Trust for Public Land Action Fund

Background

The Trust for Public Land Action Fund was established in 2000 as the 501(c)(4) lobbying and advocacy affiliate of the Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco-based land conservation nonprofit founded in 1972 by Huey Johnson, formerly the Secretary of Resources for the State of California and the western regional director for The Nature Conservancy. The Trust initially focused on real estate acquisitions to protect land near urban centers and later expanded nationwide. In the 1990s, it established a Conservation Finance program to assist localities in placing conservation funding measures on ballots. Such ballot measures had generated more than $112 billion in voter-approved public funding for parks and conservation from the 1990s through 2026. The Action Fund was created specifically to conduct ballot-measure campaigns and direct legislative lobbying, activities that federal tax law substantially restricts for 501(c)(3) public charities such as the Trust for Public Land. ^{3 4 5 6}

The Action Fund has described itself as “the only nationwide organization focusing solely on political action for conservation funding.” It operates through a coordinated workflow with the parent organization’s Conservation Finance team: TPL staff would identify promising ballot measures, conduct polling, and craft ballot language; once a measure was on the ballot, the Action Fund formally took over campaign strategy, fundraising, voter communications, and legal compliance. ^{5 7}

Ballot Measure Campaigns

The Trust for Public Land Action Fund’s primary activity is managing campaigns in support of local and state ballot measures that create new or extended public funding for parks, open space, and land conservation. According to its website, together with the Trust for Public Land, the Action Fund reported supporting the passage of 687 ballot measures with $112 billion in voter approved funds being generated. In 2024, the Action Fund reported assisting in local ballot-measure campaigns in 13 states and participating in statewide legislative efforts in one state. ^{6 5 8}

The group reported that the 2020 election cycle produced approximately $3.7 billion in new voter-approved conservation funding from 26 measures the Action Fund and TPL supported, all of which passed. ⁹

In 2020, the Action Fund and TPL supported Denver’s Measure 2A, a quarter-cent sales tax projected to generate $40 million annually for a new Climate Protection Fund. The measure explicitly directed that half of its proceeds go to “communities of color, under-resourced communities, and communities most vulnerable to climate change.” ¹⁰

The Action Fund and TPL helped campaign for a 2023 measure to implement a statewide park fund in Texas, which was approved by voters and was not tied to a tax increase. ¹¹

In 2022, the Action Fund and TPL supported Los Angeles Proposition SP, a proposed 30-year parcel tax of 8.4 cents per square foot projected to generate $227 million annually for parks and recreation. Funds were to be allocated based on Los Angeles’s “equity index,” with priority for park-poor communities. The measure was defeated by a wide margin. ^{12 13}