The Catalyst Fund

Protecting Land that Matters Most, While We Still Can

Across Massachusetts, forests, wetlands, farms, and coastal landscapes provide clean water, wildlife habitat, climate resilience, and places for people to experience nature. Protecting these lands is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to safeguard the future of Massachusetts. But the window to protect them is closing.

Massachusetts has committed to permanently protecting 30% of its land and water by 2030. Reaching that goal will require us to dramatically accelerate the pace and scale of conservation over the next several years, while opportunities to protect important landscapes still exist.

The Catalyst Fund was created to meet that urgency with ambition. It gives Mass Audubon the scale and flexibility to move quickly, mobilize conservation partners across the Commonwealth, and fund the work we know needs to be done.

Conservation at the Speed the Moment Requires

Land conservation is often a race against time. A property may come onto the market with only a short window for action. A local land trust may have a willing landowner but needs funding to complete a project. A community may need technical expertise to turn an opportunity into permanent protection.

The Catalyst Fund gives Massachusetts conservationists something they have rarely had: the ability to match the speed and scale of the threat with the speed and scale of our response.

It allows Mass Audubon to bring together funding, conservation science, technical expertise, and trusted partners to move promising projects forward, sometimes in a matter of days.

In the first two years, the Fund has helped complete 54 conservation projects protecting over 14,000 acres across Massachusetts. Its reach extends far beyond Mass Audubon’s own wildlife sanctuaries to land trusts, towns, and state agencies. Each project protects an important place. Together, they are building the scale of conservation Massachusetts needs.

How the Catalyst Fund Works

We begin with the land itself.

Our conservation scientists and land protection experts identify places with exceptional value for wildlife, clean water, connected habitat, carbon storage, and climate resilience. When an opportunity arises, we work with landowners and conservation partners to find the right path forward.

Sometimes Mass Audubon purchases land directly. Other times we provide critical funding or technical support to a local partner. Sometimes we can acquire a property quickly, protecting it from development while a land trust, municipality, or public agency prepares to become its long-term steward.

Mass Audubon does not need to own every acre for the Catalyst Fund to succeed. Success means ensuring that important land is permanently protected, with the right long-term steward in place.

MathWorks: A Transformative Partnership 

For the Catalyst Fund to achieve its full potential, we estimate that we need to raise approximately $75 million. MathWorks, the Natick-based developer of mathematical computing software, rose to the challenge, seeding the Fund with $25 million in 2023 and investing another $25.5 million in 2026.

More than philanthropy, this strategic partnership has transformed the scale and speed of our land conservation work, giving Mass Audubon the capacity to leverage public and private funding and help partners across Massachusetts protect critical land while opportunities still exist.

More than 500 individual donors and foundations have followed MathWorks’ extraordinary generosity bringing the total contributions to the Catalyst Fund to $69 million. 

Watch Mass Audubon President & CEO David O'Neill speak with MathWorks' Craig Lizotte about how this partnership came to be and the impact it has had.

You Can Become Part of Massachusetts’ Natural Legacy

We know there is more work to do to ensure the protection of nature in Massachusetts. We invite you to partner with us in work that can’t be done alone – by contributing to the Catalyst Fund or initiating land conservation projects. 

For many landowners, deciding what will happen to a beloved property is deeply personal.

A forest that has been in a family for generations. A field where birds return every spring. Wetlands that protect a community from flooding. A piece of land that has become inseparable from the story of a family or a place.

Mass Audubon works with landowners to explore conservation options that reflect both the ecological importance of their land and their hopes for its future.

If you are considering selling, donating, or permanently protecting land, you do not need to know exactly what you want to do before contacting us. Our land conservation team can help you understand the possibilities.

Explore options for protecting your land

Protecting Nature at the Scale it Needs

Thirty by thirty is an urgent, science-based international conservation milestone that reflects a basic ecological truth: nature functions as connected systems, and to keep those systems functioning, we must conserve 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030. 

Protecting enough land, in the right places and in connected networks, gives plants and wildlife room to move and adapt, safeguards forests and wetlands that store carbon and absorb floodwaters, and helps protect the water and natural systems communities depend on. A 30x30 statewide target for Massachusetts asks us to build those networks while the opportunity remains.

The Catalyst Fund helps translate that statewide ambition into action. By giving communities and conservation organizations the resources to act quickly and work across boundaries, the Fund expands the conservation capacity Massachusetts needs to reach 30x30 and sustain that work well beyond 2030.

Help Protect What Makes Massachusetts Home

The Catalyst Fund began with extraordinary philanthropic investment and grows more powerful with every landowner, community, conservation partner, and donor who joins the effort.

Mass Audubon is committed to leading Massachusetts with a full suite of strategies that advance conservation at scale: advocacy and legislative action, research and restoration, and paradigm-shifting financing mechanisms like the Catalyst Fund. Together, these approaches can accelerate land protection, strengthen biodiversity, and help secure a resilient future for nature and people across the Commonwealth.

Together, we can meet our 30 x 30 goals and protect the places Massachusetts cannot afford to lose.

Protect Your Land

Support the Catalyst Fund