NEW YORK, NY (April 4, 2018)—The Open Space Institute (OSI) has received an $11 million grant from the William Penn Foundation for its Delaware Watershed Protection Fund. Today’s announcement builds on a similar grant awarded to OSI by the William Penn Foundation in 2012. With this latest funding, OSI will continue its work protecting forestland in the watershed, thereby ensuring clean drinking water for human communities and the natural environment in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware, including the cities of New York, Philadelphia and Trenton.
Through the prior grant, OSI utilized $8.3 million from the William Penn Foundation to fund projects conserving some 20,000 acres of high-priority watershed lands, protecting the water supply of 15 million people across the watershed. Each dollar of the funding was matched 6:1, leveraging approximately $55 million in other funding. Through the Delaware River Watershed Protection Fund, OSI awards grants to land trusts to conserve land locally.