Introduction

The Alliance for Canadian Land Trusts, Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia, Ontario Land Trust Alliance and Le Réseau de Milieux Naturels protégés have partnered to develop a national self assessment tool for land trusts. This tool is a voluntary program that will help land trusts develop capacity and ensure governance and operations follow best practices.

The Alliances will not assess land trusts or their progress through self assessment. The Centre for Land Conservation holds the rights to the Canadian Land Trust Standards & Practices and is developing a program to assess performance.

This tool is designed to help build capacity and to guide land trusts to achieve best practices whether they are a volunteer run organization or a land trust with both volunteers and staff. Alliances will provide resources and educational opportunities related to the Standards & Practices and will offer support to land trusts using this tool.

The self assessment tool is voluntary, free to land trusts and is designed to allow you to work at your own pace and within the capacity of your organization.

Overview

This Collection of Best Practices, Resources and Template Documents is listed in the order of the Canadian Land Trust Standards & Practices.

Sample documents and templates have been provided by leading land trusts across Canada and represent resources to help your organization as it develops policies and guidelines. These are being continuously updated.

Successful land conservation has resulted in the public, government and private agencies requiring assurances that land trust’s practices conform to professional standards that they can rely on. Thus, this collection is catalogued according to the most recent versions of the updated Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices, (2019) Centre for Land Conservation.

The tool provides land trusts several options and resources:

The ability to register and have multiple individuals within your land trust work on the program at the same time.

The capability to rank each standard and practice with a high, low and medium importance to
gauge progress on the program.

Shared notes between those working on the program within your land trust.

Capacity to upload your final document and ensure records are available permanently as a resource for your land trust.

An option to share policies, guidelines, protocols with the wider land trust community.

A resource bank of documents developed by other land trusts, conservation organizations and charities that serve as templates.

Sources

Note that the sources of most of the documents are plainly identified within it. We have sought permission from any outside sources, and thank all those who generously provided their work for others to use and share. We hope that further editions of this collection will be available based on continued input of template documents and research from our members and associated organizations. This Assessment Tool is designed to help land trusts assess, update, and find associated laws, sample documents and policies that you can use to work toward full compliance with the Canadian Land Trust Standards & Practices. This web-based assessment tool is a voluntary program to help build land trust capacity and excellence.

Acknowledgments

The BC Assessment Tool originated in 2009 developed by The Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia LTABC. In 2023, LTABC partnered with The Alliance for Canadian Land Trusts, the Ontario Land Trust Alliance and Le Réseau de Milieux Naturels protégés to update the self assessment tool with a national and bilingual format.

Funding for this project was generously provided by Environment & Climate Change Canada, The Land Trust Alliance of BC and The Alliance for Canadian Land Trusts.

Sample Board Resolution

Alliances encourage member land trusts to accept the Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices as the guiding principles for their operations, indicating their commitment to upholding the public trust and to the credibility of the land trust community as a whole. The Alliances encourage all land trusts to go beyond accepting the guidelines by implementing the Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices at a pace appropriate for the size of the organization and scope of its protection activities. Through a Board resolution, land trusts are asked to accept the statement of the Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices as guiding the practices of the organization, and to make a commitment to making continual progress toward implementation of the standards and practices.

When a land trust passes a board resolution adopting Canadian Land Trust Standards and Practices it should send a copy to the appropriate land trust alliance. LTABC and OLTA have sample Board resolutions available for land trusts to use.

Limitation of Liability and User’s Responsibility

All information in this Collection is provided “as is” and no representations, warranties or conditions, either expressed or implied, are made in connection with the use of, or reliance upon, this information. Legislative, tax and other information changes over time, and thus the user is advised in all cases to seek legal and financial advice independently. Much of this information has been reproduced with permission from other sources; its accuracy and completeness is not guaranteed. It is provided to you as the user entirely at your own risk.

Information specific to a land trust and downloaded into this tool remains the property of the individual land trust and is accessible only to them unless otherwise agreed. The Administrator of the Self-Assessment Tool may enter individual land trust information to provide technical assistance upon request of a land trust. The Administrator may, from time to time, collect anonymous collective data for use in improving and developing the site however no individual land trust data will be used or shared for this purpose.

This online Self-assessment tool (SAT) © was developed in 2009 and revised and modified in 2024 by The Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia based on the Canadian Land Trust Standards & Practices which was developed in 2007 by the Canadian Land Trust Alliance and revised in 2019 by the Centre for Land Conservation. The Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia would like to thank The Alliance of Canadian Land Trusts and Environment Climate Change Canada for its financial support toward the 2024 revision of this online assessment program.

Reprinting or use of copyrighted Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) © for uses other than distribution to land trust board and staff requires permission from the Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia. The Canadian Land Trust Standards & Practices are the property of the Centre for Land Conservation and any use or distribution must be directed to them separately.