ATCF 2021 Grant Program Accepting Project Nominations

The Adventure Travel Conservation Fund (ATCF) grant program is accepting project nominations for the next grant cycle until 1 August 2021. The ATCF provides funding to grassroots organizations outside of North America for projects that protect the nature, biodiversity, and culture of destinations impacted by climate change, while supporting communities.

The grant program protects threatened communities, cultures, and wild places throughout the world for their cultural, habitat, and recreational value. Over the past five years, ATCF members (a diverse group of leading adventure travel and outdoor recreation businesses) have shared a common goal and responsibility to protect the resources from which the adventure tourism industry benefits.

Climate change, global warming, habitat loss, and wildlife protection have been identified by our members—and the wider travel industry—as important and urgent issues that need to be addressed. In approximately the last 20 years, we have lost 1.2 million square miles of wildland worldwide—about the same as the total area of India. And according to an assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 75 percent of land environments and 66 percent of marine environments worldwide have been “severely altered” by human actions. We take this seriously.

The strongest projects that will be considered for voting by our members, will intersect three core focus areas of our grant program–tourism, climate change, and keeping the local communities at the center of all of it.

If you are a grassroots organization that is hoping to get your project nominated but do not have a connection to one of our members,  you may complete this project information form and we will do our best to matchmake you with one of our members to see if they are interested in nominating your project.

Funding will be awarded based on:

1.  Projects that most closely align with the above criteria
2.  Available funding capacity for that grant cycle
3. Membership voting preferences

You can read more about funding criteria here. The application deadline is 1 August 2021.

Learn more from Soraya Shattuck, ATCF Executive Director, in the video below.