PA Wilds Center

Pennsylvania Wilds Center connects people to nature, businesses to opportunities, and communities to resources, creating rooted local wealth in the PA Wilds. Give to one of our funds by selecting it while donating: The PA Wilds Fund: Provides flexible support that fuels new ideas, launches pilot programs, and sustains existing initiatives across the PA Wilds Center. This fund directly supports Center operations and can be applied where it is needed most, ensuring the PA Wilds Center remains responsive, innovative, and impactful. The PA Wilds Rural Entrepreneur & Innovation Fund: Provides flexible resources to advance programs that support rural makers, outdoor-based entrepreneurs, and other small businesses where the need is greatest. This fund helps fill gaps and launch new initiatives across the PA Wilds Cooperative, Placemaker CoLab, and the Center’s PA Wilds-branded brick-and-mortar and digital marketplaces, while enabling the Center to offer unique offerings such as new product development opportunities, business plan competitions, mentoring, and meaningful connections between rural businesses and customers. The PA Wilds Community Investment Fund: Your gift strengthens the rural communities that make the PA Wilds unique. By supporting community development at the PA Wilds Center, donors help turn local ideas into real projects, such as wayfinding, youth opportunities, mini-grants, volunteer initiatives, public art, and more, that enhance a community’s sense of place and invite people to explore and invest. These efforts do more than enhance outdoor recreation; they fuel small businesses, build pride of place, keep young people connected to their hometowns, and ensure stewardship and economic growth move forward together. Through regional partnerships and locally developed resources such as the award-winning PA Wilds Design Guide for Community Character Stewardship, the PA Wilds Center helps communities work together rather than in isolation. Flexible support allows the Center to respond where the need is greatest, helping rural communities not just survive, but adapt and thrive for generations. The PA Wilds Stewardship Fund: Supports the care, stewardship, and enhancement of the region's special natural places, including its more than 2 million acres of public land, through strategic investments in real projects like maintenance capacity, planning studies, and accessibility projects, as well as in storytelling, toolkits, and visitor messaging, all of which are rooted in collaborations with an impactful network of local conservation partners.