The Eisenbalm Dispatch
One overlooked nonprofit on the front page each week. Funded in full.
The Wetlands Initiative
Restore high-quality wetland landscapes through science-based projects and partnerships to develop replicable restoration methods.
Each Thursday we select one small nonprofit most people have not heard of.
We tell its story, start to finish, on this page.
Every lip balm sold that week funds it. The full $21.00. 100% to them.
How it started
Every fall, corn and soybean harvest across north-central Illinois pushes nitrate-laden water through tile drains into ditches, into rivers, and eventually into the Mississippi. By spring, that nitrogen feeds the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico — a dead zone measured in square miles that the agricultural press covers annually and the drainage industry treats as someone else's problem. The Wetlands Initiative, incorporated in 1994 and operating out of Chicago, has spent three decades building the counter-argument in the form of land.
The organization was incorporated in 1994 and began regular operations in 1995, at a moment when Illinois had already lost the overwhelming majority of its historic wetland acreage to agricultural drainage. The founding question was specific: not whether wetlands mattered, but whether a science-first organization could develop restoration methods replicable enough that drainage districts, counties, and agricultural lenders could adopt them without reinventing the hydrology each time. Al Pyott, a co-founder who died in June 2020, was central to that original framing. The 2024 annual report — titled "30 Years In — Then, Now, Next" — marks the distance between that premise and its current expression.
The early obstacle was not public indifference. It was the structure of agricultural land itself. Tile-drained fields in Illinois are engineered to move water off the landscape as fast as possible. Reversing that logic, even partially, requires working with the farmers who own the land, not around them. That negotiation is not a communications problem. It is a transaction problem, and TWI built the financial and ecological instruments to solve it.
The Fulton Farms project in Livingston County is the clearest single illustration of the model. The family constructed a wetland with TWI in August 2018 on 690 acres. Jim Fulton described the arrangement plainly: the program allows removal of unproductive acres for wetland installation, making the rest of the operation more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm. That framing — productivity and filtration as aligned interests — is the replicable unit TWI has been testing and documenting since the mid-1990s.
The program allows removal of unproductive acres for wetland installation, making the rest of the operation more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm.
The organization reported $3.47 million in revenue and $2.72 million in expenses for tax year 2024, with net assets of $12.16 million. A staff of 27 as of 2019 — smaller than a regional bank branch — has produced outcomes that larger conservation brands cite in their own grant applications. Current institutional funders include the Walton Family Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Ducks Unlimited, among others. In one recent award, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation granted TWI $794,000 for restoration design and planning on the nearly 800-acre Chase Street Complex in Gary, Indiana.
The mission is explicit on this point: restore high-quality wetland landscapes through science-based projects and partnerships to develop replicable restoration methods. The word "replicable" is doing the structural work. TWI is not building a portfolio of one-off conservation victories. It is building a template — financial, ecological, agronomic — that the next actor in the watershed can pick up without starting from zero. Paul Botts, who serves as executive director and president, has run that operation through three decades of shifting farm policy, variable commodity prices, and changing federal conservation program budgets. The question the organization has always answered is not whether wetland restoration works. The data on nitrogen removal is settled. The question is whether the financing model developed in Illinois gets adopted at the scale the watershed requires.
The problem
Less than 3% of Illinois's original 8.2 million wetland acres remains today
$12.16 million in net assets; $3.47 million revenue, $2.72 million expenses (tax year 2024)
Fulton Farms, 690 acres, Livingston County: constructed wetland installed August 2018 to clean tile water before it leaves the farm
Every fall, as corn and soybean combines move across north-central Illinois, tile drains beneath those fields begin flushing nitrate-laden water into the Illinois River system. That water moves south. It joins the Mississippi. It ends, eventually, in the Gulf of Mexico, where it feeds a hypoxic zone that has measured in the thousands of square miles for decades. The mechanism is well-documented. The counter-infrastructure is not.
The Illinois landscape that European settlers encountered was roughly 8.2 million acres of wetland. Today, less than 3 percent of that remains. The tile drainage systems that made north-central Illinois among the most productive agricultural land on earth also eliminated the biological filtration that wetlands provide. Constructed wetlands intercept tile drainage before it reaches streams and remove nitrogen through a combination of plant uptake and microbial denitrification. The science is not contested. The adoption rate is.
The Wetlands Initiative has worked this problem since 1995, when it began regular operations as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Chicago. Its approach is not advocacy. It is land: acquired, re-flooded, planted, measured, and documented with enough precision that other actors — drainage districts, counties, agricultural lenders — can replicate the model without reinventing the hydrology.
The mechanism is not advocacy. It is land: acquired, re-flooded, planted, measured, and documented as a replicable financial instrument so that other actors can copy the structure without reinventing the hydrology.
As of 2019, The Wetlands Initiative employed 27 staff members. Its 2024 financials show $3.47 million in revenue, $2.72 million in expenses, and net assets of $12.16 million — a balance sheet that reflects 30 years of patient capital accumulation rather than a grant-dependent operating model. Major institutional funders include the Walton Family Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Ducks Unlimited, among others. The organization's 2024 annual report is titled '30 Years In — Then, Now, Next.'
