Colcom Foundation A Legacy Built on Environmental Vision
Colcom Foundation operates with a mission rooted in decades of environmental concern and a deep belief that unchecked population growth poses one of the most serious threats to the natural world. Based on the life’s work of its founder, Cordelia S. May, the organization continues to advocate for sustainable living and ecological balance long after her death. Colcom Foundation’s work has also facilitated proactive environmental advocacy and protection by groups, including the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, WeConservePA, Westmoreland Land Trust, Protect PT, and Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services.
A Founder Ahead of Her Time
Cordelia S. May was just 23 years old in 1952 when she began supporting family planning, driven by what she described as charitable concern for the health of the natural world and its effect on human quality of life. Long before these issues entered mainstream conversation, she recognized that population growth compounds quietly imperceptible from day to day, yet overwhelming in its cumulative force. That insight became her lifelong passion.
She established Colcom Foundation in 1996 at the age of 68, and the organization was substantially funded following her death in 2005. The foundation’s grantmaking is designed to honor her humanitarian objectives, her foresight, and her compassion.
Mission and Focus Areas
The primary mission of Colcom Foundation is to foster a sustainable environment that ensures quality of life for all Americans. The organization concentrates on addressing the major causes and consequences of overpopulation and its adverse effects on natural resources. At the regional level, the foundation supports conservation efforts, environmental projects, and cultural assets.
The foundation’s perspective holds that today’s environmental headlines aquatic and terrestrial habitat destruction, pollution, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse are direct consequences of population growth. Yet mainstream culture rarely connects these problems to overpopulation, a gap that Mrs. May identified and worked to address well before the topic reached broad public discourse.
Her supporters compare her forward-thinking views to other early reformers who faced skepticism or outright opposition in their own time, including advocates for gender equality and civil rights. Like those figures, Mrs. May’s vindication, in the foundation’s view, will come through the judgment of history.
Today, Colcom Foundation carries that vision forward through targeted grantmaking and a commitment to the environmental and demographic issues its founder spent her life championing. Visit this page for more information.
More about Colcom Foundation on https://waterlandlife.org/land-conservation/colcom-revolving-fund-for-local-land-trusts/