Behind Colcom Foundation is one woman’s lifelong commitment to the idea that environmental health and human population are inseparably linked. Cordelia S. May, who founded the organization in 1996, spent more than five decades building a philanthropic legacy rooted in that conviction one that continues to shape the foundation’s work today.
A Personal History with Purpose
Mrs. May’s environmental outlook took root at a remarkably young age. In 1952, at just 23 years old, she began supporting family planning efforts. Her motivation was not political but humanitarian: she was concerned about the health of the natural world and what population growth might mean for human quality of life over the long term.
She grasped something that many of her contemporaries did not. Growth, she understood, is deceptive barely noticeable from one day to the next, yet capable of producing cumulative effects that eventually overwhelm natural systems. Keeping that reality in focus became her life’s work.
At 68, she formally established Colcom Foundation. After her death in 2005, the organization was substantially funded, giving it the resources to pursue the mission she had envisioned for years.
The Foundation’s Core Mission
Colcom Foundation exists to foster a sustainable environment and protect quality of life for Americans. Its grantmaking centers on the causes and consequences of overpopulation, with particular attention to the burden that population growth places on natural resources. The foundation also directs funding toward regional conservation, environmental initiatives, and cultural preservation. 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.
The foundation draws a direct connection between population growth and some of the most visible environmental problems of our time: habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, pollution, and ecosystem collapse. These are problems that Mrs. May recognized as coming long before most public discourse caught up.
Her position is compared, by the foundation itself, to that of other reformers who were dismissed during their lifetimes and later seen as ahead of their time. In that tradition, Colcom Foundation treats its work as both urgent and historically grounded a continuation of a vision that has been decades in the making. Refer to this article for related information.
Find more information about Colcom Foundation on https://waterlandlife.org/land-conservation/colcom-revolving-fund-for-local-land-trusts/