loves a bright shiny trail! While we will continue to support new trails, we are also choosing to focus on addressing the need for the long-term care of these trails and the trail network with this new Tahoe Trails Endowment. If you love trails as much as we do, we invite you to join our efforts with a gift to the new Tahoe Trails Endowment. All donations made before December 31 will be matched up to $100,000.
Smartest Forest Fund
This year, California and Nevada both experienced their biggest wildfires in history. The Sierra Nevada forest is now home to more than 100 million dead trees. In the Tahoe Basin, we have seen tree mortality explode to over 160,000 trees in just the past few years. Many feel it is not a matter of if, but when we will face a catastrophic wildfire. We know the Camp Fire in Paradise, California could happen here. For all of these reasons, the Tahoe Fund has identified forest health as our number one priority.
The Tahoe Fund launched the Smartest Forest Fund, a sub-fund of our Environmental Venture Trust, to use philanthropy to drive innovation through seed funding. With this Fund, we plan to invest in new ideas and pilot projects. Some will work; some may not. We know our efforts will help bolster the great work already underway by the US Forest Service, California and Nevada to accelerate the pace and scale of fixing our forest.
The Tahoe Fund wants to make Tahoe’s forest the Smartest Forest on the Planet, because we believe through innovation and technology we can significantly increase the pace and scale of forest restoration in the Tahoe Basin and beyond.
Supporting these efforts is the Tahoe Fund’s highest priority. Working together with our public agency partners, we know there is an opportunity to harness the power of philanthropy and the private sector to increase the innovation and technology needed to significantly increase the pace and scale of the restoration.
Right now, the Tahoe Fund Board will match any donation to the Smartest Forest Fund.