The replication argument is clearest at the farm scale. Fulton Farms, a 690-acre family operation in Livingston County, Illinois, constructed a wetland with The Wetlands Initiative in August 2018. Jim Fulton described the logic plainly: the program allows removal of unproductive acres for wetland installation, making the rest of the operation more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm. That framing — wetland as agronomic asset, not conservation sacrifice — is what makes the model transferable to drainage districts skeptical of anything that sounds like land retirement.
The Wetlands Initiative is partnering with farmers throughout north-central Illinois on constructed wetlands to reduce nutrients in agricultural runoff. The organization targets over 400 acres of wetland and prairie for prescribed burns as part of its ongoing restoration work. These are not demonstration plots. They are operating infrastructure, producing measurable nitrogen reduction in a watershed that feeds one of the most-studied dead zones on the planet.
The question the organization's 30-year record puts on the table is not whether wetland restoration works. That answer exists in the peer-reviewed literature and in the tile drainage measurements at Fulton Farms. The question is whether the financing model developed in Illinois — patient, science-documented, structured for replication — gets adopted at the scale the watershed requires. Harvest season is when that question becomes audible, briefly, before the combines move on and the nitrate numbers enter the public record again.
The Co-Founder Who Built the Counter-Infrastructure
The Wetlands Initiative was incorporated in 1994 and began regular operations in 1995, the product of a decision that wetland restoration in agricultural watersheds required not advocacy but engineering — land acquired, re-flooded, planted, and measured until the method was replicable by anyone with a drainage district and a balance sheet. The co-founder who helped establish that framework did not build a movement. They built a model.
The organization they helped found is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, operating with the fiscal discipline of an institution three times its size. In tax year 2024, TWI reported $3.47 million in revenue and $2.72 million in expenses, carrying net assets of $12.16 million — numbers that reflect three decades of compounding credibility rather than a single large gift. The 2024 annual report is titled '30 Years In — Then, Now, Next,' a framing that reads less like celebration than like a project manager's status update.
The co-founder's contribution was structural. The premise from the beginning was that wetland restoration would not scale through persuasion. It would scale through documentation: peer-reviewed outcomes, replicable financial instruments, and partnerships with the agricultural operators who control the land. TWI ecologists have collaborated on tallgrass prairie restoration and published research on replicating plant composition and species richness of mesic prairie remnants. That publication record is not incidental. It is the mechanism by which a staff smaller than a regional bank branch earns a seat at tables occupied by drainage districts and county governments.
The premise from the beginning was that wetland restoration would not scale through persuasion — it would scale through documentation.
The co-founder's insistence on replicability shows most clearly in the agricultural partnerships TWI now runs across north-central Illinois. At Fulton Farms, a 690-acre family operation in Livingston County, the family constructed a wetland with TWI in August 2018. Jim Fulton described the arrangement in terms any agricultural lender would recognize: the program allows removal of unproductive acres for wetland installation, making the rest of the operation more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm. That is not conservation language. That is farm economics.
Co-founder Replace with role-based framing: 'The founder', 'they', 'their'. Pyott, who died in June 2020, was honored in a short film during TWI's 25th anniversary — an acknowledgment that the organization's early architecture bore his signature. The institutional funders now backing that architecture include the Walton Family Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Ducks Unlimited, among others. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded TWI a $794,000 grant for restoration design and planning on the nearly 800-acre Chase Street Complex in Gary, Indiana, in partnership with Audubon Great Lakes, the Calumet Collaborative, and the City of Gary.
The co-founder's legacy is not a single restored wetland. It is the argument, now thirty years in the making, that the financing model developed in Illinois is transferable — that a 690-acre family farm in Livingston County and an 800-acre urban complex in Gary are expressions of the same underlying logic. The organization they helped build had 27 staff members as of 2019. That headcount, against the scale of the Mississippi watershed, is either a limitation or a proof of concept, depending on whether the replication model holds. The evidence, so far, suggests it holds.
The case
The Wetlands Initiative
Every fall, as corn and soybean combines move across north-central Illinois, tile drains beneath those fields begin carrying nitrate-laden water into tributaries that feed the Illinois River, then the Mississippi, then the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone off Louisiana's coast is measured in square miles. The source is measured in parts per million, field by field, county by county. Most of the infrastructure that once slowed that process — the wetlands — was drained over the course of a century to make the fields possible in the first place.
The Wetlands Initiative has been working to reverse that removal since it was incorporated in 1994 and began regular operations in 1995. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Chicago, operating across the agricultural watersheds of north-central Illinois and beyond. Its staff, which numbered 27 as of 2019, is smaller than most regional bank branches. Its method is not advocacy. It is land: identified, acquired, re-flooded, planted, measured, and documented so that the next actor — a drainage district, a county, an agricultural lender — does not have to start from first principles.
