By TIGERS Success Series
One of TIGERS Success Series projects this year is to track collaborations between corporations and small business that results in job growth and business success. The Ace Group has risen on our radar for providing business funding for green business entrepreneurs.
The ACE Charitable Foundation has just committed to a two-year, $300,000 conservation fund for new initiatives aimed at protecting key watersheds, expanding wildlife migration corridors and investing in local green economies in the U.S.
Since TIGERS® Founder, Dianne Crampton’s, presentation and break out session on stakeholder team development for the joint NW Fisheries Association and NOA conference, fish recovery and habitat restoration are initiatives TIGERS Success Series supports. So we salute the Ace Charitable Foundation.
With this new funding commitment, ACE has provided $850,000 since 2005 to the ACE Land Legacy Fund, a revolving pool of capital within The Conservation Fund that has been leveraged with other capital sources to protect more than 300,000 acres of the nation’s most threatened lands and waters.
“We are proud to continue to protect the environment through the ACE Land Legacy Fund,” said Evan G. Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ACE Limited. “With this new grant, we are joining forces with individuals, companies and foundations in financing innovative initiatives designed to make a positive impact on the environment and stimulate entrepreneurial green business activity.”
“ACE continues to demonstrate its commitment to environmental responsibility through its participation in theACELandLegacy Fund,” said Larry Selzer, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Conservation Fund. “We’re pleased to serve as a partner in supporting projects that conserve wilderness areas for future generations.”
In the past year, the ACE Land Legacy Fund grant was leveraged with public and private financing to help The Conservation Fund protect more than 4,000 acres near three family ranches along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. These serve as key migration corridors for wildlife including the grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine and elk. The ACE Land Legacy Fund also supported efforts to secure a stretch of the Nanticoke River within the Greater Philadelphia Delaware Bay watershed and funded a waterway protection effort along the Kishwaukee River in the Chicago-to-Milwaukee metropolitan corridor.
In addition to these conservation initiatives, ACE’s grant supports The Conservation Fund’s newly-established Shade Fund™ program, an initiative that provides financing to green microenterprises nationwide. Shade Fund was established by The Conservation Fund with a lead grant from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities and provides small loans to promising green entrepreneurs by pooling contributions from individuals, companies and foundations. As the companies repay their loans, capital is redeployed to help other entrepreneurs, thus creating jobs, preserving working forests and supporting rural communities across the country.
The Conservation Fund is the nation’s foremost environmental nonprofit, dedicated to protecting America’s most important landscapes and waterways for future generations. The Conservation Fund pioneers a balanced, non-advocacy, non-membership approach to conservation — one that blends environmental and economic goals and objectives. Since its founding in 1985, the Fund has helped its partners safeguard wildlife habitat, working farms and forests, community green space, and historic sites totaling nearly 7 million acres nationwide.
What does the Ace Group do?
The Ace Group is a global leader in insurance and reinsurance serving a diverse group of clients. Headed by ACE Limited (NYSE:ACE), a component of the S&P 500 stock index, the ACE Group conducts its business on a worldwide basis with operating subsidiaries in more than 50 countries. Additional information can be found at: www.acegroup.com.
