Big Thompson Watershed Coalition

What it reported doing in 2024

Disaster recovery goal: helping our lands and community recover from flood and fire through collaboration, restoration, and resiliency building. An immediate need following catastrophic fires like the cameron peak fire is to reduce erosion on hillslopes. High severity fires burn away the majority of vegetation and topsoil on hillslopes leaving hydrophobic (water repellent) soils and burning the seed sources for future vegetation growth. Hydrophobic soils with little vegetation can be heavily impacted by even small rain events leading to severe erosion and sediment, ash, and debris flowing downhill into waterways. When our waterways are inundated with excess water, sediment, and debris, post-fire flooding occurs impacting downstream values, aquatic populations, communities, and roadways. With no seed sources to produce new tree growth, some areas may take decades or longer to become reforested. To address this need in 2024, we took a two-fold approach focusing on stream restoration and reforestation efforts. Led by our stream restoration project manager, we continued our post-fire recovery work to address restoration in streams that have high amounts of post-fire flooding, debris flows, and sediment transport. Our projects focus on installing woody structures in priority streams to slow the flow of water, catch debris and sediment, and slowly raise eroded streambeds to reconnect them with their floodplains. The in-stream projects occurred on both usfs land and private properties. We installed 89 in-stream structures and installed 500 willow stakes along riparian areas to help restore 2.1 miles of streams. All our structures installed to date have allowed 141,500 cubic feet of sediment to be deposited behind the structures (which protects water quality). To counter the lack of tree regrowth in severely burned areas of the fire, we hosted 3 volunteer days (81 volunteers and over 400 volunteer hours) to plant 1,950 ponderosa pine seedlings across 25 acres of severely burned areas of the big t watershed in 2024

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 82.3%; rating input score 82
• Program expense ratio: 87.3%; rating input score 87
• Fundraising efficiency: $644.27 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 97; 97th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: Limited
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: Limited
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 5 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 62
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
  • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Missing
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 5.7%; rating input score 52; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.82; rating input score 36; 36th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.79; rating input score 9; 9th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 8.9%; rating input score 40; 40th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -16.8% per year; rating input score 0; 3rd percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -15.3% per year; rating input score 0; 2nd percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 3.2% per year; rating input score 100; 31st percentile among comparable filings