Support TREE Fund today

This is a matter of life and death. For you. For your community. For your planet.

Drawing the line from research to life and death can be tough. Research often seems removed from real life, but the line is real and grows stronger every day.

Your gifts to TREE Fund have seeded research into the safety of working in trees. Men and women dedicated to this vital work are alive and healthy today because of you.

Your gifts to TREE Fund have nourished research into healthier community trees. You know trees mean a healthier environment, and we’re learning that trees mean healthier, wealthier and happier people.

Quite literally, you’re an unsung hero. Your gifts to TREE Fund have been a blessing to individuals, to communities, and to the Earth.

No one else may say it, so let me: Thank you.

You are an important part of the TREE Fund community, just as community trees are an important part of all our lives. At this moment of change in our community, your willingness to be less apart from and more a part of TREE Fund is more important than ever. Your year-end gift to TREE Fund is key.

The value of community amid change struck me a few years ago on a forest hike with my youngest son. He was just 5 and learning about the community of life and his place in it. We found a dead tree covered with moss and crumbling, decomposing as it returned to the Earth. He asked about the fallen tree, and I told him about the tree’s change as part of the cycle of life.

After a bit, I started to walk away, expecting him to follow, but he remained. He sat on the ground with an arm draped over the decomposing tree. “I have to stay with this tree, Daddy,” he said, “so it’s not afraid.”

In that moment, I felt him a part of me, and I of him, more than ever before. I sat next to him and said, “I’m proud of you for that, but it’s not afraid. Look at all these trees around us—they are all this tree’s family and they are here for it, just like us.”

As I said the words, I felt a new kinship, a new sense of community that reached far beyond my family and neighborhood, and a realization that the point of that community is to support each other. We’re learning now that trees of the same species are communal, will often form alliances with trees of other species, and have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships. Just like us.

The TREE Fund community—and, by extension, all communities—need you today. Please make a donation to TREE Fund by clicking on the purple “Donate Now” button on the home page of this site, or by sending a check to TREE Fund, 552 S. Washington St. #109, Naperville, IL 60540.

With deep gratitude,

Russell King
TREE Fund President and CEO

P.S. Even the most frugal organization needs operating funds to serve its mission, and this is the greatest current need at TREE Fund. Please consider making an unrestricted donation to meet this need today.