Mission Statement

The Christensen Fund believes in the power of biological and cultural diversity to sustain and enrich a world faced with great change and uncertainty. We focus on the "bio-cultural" – the rich but neglected adaptive interweave of people and place, culture and ecology. The Fund's mission is to buttress the efforts of people and institutions who believe in a biodiverse world infused with artistic expression and work to secure ways of life and landscapes that are beautiful, bountiful and resilient.

We pursue this mission through place-based work in regions chosen for their potential to withstand and recover from the global erosion of diversity. We focus on backing the efforts of locally-recognized community custodians of this heritage, and their alliances with scholars, artists, advocates and others. We also fund international efforts to build global understanding of these issues. These are challenging goals, so we seek out imaginative, thoughtful and occasionally odd partners to learn with. The Fund works primarily through grant making, as well as through capacity and network building, knowledge generation, collaboration and mission-related investments.

The Founders and History of The Christensen Fund Allen D. and Carmen M. Christensen founded the Christensen Fund as a private foundation in 1957. Mr. Christensen, who was a civil and mining engineer and served as President of the Utah Mining and Construction Company for many years, was an Council on Foundations enthusiastic and eclectic art collector. Mrs. Christensen had a strong interest in education both as an educator of studio arts and an artist. Mr. and Mrs. Christensen's interest in the visual arts and music strongly influenced the Fund's direction. One of their children, Diane Christensen, currently serves on the Board.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the Christensen Fund added to its charitable and educational activities the acquisition of fine arts and ethnographic artifacts. From 1972 to 1999 the Fund was a private operating foundation, its operations being the loan of non-Western art collections to museums and arranging for their study and exhibition in Australia, Europe and the United States.

By 1981, the Fund's focus had expanded to include support for research in natural history through its support of the Christensen Research Institution (CRI) in Papua New Guinea. The Fund also supported the partners and organizations associated with CRI, including California Academy of Sciences, Oxford University, Stanford University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Upon CRI's closure in 1996, the Fund began grant-making to conservation organizations involved in conservation related field research. Principal among those was the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), formerly New York Zoological Society.

Photo Source

The Fund has long made larger grants to public and private schools and other organizations offering educational programs for children. From 2000-2002, the Fund ran a small grants program supporting studio art and conservation science education programs in both public and private K-12 schools.

During the mid-1990s, the Fund decided to donate its art collections to museums at which these were on loan, or repatriate them to appropriate bodies, with the donations accelerating in the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Art Collection). By 2002, the Fund thereby ceased to be an operating foundation and became a private foundation, solely dedicated to grant-making, creating a new Board of majority non-family members to develop a new programs under the leadership of a new Executive Director, Dr. Kenneth Wilson.

Recent Grantees

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African Rift Valley

Action for Environmental Public Advocacy	Underwrites training, capacity building and legal support for thirty culture and environment community associations and local government officials in Ethiopia's southwest around the roles of community associations in civil society.
African Conservation Fund	This grant underwrites preparation and hosting for the bringing together of community, national and international conservation experts to a four-day workshop in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, in early 2007 on "The Future of Pastoralism, Wildlife and Landscape Conservation in the Ethiopian Rift Valley" to work towards a shared vision and strategy for securing the region's unique biological and cultural diversity.
Aid to Artisans ATA	To assess the artisan situation in the Gamo Gofa, in Southwest Ethiopia, in order to understand the variety, quality and marketability of products and to devise a project to deliver technical assistance to create global marketability to artisan products that will strengthen the link between land, tradition and livelihood.

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Central Asia and Turkey

Afghan Communicator	To strengthen the revival of the arts in Afghanistan by providing books and basic supplies to Afghan artists, to network art students and curators in Kabul and Herat and link them with artists from the Afghan Diaspora in North America, and to organize exhibitions locally and in the US.
Anadolu Kultur A.S.	Supplementary support for the strengthening of the cultural life of Kars (NE Turkey), including in women's handicrafts, filmmaking for community development, cultural heritage and creative photography at the Arts High School, and through creating and strengthening local community-based organizations and NGOs.
Fauna & Flora International FFI	To continue to strengthen the capacity of Beshat (CBF), a community-environment and development support organization in the Kyrgyz Republic, and to identify and support local organizations in Tajikistan concerned with maintaining walnut and pistachio forests.

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Disaster Giving

Action for Environmental Public Advocacy	To underwrite the delivery of heifers, she-goats and sorghum seed through indigenous friendship networks to Nyangatom and D'assanetch pastoralists of the Omo Valley whose livelihood was affected by the recent flooding in Ethiopia and thereby sustain the existing institutions of mutual support.
Battery Dance Company	To co-finance production and performance of a dance tribute to the victims of Katrina and the Tsunami to support their healing and the restoration of their relationship to water, drawing on contemporary dance, Indian classical dance, jazz and Indian ragas and chants.

