Sweet Water Fund

About the Fund

In January 2022 the Sweet Water Trust—a philanthropic organization dedicated to wilderness conservation—became the Sweet Water Fund, a donor-advised endowment fund that will continue funding wildlands protection in the Northern Appalachians. Northeast Wilderness Trust is honored to be the recipient of Sweet Water Fund’s annual giving and legacy. In 2023 alone, the Fund will generate a million dollars for the Wilderness Trust’s land protection projects.

Sweet Water Trust was influential in Northeast Wilderness Trust’s founding in 2002 and has been an essential partner in the conservation of over 90% of the land the Wilderness Trust safeguards.

Every so often, gifts are made to a non-profit that fundamentally change the trajectory of that organization’s work. This is one of them. Through the Sweet Water Fund, Northeast Wilderness Trust will receive annual grants to further wildlands protection. The Wilderness Trust is thrilled to carry forward the legacy of Sweet Water Trust.

Sweet Water Trust’s Legacy

Over three decades, Sweet Water Trust made more than 650 grants in support of forever-wild land protection, conserving more than 310,000 acres of wild forests, rivers, and wetlands across the Northern Appalachians—primarily in northern New England, the Adirondacks, and eastern Canada. To protect these critical places, Sweet Water Trust worked with nearly 90 partners.

Sweet Water Trust was an early champion of the “Belt and Suspenders” conservation strategy, whereby a property’s non-profit or government owner (the “belt”) commits to durable conservation by adding a second layer of protection to the land via a perpetual  forever-wild conservation easement (the “suspenders”), held by a separate qualified entity. The Wilderness Trust employs this strategy because when it comes to wilderness, permanence is non-negotiable.

NEWT Projects in Partnership with Sweet Water Trust

During its three decades of wildlands philanthropy, Sweet Water Trust played an instrumental role in protecting these forever-wild lands safeguarded by Northeast Wilderness Trust:
MAINE
NEW HAMPSHIRE
NEW YORK
VERMONT

Learn more about these special places…

Other Conservation Projects

Sweet Water Trust has an extensive legacy of wilderness conservation with organizations other than Northeast Wilderness Trust.