Insights

As a learning organization, LegacyWorks is committed to staying curious about the world around us. We see the landscape as complex but knowable. The more we learn, the more questions we have. Thanks for visiting our Insight pages where we will continue to gather knowledge, share information and learn together. We look forward to furthering the conversation with you.

2024

Featured
Strengthening Community Resilience: Wildfire Risk Reduction and Habitat Restoration in Goleta
Strengthening Community Resilience: Wildfire Risk Reduction and Habitat Restoration in Goleta

As part of ongoing efforts to address wildfire risks and restore ecosystems in Santa Barbara County, LegacyWorks, together with the Cachuma Resource Conservation District (CRCD) and the Community Environmental Council (CEC), is proud to be a coordinating partner of the Wildfire Resilience Collaborative (WRC).

Increasing the Capacity and Collaboration to Conserve the Gaviota Coast</span>
Increasing the Capacity and Collaboration to Conserve the Gaviota Coast

LegacyWorks is excited to partner with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB for a master’s group project aimed at conserving the Gaviota Coast.

Local Film Featured in Wild and Working Lands Film Festival April 12
Local Film Featured in Wild and Working Lands Film Festival April 12

“Who will carry this on when we are gone? Who will carry on the traditions of the Crow people?” asks Noel Two Leggins in Rylon Bird’s new film, The Return, which will be featured in the Wild and Working Lands Film Festival on April 12 at the Cody Theatre.

2023

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Interstitium
Interstitium

In this time of giving thanks, I am feeling grateful for so many things. Our remarkable team. Our phenomenal partners, funders and clients. The culture of authentic connection, curiosity and openness we cultivate together. How that culture welcomes each of us with our great gifts and growing edges.

Melissa Fontaine Announcement
Melissa Fontaine Announcement

We’re thrilled to welcome and introduce you to our newest Santa Barbara Regional Initiative team member - Melissa Fontaine! Melissa brings to LegacyWorks a deep commitment to both the natural world and local community.

Good Fire
Good Fire

In 2017, the Thomas Fire raged through Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. At the time, it was the largest, most devastating wildfire in history; burning more than 285K acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, destroying over 1,000 buildings, resulting in over $2.2B worth of damages and causing over 100K people to evacuate their homes.

The Heart of Ellwood Mesa
The Heart of Ellwood Mesa

Ellwood Mesa is an important node in a connected mosaic of protected lands in Goleta. It is also one of the most important overwintering sites for the western population of monarch butterflies. Monarch populations are declining globally, and the overwintering population at Ellwood has declined as well, raising alarm bells in the community. 

LegacyWorks Santa Barbara Community Resilience Portfolio
LegacyWorks Santa Barbara Community Resilience Portfolio

Community resilience is our collective capacity to endure, respond and recover from adversity. Resilience allows us to adapt and grow after a disaster, whether a pandemic, flood or wildfire. At LegacyWorks, we work to build community resilience every day as we show up in service of emerging community needs.

Bill Leahy Announcement
Bill Leahy Announcement

LegacyWorks is pleased to announce Bill Leahy as the newest member of our Santa Barbara team. Bill joined LegacyWorks in the Fall of 2022 after living up the coast on the 25,000-acre Jack & Laura Dangermond Preserve, where he served as Deputy Director for several years.

2022

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LegacyWorks Santa Barbara 2022 Wildfire Resilience Portfolio
LegacyWorks Santa Barbara 2022 Wildfire Resilience Portfolio

Wildfire affects every person and every sector in our community; the scale and complexity of this problem requires every one of us to take action to advance our region’s resilience. We must learn to adapt and develop new strategies for learning and working together.

Wildfire Resilience Collaborative
Wildfire Resilience Collaborative

Santa Barbara is rich in natural communities that are specifically adapted to its Mediterranean climate. These include coastal scrub, chaparral and foothill woodland plant communities, some of the world's most imperiled ecosystems.

