DFO Endowment Fund

The DFO Endowment Fund shall provide grants for projects that encourage the study, appreciation and/or the preservation of birds and their habitats.  Preference shall be given to grants for projects in the Denver metropolitan area, the Colorado Front Range, the State of Colorado, and the United States – in that order.

In 1994 Mary Hope Robinson donated $15,000 to DFO. This donation was the beginning of the fund that became known as the DFO Educational Endowment Fund. Over the years many projects have been funded from student scholarships to teacher training to avian research.

In recent months the name of the fund has been changed to the DFO Endowment Fund and the mission statement and guidelines for funding grants have been updated. The goals of these changes are to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the grant process and to attract more high quality project applications than we have seen in recent years.

Mary Hope Robinson’s generous gift was invested and has grown to $28,000. The interest generated from the principal and gifts from members provide the actual monies used to fund grants each year. For 2012 the DFO Board has added additional money to bring the fund up to about $4,000 which is available for grants beginning January 2012. This is very exciting! Another wonderful development is that last year long-time member and Ptarmigan Award winner Bob Righter very generously donated $1,500 to DFO. The Board has decided to use this money to match member gifts to the grants fund (for 2013) with the goal of raising a total of $5,000 for grants. So DFO has approximately $4,000 for Endowment fund grants in 2012, and a goal of raising $5,000 for grants for 2013.