What is Accreditation?

The Commission is an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance. The Commission is governed by a board of diverse land conservation and nonprofit management experts from around the country who serve as commissioners.

Commissioners volunteer their expertise to verify that a land trust is implementing specific accreditation indicator elements from Land Trust Standards and Practices. The Alliance selects the accreditation indicator elements and the Commission establishes the requirements used to verify that the indicator elements are met. Commissioners use their breadth of experience with large and small and staffed and unstaffed land trusts to ensure the requirements are flexibility enough to apply to all land trusts. The Commission is supported by professional staff.

The Commission follows best practices in accreditation.

• It has a comprehensive conflict of interest policy and manages conflicts to ensure fair and consistent decisions.

• It makes decisions that are independent and are not influenced by political or donor concerns.

• It maintains a help desk and instructional materials to support land trusts through the accreditation process but does not provide training or mentoring in how to meet the requirements.

• It keeps all material provided by applicants confidential. It shares aggregate data about challenges facing land trusts to help inform the Alliance’s training and technical assistance program. A strict confidentiality policy governs how information is shared between the two organizations.

The Alliance is a national conservation organization working to save the places people love by strengthening land conservation across America. The Alliance publishes Land Trust Standards and Practices and selects the accreditation indicators; only its board can make changes to them.

The Alliance provides training and technical assistance to help land trusts achieve and maintain accreditation. It elects commissioners to serve on the Commission’s independent board, manages an endowment to keep the program affordable for land trusts, and provides administrative services to the Commission.

The Commission currently evaluates applicants on select indicators from the Standards. These indicators are used under license with and designated by the Land Trust Alliance and were chosen based on the following criteria:

• Responsible governance of the organization;

• Protection of the public interest with sound and sustainable land transactions and stewardship;

• Ethical operations;

• Accountability to donors and the public; and,

• Compliance with all laws, such as IRC §170(h) and §501(c)(3).

The list of indicators is reviewed periodically and has been revised since the accreditation program’s inception. The current list of accreditation indicators can be found in the Commission’s Requirements Manual.

In surveys of accredited and renewed land trusts, 100% report accreditation helps the land trust community maintain the trust of Congress, the Internal Revenue Service, and the public. The accreditation seal is a mark of distinction, and being accredited helps your land trust to stand out, to say to landowners, funders and other supporters: “Invest in us. We have proven we are a strong, effective organization you can trust to conserve your land forever.” To learn more, visit our Benefits of Accreditation page.

Becoming an accredited land trust involves a rigorous application process where applicants are assessed across four crucial areas: governance, finance, transactions, and stewardship.

Land trusts wishing to apply for first-time accreditation enter a yearly lottery to determine which year they will be assigned to apply, as there may be more land trusts who wish to apply than the Commission has resources to review. Completed applications are reviewed by a Commission staff member and one or more commissioners. The majority of the information evaluated by the review team is from the applicant; additional information may be provided by the public or may be the result of research conducted by the Commission’s review team. This additional information may relate to the review of more than one accreditation indicator. Relying on multiple sources of information helps ensure credible decisions that maintain the integrity of the accreditation program.

Accredited land trusts go through a renewal process every five years. At third renewal (or being an accredited land trust for 15 consecutive years) an accredited term is seven years.  

The Commission maintains a searchable database of all accredited land trusts. Check it out.