Teton Program Update
Teton Program Update

Ten years ago we began working with the LOR Foundation to help assess the opportunities, threats and challenges facing the region and to outline a strategy to invest in regional wellbeing and resilience. Community leaders identified dozens of opportunities for deep impact that fell outside of the reach of their organizations, highlighting a critical need for greater collaboration.

Adapting to Our Changing Hydrology
Adapting to Our Changing Hydrology

Wyatt Penfold is a lifelong Teton Valley farmer, just like his father and grandfather. He grows potatoes, quinoa and other grains in the fertile soil that abuts the west slope of the Tetons. Wyatt is feisty and entrepreneurial and struggles to sit still. He lights up when he talks about water. With a combination of flood irrigation and center pivot sprinklers systems, Wyatt can produce amazing crops even in our extreme conditions.

SBC Water Quality Dashboard
SBC Water Quality Dashboard

Our Santa Barbara team has the great pleasure of living and working in the Santa Barbara region, while also interfacing with our teams working in the northern Rockies and in southern Baja California Sur. While far apart, all the communities we work with are facing the worst drought in the historical record, exacerbating long term challenges around water quality and water supply. Frustratingly, it can be remarkably difficult to get straightforward data on the state of our water.

Baja Team Update
Baja Team Update

LegacyWorks group is pleased to announce the newest member of the Baja Team, Alina Breceda-Martos. Originally from Sinaloa, Alina studied Environmental Engineering in Guadalajara and received her Masters in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University in Sweden.

Weaving the Fabric of Regeneration in Mexico
Weaving the Fabric of Regeneration in Mexico

We recognize that the good of the land can’t be achieved without the good of the people. And we work, hand-in-hand with local people, to address the inter-related web of issues that drive scarcity, or alternatively, can create abundance in a place.

Our Growing Team!
Our Growing Team!

At LegacyWorks Group we catalyze and facilitate collaborations that meet critical community needs. We’re always on the watch for promising opportunities and for the resources and partners necessary to move them forward. All three are fundamental to the work we do.

2021

Featured
Santa Barbara Project Updates
Santa Barbara Project Updates

LegacyWorks has played a central role in at least a dozen projects with real impact on the well-being of our communities, ecosystems and working lands. Our Fall Update gathers many of these stories…

Regional Priority Plan
Regional Priority Plan

Ten days ago, with the Alisal fire still smoldering and rain in the forecast, I had flashbacks to the Thomas Fire and subsequent debris flow. It was a visceral feeling that brought me back to that morning in January of…

Water in BCS's Eastern Cape
Water in BCS's Eastern Cape

Three years ago we began a collaboration with the Baja Coastal Institute (BCI) to survey water issues to inform citizen action, improve policy, and prepare youth leaders through the public schools. The result is our recently-released East Cape Citizens’ Water Report.

Resilience Roundtables Wrap-up
Resilience Roundtables Wrap-up

In the summer of 2019, Sharyn Main took the lead on creating a new program at the Community Environmental Council focused on building community climate resilience – a roundtable series bringing together key leaders and climate practitioners responsible for climate change planning and decisions that determine how we respond to the climate crisis.

Partnering with Playa Viva
Partnering with Playa Viva

An exciting partnership is developing in Mexico! In late 2020 we began collaborating with Playa Viva, a boutique hotel located south of the Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo coastal resort area. We were invited by its founder, David Leventhal, and are collaborating with its all-female management team. Playa Viva is a founder of and a leader in the Regenerative Travel movement.

Congratulations White Buffalo Land Trust on Their Acquisition of Jalama Canyon Ranch
Congratulations White Buffalo Land Trust on Their Acquisition of Jalama Canyon Ranch

We are thrilled to share the news that our good friends at White Buffalo Land Trust acquired the 1000-acre Jalama Canyon Ranch last week after a successful $6 million capital campaign.

Tracking Variants
Tracking Variants

The pandemic has arguably become a race between vaccinations and variants, with vaccinations critical to keeping the spread of more contagious and more impactful variants of COVID from driving another spike in case counts here. The dashboard is now tracking both critical elements of what we hope is the final leg of this marathon.

