Common Ground — Connecting With the National Land Trust Community at Rally 2026
Image credit: Shirley Heinze Land Trust
Land conservation may happen locally, but no land trust does this work entirely alone.
Ouabache Land Conservancy Board President Alysa Morley joined land trust staff, board members, volunteers, partners, and conservation professionals from across the country in Denver for Rally 2026, the Land Trust Alliance’s annual national land conservation conference.
For OLC, Rally offers something especially valuable: the chance to step outside our everyday work in west-central Indiana, learn how other organizations are approaching familiar challenges, build relationships with peers, and bring new ideas home.
Learning from the land trust community
Over several days, Rally offered workshops and conversations on nearly every aspect of running and strengthening a land trust.
OLC participated in sessions exploring planned giving, partnerships with community foundations, building leadership pipelines, and other topics that can help conservation organizations become stronger and more sustainable. A board member roundtable created space for board members from different organizations to compare experiences and discuss challenges they have in common.
But some of Rally’s best learning happens outside the meeting rooms.
Conversations over meals, introductions in the exhibit hall, and informal meetups offer opportunities to ask questions, swap ideas, discover new resources, and learn from people doing similar work in very different communities.
“Rally feels like a family reunion every year. Some of the most valuable moments happen outside the sessions—in conversations with peers, reconnecting with people I see year after year, or meeting someone new who has wrestled with the same challenge we’re facing. I always come home energized, with new ideas and connections that continue to be valuable long after the conference ends.”
For a local organization like OLC, those connections matter. We don’t have to figure everything out on our own when there is an entire network of conservation organizations willing to share what they’ve learned.
Staying connected closer to home
Image credit: Shirley Heinze Land Trust
Rally also creates an unusual opportunity to strengthen relationships with the people doing this work in our own region.
OLC joined fellow conservation organizations at the Midwest regional reception and connected with colleagues from across Indiana at a happy hour hosted by the Indiana Land Protection Alliance. Conversations also extended beyond state lines, including time with peers from the Illinois land trust community.
Those relationships help connect the work happening in west-central Indiana to conservation efforts across the Midwest. Our landscapes and organizations may be different, but many of the questions we face—and many of the opportunities—cross organizational and geographic boundaries.
Bringing ideas back to west-central Indiana
The real value of a conference like Rally isn’t measured by how many sessions someone attends. It’s what comes home afterward.
For OLC, that means new ideas to consider as we think about fundraising and planned giving, new perspectives on board leadership and organizational sustainability, possibilities for stronger community partnerships, and relationships with people we can continue learning from long after everyone has left Denver.
It’s also a reminder that the work happening here in west-central Indiana is part of something much larger. Across the country, people are working in their own communities to protect the places that matter to them—and there is tremendous value in coming together to learn from one another.
We’re grateful to be part of that community, and we’re already looking forward to Rally 2027 in Louisville, KY.