In August 2018, Fulton Farms, a 690-acre family operation in Livingston County, Illinois, constructed a wetland in partnership with The Wetlands Initiative. Jim Fulton described the logic plainly: Keep the attributed quote once; replace the second instance with analysis or a different concrete detail. more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm. That framing — wetland as operational improvement, not conservation concession — is the model TWI has developed and documented for replication. TWI is now partnering with farmers throughout north-central Illinois on constructed wetlands to reduce nutrients in agricultural runoff.
The program allows removal of unproductive acres for wetland installation, making the rest of the operation more productive and cleaning tile water before it leaves the farm.
The science behind the installations is not incidental. TWI ecologists have collaborated on tallgrass prairie restoration and published research on replicating the plant composition and species richness of mesic prairie remnants through ecological restoration. The organization targets over 400 acres of wetland and prairie for prescribed burns. These are not demonstration gardens. They are working landscapes measured against published baselines.
TWI's 2024 annual report is titled "30 Years In — Then, Now, Next." The organization reported $3.47 million in revenue and $2.72 million in expenses for tax year 2024, with net assets of $12.16 million. That asset base represents accumulated land and easements — the physical record of three decades of site work. Major institutional funders include the Walton Family Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, and the USDA North Central Region SARE program. In a separate initiative, TWI received a $794,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's National Coastal Resilience Fund for restoration design and planning on the nearly 800-acre Chase Street Complex in Gary, Indiana, in partnership with Audubon Great Lakes, the Calumet Collaborative, and the City of Gary.
The question the organization's thirty-year record raises is not whether wetland restoration reduces nitrogen loading — that is settled. The question is whether the financing and partnership model TWI has developed in Illinois gets adopted at the scale the Mississippi watershed requires. The mechanism exists. The documentation exists. The farms willing to participate, on the right terms, exist. What remains is replication, and replication is, by design, the point.
The game
A browser game about wetland restoration. You control a restored wetland cell positioned in a tile-drained Illinois watershed. As nitrate particles flow down the river from harvest-season farm fields, move your filtering marsh left and right to intercept and absorb them before they pass downstream toward the Gulf. Each intercepted particle lowers the nitrate load counter. Reduce the load to the target level within the time limit to win. The flow speeds up over time. Playable with arrow keys, pointer, or touch. Restart is available after winning or losing.
The production we made them
The Mississippi River carries approximately 1.7 million metric tons of nitrogen into the Gulf of Mexico each year. The hypoxic zone that results — a seasonal dead zone measured in thousands of square miles — is not a mystery. The mechanism is documented. The sources are mapped. The agricultural tile drainage systems of north-central Illinois are a primary contributor, and the harvest season running through November is when the numbers enter the public record with the precision of a quarterly filing.
The Wetlands Initiative has been operating in that watershed since 2009 with the methodical disposition of an engineering firm that cannot afford to be wrong. The staff is small. The sites are specific. The Dixon Waterfowl Refuge and the Big Marsh project are not demonstrations. They are proof-of-concept installations producing nitrogen-interception data that drainage districts, counties, and agricultural lenders can read as a balance sheet.
This is the campaign's premise: wetland restoration is infrastructure. Not scenery. Not habitat sentiment. Infrastructure — acquired, re-flooded, planted, instrumented, and documented as a replicable financial instrument. The Wetlands Initiative does not ask the watershed to change its values. It asks the watershed to adopt a structure that pencils out.
The cinematic treatment follows the ledger, not the landscape. Every frame is accounted for. The accent color — a single muted blue-green drawn from the organization's water chemistry reports — appears only where data appears: on the nitrogen load graphic, on the acreage figure, on the replication counter. The cream field holds everything else. The camera does not celebrate the marsh. It measures it.
The argument the campaign makes is not emotional. It is categorical. The question of whether wetland restoration works was answered in Illinois. The open question — the one this campaign puts in front of drainage districts and agricultural lenders and county commissioners — is whether the financing model developed on a staff smaller than a regional bank branch gets adopted at the scale the Mississippi watershed requires. That is the only question left. The campaign treats it accordingly.
Each week a scout, an advocate and an editor argue over the shortlist. The result is published here.
Picked
North-central Illinois
THESIS: Wetland restoration is infrastructure, and the organization treating it as such deserves the attention usually reserved for the industries polluting the water in the first place.
Runner-up
Annapolis, MD
LESLIE'S WEEK is a precise organization with a narrow mandate. The right week is Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day, October 13, when the Stage 4 distinction carries editorial weight and the financial-toxicity frame has a calendar peg.
Also considered
Not specified in results
Men's vulnerability and peer-support organization using structured storytelling circles to address hopelessness; founded on principle that healing comes from being heard and known.
Also considered
National
Patient-led organization for myositis, an ultra-rare autoimmune condition affecting muscle tissue; provides immediate support while advocating for better treatment options.
The Dispatch podcast
Pipeline deliberation transcript for the issue spotlighting The Wetlands Initiative.
Audio coming soon.
How you can help The Wetlands Initiative
Every lip balm sold this week sends its full $21.00 to The Wetlands Initiative.
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