Land Trust Puts Focus on Capital: New Job to Give It Buying Power

By Jim Sparks, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

Mar. 26–The Piedmont Land Conservancy is adding a position to focus on fundraising as it competes to buy land that comes onto the market.

Charles Brummitt, who has led the organization as the executive director, is stepping down after four years to become the conservancy’s new fundraiser.

Kevin Redding, the associate director of the Salisbury-based Land Trust for Central North Carolina for the past six years, is replacing him.

The idea behind the change is for Brummitt to build the land trust’s coffers so that it has cash available to buy property it has targeted for protection as soon as it hits the market.

Brummitt said that the organization is in great need of increasing the amount of working capital it has available because large projects sometimes leave the nonprofit organization strapped for cash while it waits to be repaid after buying property for transfer to various state agencies.

“There have been too many times that we lost property that we had wanted to protect but we weren’t able to move quickly enough,” Brummitt said. “Having more funds available will allow us to buy property before the price goes up or developers purchase it.”

Brummitt said that having staff members focused on fundraising is common for non-profit organizations such as the conservancy. Brummitt, a retired, former executive with Bank of America, has committed a year to his new job. He wouldn’t disclose how much either he or Redding are being paid but did say that he would make only about a third of his salary as the executive director.

According to returns filed by the group with the Internal Revenue Service in 2006, Brummitt was paid $54,480 as the executive director.

Land trusts work with land-owners, communities and government agencies to protect land that has ecological, scenic, recreational, agricultural, cultural or historic value. They either buy land outright or help landowners create conservation easements, which are voluntary land-protection agreements that can be sold or donated by landowners.

The Piedmont Land Conservancy is a private, nonprofit land trust dedicated to preserving the region’s natural character. It covers Alamance, Caswell, Forsyth, Guilford, Randolph, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry and Yadkin counties.

Since it was founded in 1990, the Piedmont Land Conservancy has protected more than 13,400 acres on 115 sites.

–Jim Sparks can be reached at 727-7301 or at jsparks@wsjournal.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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