Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund

Ensure nature always has a champion. The Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund was launched in honor of Lennie’s 50+ year legacy of open space preservation in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties with Green Foothills.

The Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund ensures there will always be an advocate for local nature. Restricted to our Advocacy Program, this fund allows Green Foothills to provide competitive salaries and compensation packages to our professional advocacy staff so they can afford to live in the Bay Area.

The Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund accepts contributions in the form of cash, stock, or bequests. The returns on the invested Fund will be carefully spent over time to achieve our vision of a region where wildlife thrives, everyone has natural beauty to enjoy, and communities live in balance with nature.

Our goal is to raise $2 million for the Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund by April 1, 2025. Currently $1,200,000 has been donated or pledged with $800,000 left to go. Download the case for support and pledge form.

Please be part of this important initiative by helping us reach our goal of $2 million. You can mail in your pledge form or donation (with memo for Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund) to: Green Foothills, 3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303.

To learn more, please contact Justyne Schnupp, Associate Development Director, at 650.968.7243 x340 or by email to [email protected].

Donor Information Rights

All Lennie Roberts Advocacy Fund donors over $1,000 will receive an annual update every April with the status of the fund, investment earnings, what has been spent, any decision by the board to make a distribution from the fund, or any decision by the board to spend down the principal.

About Lennie Roberts

Lennie first joined Green Foothills as a board member in 1968. Ten years later, she became a Legislative Advocate, serving in that position on a volunteer basis for her entire career. Lennie’s steadfast voice for open space over the past 50 years is why thousands of acres of hillsides, forests, creeks, farms, wetlands, and pristine coastal bluffs and beaches are still here for us to enjoy in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Today she is one of the Bay Area’s most respected environmental leaders.

The Case for Support: Green Foothills’ Impact

Since our founding, approximately 200,000 acres of open space, farmland, and natural resources in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties have been permanently protected. This is the result of our advocacy on over 900 land use issues and 60 ballot measures.

Too often, land use decisions perpetuate sprawl, loss of biodiversity, and inequitable climate impacts. There are many incentives and few disincentives for decision makers to approve development that impacts open space, farmland, and natural resources.

Green Foothills’ advocacy team engages early in land use policy, proposals, and planning processes that pose an opportunity or threat to our natural environment. Sometimes this means supporting a land use plan that will protect nature and bring ecosystem benefits to our communities. At other times, it means opposing a new development proposal that will harm a wetland, adversely impact a marginalized community, or block a wildlife corridor. We encourage current and future decision makers to be champions for conservation and inclusive public processes, and we mobilize people to effect change for local lands, wildlife, and their communities.