Vaccination data added to Community Dashboard
Vaccination data added to Community Dashboard

Three months ago we launched the The Santa Barbara Community Data Dashboard. Since then we have worked closely with the County Public Health Department to refine and adapt the dashboard as the State changed policies and set, then lifted restrictions.

Voices JH joins LegacyWorks family
Voices JH joins LegacyWorks family

We’re thrilled to announce that Voices JH has joined the LegacyWorks family as a new fiscal sponsorship in the Tetons. When we first learned of Voices JH through the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole…

Honoring Sandy Mason
Honoring Sandy Mason

We write with a heavy heart to tell you that our beloved teammate Sandy Mason passed away on December 26 at his home with his wife Mary. Sandy was a co-founder of LegacyWorks Group, though he always pushed that notion away.

2020

Featured
Collaborative Community Dashboard
Collaborative Community Dashboard

True to our mission to help organizations collaborate on critical challenges that no single agency can tackle on their own, LegacyWorks Santa Barbara facilitated a public-private partnership and launched a countywide COVID-19 Data Dashboard.

Cabo Pulmo and the Opportunity to Thrive
Cabo Pulmo and the Opportunity to Thrive

For over two decades, almost as long as Cabo Pulmo National Park has existed, I have had the privilege of visiting and working with the community of Cabo Pulmo in Southern Baja California, Mexico, first with international conservation organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, then as a concerned citizen, and now with LegacyWorks Group.

Harnessing Markets to Achieve Conservation
Harnessing Markets to Achieve Conservation

if we only work with landowners who are willing and able to donate value, and on easements and restoration that we can fund via grants and gifts, we are working with a very small percentage of the overall ecosystem. This is where markets come in.

Why Migrations Matter
Why Migrations Matter

Whether it’s sandhill cranes congregating in local wetlands before flying to New Mexico or mule deer leaving the mountains to seek winter range in the Red Desert, our wildlife populations rely on a much larger landscape than we previously realized.

The Resilience Cycle
The Resilience Cycle

By now many of us have been exposed to the disaster cycle as it unfolds after a disaster strikes. The cycle takes us from the event itself to immediate search and rescue and early risk mitigation and relief work, into a sustained response through the first days and weeks…

Crises and Opportunities
Crises and Opportunities

When we launched LegacyWorks Group, we set out to become the best possible partner to help communities collaborate on important projects to achieve far greater impact. These kinds of collaborative projects are challenging and out of the reach of any single organization or agency.

It’s Time to Invest in Local Resilience
It’s Time to Invest in Local Resilience

The COVID-19 global pandemic. The economic recession. The climate crisis. The drumbeat of police brutality. The abuse of power and disregard of truth by elected leaders. We are facing a suite of existential threats to our health and well being.

Glen Phillips Plays Live for LegacyWorks
Glen Phillips Plays Live for LegacyWorks

Singer, songwriter and Toad the Wet Sprocket lead singer Glen Phillips is holding a concert for us this Wednesday, June 24 at 6 pm (PDT). Please join us live at Facebook.com/GlenPhillipsMusic. Enjoy Glen's heartful music, and help us raise funds to build community resilience.

Add it to your calendar, spread the word and we'll see you there!

Solidarity
Solidarity

We stand in solidarity with the Black community and all those who are protesting and working to end institutional and cultural racism in our country and around the world.

Responding Locally to a Global Crisis
Responding Locally to a Global Crisis

Two years ago a debris flow swept through my hometown of Santa Barbara and changed everything. The loss of life, property and security were hard to fathom.

Our Collaborative Impact Model
Our Collaborative Impact Model

Over the past five years LegacyWorks Group has been applying and refining our collaborative impact mission and model. Progress has been encouraging, with demand and momentum growing steadily. 

Our Principles - How we Work
Our Principles - How we Work

Our work is built upon a set of core principles that guide how we come together as a team, how we build and lead collaborations, and how we engage our communities.