leave a lasting legacy

Please consider making our nation’s wildlife heritage part of your personal legacy by giving through your will or trust. Here’s how and why.

How:

You can include the National Wildlife Refuge Association in your will and let us know what name to honor forever.  The gift can be directed to all our missions, or to one close to your heart.  Sample language is as follows:

Bequest of specific dollar amount: “I hereby give, devise and bequeath ______ ($DOLLARS) to the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit organization located at 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 905, Washington, DC 20036, Federal Tax ID #23-7447365.”

Bequest of specific asset: “I hereby give, devise and bequeath (description of asset) to the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit organization located at 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 905, Washington, DC 20036, Federal Tax ID #23-7447365.”

Percentage bequest: “I hereby give, devise and bequeath ____ percent (____%) of my total estate determined as of the date of my death, to the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit organization located at 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 905, Washington, DC 20036, Federal Tax ID #23-7447365.”

We welcome to opportunity to show you the potential benefits of including the National Wildlife Refuge Association in your will or trust. We recognize exceptionally dedication individuals that care about the National Wildlife Refuge System, the world’s largest network of lands and waters set aside for wildlife conservation.

Considering adding the National Wildlife Refuge Association to your will or trust, or have any additional questions? Please contact contact Courtney Phelan, CFRE at (202) 577-3200 or by email at cphelan@refugeassociation.org

Why:

Our country is blessed with an incredible natural legacy of fish and wildlife.  We don’t have that legacy by chance.  We have it because beginning with Teddy Roosevelt citizens demanded that we protect it for future generations.

Thanks to these far-sighted citizens, hundreds of millions of acres of land and water have been set aside to form a national network of wildlife refuges, called the National Wildlife Refuge System, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While other public lands also serve as important fish and wildlife habitat, the Refuge System plays a unique and critical role in all 50 states preserving key habitat for often-endangered animals and plants.

Even with the best intentions, though, there are limits to what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can accomplish, due to laws, politics, and low funding.

That’s why in the 1970s retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees came together to form the National Wildlife Refuge Association to protect and enhance the Refuge System.  We are a private, non-profit, independent, and essential voice.

Over the last 47 years, we’ve honed our organization to focus on three key strategies.

  • First, we advocate. We rally support in Congress and the Administration to protect the Refuge System and the wildlife that depends on it. While we have allies, nobody else is 100% focused on Refuge System. And we defend individual Refuges when threatened.

  • Second, we rally the public. Working through Friends groups focused on specific refuges and other regional and national partners, we’re building a grassroots constituency to defend both their own nearby refuges and the larger system.

  • Third, we identify critical issues and manage programs to help solve them. We take on science-based initiatives to protect, promote, and enhance specific landscapes and marine habitats of the Refuge System.

Our organization is healthy, but the Refuge System is in troubled waters.

We are fighting, on the Hill and in the courts, attempts to open wildlife refuges to drilling and mining, including in crown jewels like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to build a road through fragile wilderness, to use much of a refuge for bombing practice, to expand high-voltage lines through sensitive wetlands, and to allow wolf and bear cubs to be shot in their dens for the sake of more elk to hunt. We’ve had big victories that we’d love to tell you about. 

We manage and fund specific projects, like hosting urban youth at nearby refuges and restoring nesting habitat for endangered sea turtles.

And we train Refuge Friends leaders to educate their legislators, run their operations, and raise local money to support their work. 

Meanwhile, refuges are also grappling with Eastern and Gulf coastal flooding and Western droughts, habitat fragmentation, toxic tides, invasive species, – and low budgets to deal with these threats.

We’re a lean organization, and we punch well above our weight.  We can leverage the generosity of our supporters to do great things.

To do that, and to keep building the constituency that will defend America’s wildlife legacy into the future, we ask you to consider making us part of your legacy too.   

questions?

Considering adding the National Wildlife Refuge Association? Please contact Courtney Phelan, CFRE at (202) 577-3200 or at cphelan@refugeassociation.org