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Global Biocultural Initiative - Institutions and Policies

International Institute for Environment and Development IIED	Bridging funding for a suite of action research, publication, networking and policy activities to promote global understanding of collective bio-cultural heritage.
Gaia Foundation	Co-fund community-level exchange between Africa and Latin America and associated "microproject" initiatives to strengthen traditional management of bio-diverse and culturally significant landscapes, recuperate seed diversity and agricultural practices and develop sustainable diversity-rich livelihood options.
International Indian Treaty Council IITC	Partially underwrite the organization of--and participation in--the 2nd Global Consultation on the Right to Food, Food Security and Food Sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples, in November 2006, Oaxaca, Mexico, to complete formulation of "cultural indicators" for food security in collaboration with the FAO and other agencies and community partners.

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Global Biocultural Initiative - Landscapes and Communities

Center for Economic Justice [CEJ ]	To underwrite travel, food and lodging costs for 300 participants from rural areas of Mexico and Central America to attend an international forum on biological and cultural diversity in March 2006 in Guatemala.
Earth Island Institute (EII)	Support for the research and development stage of the four-part film series Losing Sacred Ground to inform global publics about the issues behind contested sacred landscapes worldwide.
Cultural Survival	Continued support for translating a semi-annual news publication (Voices) and web-based materials and their production in English, Russian, Spanish and French to share the experiences of indigenous communities worldwide.

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Grantmaking Association

Council on Foundations	General support dues for the Council on Foundations, a membership organization of grantmaking foundations and giving programs worldwide that provides leadership expertise, legal services and networking opportunities to members and to the general public.
Foundation Center San Francisco	General support for Foundation Center-San Francisco, an organization whose mission is to strengthen the nonprofit sector by advancing knowledge about U.S. philanthropy.
Grants Managers Network GMN	General support for the Grants Managers Network (GMN), a project of the Rockefeller Family Fund. The Network provides grants managers valuable opportunities for professional development and a forum for sharing best practices.

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Greater Southwest

Terralingua TL	To support community efforts to bolster biocultural traditions and to restore ecological health of their landscapes through collaborative youth-centered educational and ecological restoration projects in the Sierra Tarahumara.
Taos Land Trust	To support the intergenerational continuity of traditional Hispano and Indigenous livelihoods, knowledge and wisdom for farm and ranch families in Northern New Mexico through land easement education and economic development.
Consejo EcoRegional Sierra Tarahumara	To support bio-cultural mapping, community ecological land-use planning and watershed restoration projects with Tepehuan and Rarámuri indigenous communities in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua, Mexico.

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Local Charitable Giving

Child Family Health International	To complement an on-going outreach program for health science students at selected Bay Area colleges to raise their awareness of the issue of the waste of unwanted medical supplies in US hospitals and how these can be salvaged and distributed worldwide.
Collective Roots Garden Project	To support the Whole Families/Whole Foods program in providing elementary school students and their families with organic community gardening and nutrition-education opportunities in East Palo Alto, CA.
Each One Reach One, Inc.	This grant underwrites general support for an organization that provides academic and artistic mentors and tutors to incarcerated youth throughout juvenile detention centers in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

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Melanesia

Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development FIELD	To provide training and capacity-building activities for forty delegates from Pacific Island States to negotiate on behalf of their countries the implementation of the international legal regimes on biodiversity, climate change and trade-related agreements at international negotiating sessions.
Seed Savers Network	Partial funding for production of a film "The Guardians of the Seed" for community and international distribution about the role of traditional seed savers in the foodways, cultures and indigenous agricultural systems of Melanesia and the world.
United Nations University	Support two further workshops in a series bringing together experts in customary law and practice and coastal natural resource management from the Pacific Islands to strengthen the integration of customary and national law, particularly around access and benefit sharing and marine protected areas.

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North Australia

Aboriginal Rainforest Council Inc.	To identify needs and opportunities for capacity building and training for land and cultural heritage management amongst the Rainforest Aboriginal communities of northeast Queensland and to implement a program based on those identified needs.
Australian Conservation Foundation ACF	Underwrites the report dissemination and implementation planning phase of the Kimberley Appropriate Economies Roundtable which created a regional development vision with Indigenous Traditional Owners and other stakeholders that is in concert with the environment and culture of this part of Western Australia.
Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation	To support the intergenerational transfer and maintenance of Kaanju language and traditional knowledge on Kaanju Ngaachi (homelands) to strengthen and enhance local Indigenous cultures and communities and the links between cultural and biological diversity across the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers region in central Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia.

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The Bay Area

Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival	To support restoration of indigenous environmental knowledge and culture through underwriting master-apprentice approaches to the revitalization of Californian native languages through inter-generational language transmission.
Coevolution Institute CoE	Underwrite community environmental education and stewardship programs with Bay Area schools around valuing invertebrate diversity and establishing pollinator gardens and habitats that also improve quality of life.
Community Works CW California	To support inter-generational and cross-cultural dialogue in the diverse community of Richmond, CA, by enabling school children to document and share with their classmates and the wider public their family histories and identities and to document the experience in a study guide.