2025 has been a year of great challenge. Odds are, you don’t need us to tell you that. The news cycle that pops up in our feeds is often deflating and overwhelming enough. But we’re often asked: How is all of this impacting the daily work here at Delta Institute?
Throughout 2025, we here at Delta Institute have been fighting to preserve $4.1 million in previously committed multi-year grants. These grants fund critical work in helping low-income communities plan the removal of lead pipes, increase access to clean drinking water, mitigate flooding, restore polluted sites, and more.
While we have been fortunate that we have restored all but one of these grants impacted over the past year, we now operate under the possibility that we still may lose a full 25% of our budget at any given time.
Given the current climate, we are forecasting zero new public funding in our organizational budgets for the next three years: an unprecedented decision in our history. Like many mid-sized environmental nonprofits, federal grants typically play a fundamental role in our strategy. While we are adapting, we admit: some days, this work can still feel insurmountable, even crushing.
And yet, we still find strength when looking to nature and the community around us.
Over the years, Delta Institute has planted thousands upon thousands of trees—and engaged all those community members who rolled up their sleeves to make it happen. So many of those trees tower today: rooted in the ground upon a strong foundation, standing resilient against devastating storms, and still ever reaching toward the sky for growth.
In 2025 alone, Delta Institute has planted more than one thousand trees – each of them supported by an urban forestry management plan and commitment from the local community to provide long-term care and stewardship.
These trees collectively contribute toward an investment in our future, saying that our vision for a more resilient and equitable Midwest is a vision that will not be easily uprooted.
On the contrary, our staff have overheard remarks from young students on tree-planting days, sharing that they can’t wait to return years later to that exact spot to see how their tree has grown over the years.
We may be weathering the harshest of storms around us today, but our resilience and our resolve will keep us firmly planted in standing up for our mission, vision, and values.
We will not forgo our values.
Although it would not be an exaggeration to say that this has been the most unprecedented and challenging climate to operate within, we refuse to capitulate on our mission. We are resolved in fighting for what we have stood for since our founding in 1998—and we do so in partnership with like-minded advocates like you.
If you are able to support us as we prepare for 2026 to begin—and support many of the projects we have actively underway—please do so by donating using the form below or learn about other ways to give here.