Applicants for voluntary land trust accreditation must demonstrate compliance with a set of accreditation indicator practices selected from Land Trust Standards and Practices. These practices were designated by the Land Trust Alliance and indicate the land trust’s ability to operate in an ethical, legal and technically sound manner and ensure the long-term protection of land in the public interest.

Indicator practices were chosen based on the following criteria:

• Responsible governance of the organization;
• Protection of the public interest with sound and sustainable land transactions and stewardship;
• Ethical operations;
• Accountability to donors and the public; and,
• Compliance with all laws, such as IRC §170(h) and §501(c)(3).

Based on feedback the Land Trust Accreditation Commission received from land trusts that have been through the program and on commissioner experience from reviewing more than 100 applications, the Land Trust Alliance announced in January 2010 that it has adjusted the accreditation indicator practices. The number of practices sampled from Land Trust Standards and Practices for accreditation has been reduced from 37 to 26 in response to a systematic evaluation of the accreditation program. This change will maintain the rigor of the program while reducing the time applicants spend completing the application. It will also enable the Commission to efficiently manage an increasing volume of applications.

In conjunction with the changes to the indicator practices, the Commission released revised application materials. Many of the pre-application and application questions and attachments have been combined or reorganized in order to reduce redundancy while retaining the substance of the indicator practices that were removed from the list. The amount of questions and attachments has been reduced by nearly 40%, with attached statements replacing many of the previous questions.

Through these changes and revised materials, the Commission is reducing the redundancy in the application noted by previous applicants while maintaining the rigor of the program. The changes to the indicator practices will go into effect on March 31, 2010.

Please note that this list refers to practices as they are numbered in Land Trust Standards and Practices. If a practice is not one of the accreditation indicator practices, it does not appear in this list, and thus the numbering of practices in this list is not sequential.