During my summer as a Field School Fellow, I had the privilege of working with two incredible nonprofits: the Adirondack Community Foundation (ACF), based out of Lake Placid, and the Adirondack Diversity Initiative (ADI) in Saranac Lake. Both organizations employ community-building strategies to cultivate stronger support networks within the Adirondack region, but go about doing so through vastly different strategies.
ACF places its support behind local nonprofits, schools, medical facilities, and more, trusting them to understand the challenges facing their communities most acutely and address these challenges while maintaining a consistent line of interaction with community members. Not only does ACF distribute grants to nonprofit organizations across the Adirondacks, but the team also works tirelessly to sustain ongoing relationships with their grantees by helping them leverage additional funding resources, formalize partnerships and coalitions with fellow nonprofits, and plan out feasible project goals. I supported this work by interviewing grantees to learn more of how ACF can better support them and their organizational needs, in addition to analyzing broader trends in granting to identify what challenges grantees most commonly face and how ACF can help confront these challenges so grantees are able to continue their vital community work. The insights I gained from this research will help advise the 2025 granting cycle and the types of community-building projects that need additional support. ADI, conversely, does the bulk of its work directly with community members. This includes educational programming, retreats, and workshops that encourage regional inclusivity and equip individuals with the tools necessary to be empowered agents of social change. During my time with ADI, I gathered survey-based data on the general motives of the public for using the High Peaks wilderness and their perceptions of how welcome individuals across the seven areas of diversity (race, age, gender, class, religion, sexuality, and disability) are within these spaces. This data, which supports a multi-year study, will be used to inform policy changes for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, specifically within their Visitor Use Management Framework.
Both of these projects helped me gain invaluable experience and insight into how change is catalyzed at the local level. I have come to understand how the state and federal funding landscape can be unpredictable; thus, the power of building local support networks that unite communities and pool resources to uplift one another should not be underestimated. As a dual major in environmental studies and political science with a particular interest in environmental justice and social change, I believe the research I completed this summer represents a clear intersection between social advocacy and the physical networks and/or policies that must be instituted to strengthen communities.
In the longer term, I plan on pursuing environmental law through advocacy for the communities most adversely affected by manmade environmental hazards. As such, I hope to continue my community-based research to learn how I can better support both people and the environment locally. I am incredibly grateful to 91Â鶹¾«Æ· and the Upstate Institute for facilitating such an incredible and informative summer experience, as it has allowed me to see firsthand how I can serve communities at multiple levels, from one-on-one daily interactions to broader institutional support. — Leigha Schultze ’26