Nonprofit Newswire | Conservation Group Donor Fells Forest

Ruth McCambridge

May 19, 2010

May 18, 2010; Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | What do you do when one of your biggest contributors does the thing that you have vowed to oppose? This is a question that the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy must answer with regards to the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The Foundation oversees the 7,661-acre Richard King Mellon Estate and it has clear cut thousands of trees on a 44-acre tract without the required permit from the local township or an “approved erosion and sedimentation plan from the county’s conservation district.” The WPC has received $18.6 million from the foundation in the last five years and its board includes the director of the foundation and Mellon heir Joshua Whetzel III.—Ruth McCambridge

About the author

Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

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