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The Trail Fund Sponsorship Opportunities

Interested in Sponsoring or Donating to The Trails Capacity Grant Program?

American Trails supports the trails community through education, advocacy, and research.

The goal of this program is to invest in building trails community capacity nationwide through research, education, and stewardship.

Since the Trail Fund launched in 2021 it has now morphed into two programs. The Trails Capacity Program fills the role of what the "Trail Fund" was in 2021, and the Legacy Trail Program now offers Legacy Roads and Trails funding to projects on U.S. Forest Service lands.

In its inaugural year, the Trails Capacity Program received 291 applicants, requesting a total of $3.2 million representing $4.6 million in cash match. As of March 2023, we have awarded $122,000 to a total of fourteen trails projects across the country, representing $475K in matching funds and 818 trail miles improved.

Would you consider helping us achieve our mission?

While we have made big progress, American Trails still has a lot to accomplish. We need your support to continue to grow the Trail Fund for 2023 and beyond. Our goal for 2023 is to raise $500,000.

We are looking to create partnerships with sustaining donors who are excited to support our vision of a trail within easy access of every American.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to provide you with more information about how you can help support our work at American Trails.

We greatly appreciate your support, and it will be used to fund critical research to demonstrate where trails are needed most, to train a new generation of trails stewards and to help address the trail maintenance backlog. By supporting American Trails and the Trail Fund, you support equity in the outdoors, improved wildlife habitat, community connectivity, and climate resilience.

If you wish to contribute, please click the button below! With your donation, we will be one step closer to a trail within a few minutes of every American!

Donate Now!*

*If donating a larger amount and need certain paperwork to accompany your sponsorship, please send an email to [email protected].

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The Trail Fund Collaborators

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The Trail Fund Leadership

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The Trail Fund Community Supporters

Thank you to our anonymous donors as well!

Funding Priorities

Unfortunately, trails do not receive the ongoing maintenance support that they need through the Federal, State, and local appropriations process, resulting in a huge trail maintenance backlog. By current estimates in the US Forest Service alone, if nothing were to change in the current appropriations for trail maintenance, it would take over 1000 years to eliminate the current trail maintenance backlog. And that does not even take into consideration the additional miles of trail that will be added to the backlog in that same time.

Maintenance is not sexy, or easy to fund, but it is critical in helping our country, our citizens, and our communities maintain their connection to nature and to the enjoyment of our country’s most beautiful landscapes.

The funding received is dispersed between trail maintenance, research, and stewardship training, and a portion is also set aside for administration of this program. (Please Note: The percentages are approximate as it will depend on the applications received and their needs.)

Priority #1: Trail Maintenance Backlog on State and Local Lands

We support trail maintenance projects that offer valuable benefits to broad segments of the communities served, with emphasis on collaborative and public/private initiatives featuring multiple funding sources. The Trail Fund is dedicated to sustaining our vast trail networks and beginning to solve the trail maintenance backlog on State and local public lands.

When you’re hiking on a trail, you often focus on details: the crunch of gravel beneath your boots, the wind whispering through the trees, the purr of your dirt bike as you negotiate a technical section of trail. In all likelihood, you aren’t thinking about who maintains the trail, much less who provides the dollars to do so.

Well, the reality is that our trails are necessary infrastructure, and they need your help.

While there are Federal, State, and local agencies playing an important role in management of public lands, their bandwidth is limited and their funding is squeezed. A 2012 General Accounting Office study found that the trail maintenance backlog on U.S. Forest Service lands alone exceeds $5.2 Billion. Amplifying the backlog is decreased budgets at Federal, State, and local agencies for programs that support recreation. Both the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service show dips of more than 15% since 2012—tens of millions of dollars our trails and rivers have sorely missed.

As the Department of the Interior acknowledged, “years of increased visitation and use” make these financial and preservation realities all the more urgent. One snapshot of this: the Pacific Crest Trail Association in 2018 issued 289% more long-distance permits than 2013.

The irony is all of this outdoor recreation generates billions of dollars in spending and millions of jobs, which foster healthier communities and economies. Yet public lands themselves have an uncertain fate.

These two diverging trends—more visitation, less money—create problems for our trails.

When trails aren’t properly maintained, they can become overgrown, washed out, or simply blocked by obstacles like fallen trees. It starts a ripple effect. Hikers get creative to bypass rough spots—a safety risk itself—but forging a new path causes braiding and greater erosion. This can overwhelm local watersheds, disturbing the homes and health of wildlife.

Thankfully, we are empowered to protect our gateways to adventure. The Federal outlook may seem bleak, but we can affect change starting at the local level.

Priority #2: Research

Research and data on trails are critical to show the impact and benefits of trails. The trails community is witnessing unprecedented growth and a shift in leadership away from Federal agencies, toward foundation and private investment driving trail development. This highlights the need to develop the tools that allow a dynamic trail community to come together, professionalize and standardize, document our value and impact, and articulate this value and impact to public leaders, the outdoor industry, and other industries that unwittingly benefit from trails.

Recent data from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) calculated that outdoor recreation generated $734 billion in economic activity in 2016, surpassing other sectors such as agriculture, petroleum and coal. Outdoor recreation makes up 2.2% percent of U.S. GDP, supports 5.2 million jobs and is growing faster than the economy as a whole. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, trail centered activities directly generate over $594 billion and nearly 3.5 million jobs. We know that on federally managed land, outdoor recreation contributes more than $64.6 billion to the national economy and supports more than 623,000 jobs annually, but we don’t even know the economic impacts of State and local trail-focused outdoor recreation. It could be huge!

The Trail Fund will establish a robust and collaborative trail industry research capacity with a focus on the development and understanding of how trails create value and impact at the community, state, and federal level. We will utilize the data and knowledge from research initiatives across the country to inform and grow this critical trails knowledge base.

Priority #3: Stewardship Training

The management of our nation’s trails is largely supported by trail organizations and citizen volunteers who leverage government resources to maintain and expand our trails. On the National Trails System alone, since 1995, hundreds of thousands of citizen volunteers have contributed more than 19 million hours to build and maintain National Scenic and Historic Trails, and nonprofit trail organizations have contributed more than $200 million toward trail stewardship projects, a total value of $577.4 million. This historical and ongoing public “sweat equity” investment has led to an increased recognition of the importance of adequate federal funding for our public lands and trails to maintain quality visitor experiences.

The goal of developing high quality, consistent training opportunities is to preserve skills that have been developed over decades as well as teaching the newest technology. Top quality and readily accessible training will help all of us perform to the best of our abilities. By focusing on engaging younger, diverse populations as active trail stewards, we can build a force of passionate individuals to tackle our nation’s trail maintenance needs.