The world's first permanent institution dedicated entirely to mountain ecosystems and the communities who protect them. Born in the Nepal Himalaya, built for every range on Earth.
Mountains supply fresh water to roughly half of humanity. Two billion people live in and below them. One in three mountain species faces extinction. Yet the great ranges receive a fraction of the philanthropic attention given to oceans and rainforests.
There is no global institution whose sole mandate is the preservation of mountain landscapes and mountain communities together. The Mountain Preservation Foundation exists to be that institution: born in the Nepal Himalaya, built for every range on Earth.
To preserve the world's great mountain ranges and to strengthen the communities who call them home: funding the permanent protection of high-mountain forests, watersheds, and wildlife corridors; building and equipping schools and health clinics in remote mountain villages; and investing in safe, dignified livelihoods that keep forests standing and families together.
A world where every great mountain range is preserved by the people who live beneath it; where standing forests, thriving villages, open wildlife corridors, and safe childhoods are one and the same achievement.
In 2007, while Tashi Wangchuk Tenzing, grandson of Tenzing Norgay, was summiting Everest for the third time, his wife Bandi Nima Sherpa Tenzing stood above the terraced hills of Nuwakot district and saw something beyond the landscape: a community where human trafficking and emigration were draining families from the mountains.
She decided to change the economics. She believed the mountains could only be protected if families could prosper without leaving them. The Tenzings planted coffee. From that decision grew a farm that supports hundreds of families, and a nonprofit that builds schools, equips clinics, sponsors children, and runs anti-trafficking programs across the Himalaya.
The coffee is the product. The protection is the purpose. The Foundation exists to carry that purpose to every great range, and protection from trafficking is the work we enter first.
Permanent protection of high-mountain forests and wildlife corridors, home to red pandas, Himalayan black bears, and 286 bird species.
Anti-trafficking programs, child sponsorship, and women's leadership through coffee cooperatives, so opportunity roots families at home.
Building, equipping, and sustaining schools in remote mountain villages, with teacher support for children who would otherwise have no access.
Rural health clinics serving mountain populations far from the nearest hospital.
Income rooted in a standing forest: the coffee value chain, forest products, eco-tourism, and youth retention that creates local opportunity.
Most environmental nonprofits spend a third of every year raising the money that keeps the lights on. This foundation is built differently.
A commercial engine, the Guardian Program built by Planet 5, commits 20% of its membership revenue to the Foundation as permanent structural funding. That commitment covers the engine of the organization, so philanthropic gifts are not consumed by overhead and fundraising cycles. Commerce holds the line. Catalytic gifts build what commerce alone cannot: the corridor, the schools, the clinics, and the endowment that makes protection permanent.
Donors here are the third kind of capital in a three-part architecture: a commercial company, an investment fund, and this foundation. Different capital, different motivations, the same mission underneath.
The Foundation formalizes and scales a record built over nearly two decades in Nepal by Nuwa Estate and partner organizations, including the Nepal Green Tara Foundation.
Protecting one of the last continuous wildlife corridors between Everest and Makalu.
The Foundation's flagship commitment reconnects Sagarmatha, Gaurishankar, and Makalu-Barun National Parks into one preserved landscape: the cultural homeland of Sherpa, Rai, and Tamang communities, and a watershed in the system that serves 1.35 billion people below.
$25 million over ten years, in five phases that end in a permanent endowment: community consultations and legal groundwork, full protected designation, carbon verification and agroforestry, value-added processing and research, and finally an endowed corridor whose protection no longer depends on anyone's annual generosity, including ours.
The target: deforestation below 0.1% per year, down from a 1.8% baseline.
Nepal is where we start, not where we stop. This is a ten-year replication roadmap of planned phases, not simultaneous launches: preservation partnerships with Maasai communities at Mt Kenya and Amboseli in 2027, highland cooperatives in Bolivia's Yungas in 2027, Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe and Sidama in the pipeline, and Patagonia named from the start. A gift here is a gift to a model that makes standing forests worth more than cleared ones, on every continent where the great ranges rise.
Every commitment on this page is designed to be verified by people who are not us.
Every level of giving maps to something you can point to on a map or walk into on the ground.
The flagship corridor works out to roughly $272 per hectare across the ten-year plan. One gift, one specific piece of the map, held.
Give a hectareUnrestricted support that lets the Foundation move where the need is greatest across the five programs, from corridor patrols to classroom roofs.
Give to the fundSponsorship and naming opportunities for school construction, clinic equipment, teacher support, and child sponsorship through our program partners.
Ask about namingGifts that outlive all of us: endowment contributions, bequests, and beneficiary designations that make the corridor's protection permanent.
Build the endowmentWe gladly accept gifts by check, wire, donor-advised fund, qualified charitable distribution, and appreciated securities, and grants from private and family foundations. Contact details for giving will be published here shortly.
Status. Mountain Preservation Foundation is a Wyoming nonprofit corporation. Our application for recognition of federal tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code is in preparation. Our Employer Identification Number has been applied for and will be published here when issued.
Deductibility. Until the IRS issues our determination letter, we cannot guarantee that contributions are tax-deductible. If recognition is granted, the IRS generally treats exemption as effective retroactively to our date of incorporation when the application is filed within the required period, which would make gifts made after incorporation deductible. Please consult your own tax advisor before making a gift, and ask us for our current status at any time.
Acknowledgments. Every donor receives a written acknowledgment. No goods or services are provided in exchange for contributions; gifts to the Foundation carry no membership benefits, discounts, or products from any affiliated company.
Use of funds. Gifts are unrestricted unless a designation is agreed in writing. Designated gifts are applied to the designated program; if a program is fully funded, the balance is applied to the nearest related charitable need.
Solicitation. We solicit contributions only where lawful and will complete state charitable solicitation registrations where required. Nothing on this page is an offer of investment or a promise of financial return.
Privacy. We do not sell, rent, or trade donor information, ever.
If you have read this far, you are the kind of person this work was designed for. Write to us. We answer personally.
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