In 2020, a small British Columbia charity gave itself an almost impossible deadline: it had to raise enough money to buy a private island before its owner sold it to developers. What began as a modest local campaign, boosted in part by a group of high school students, eventually led to a major conservation gift after Lululemon founder Chip Wilson agreed to match every dollar raised.
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A race against the clock
The area in question was West Ballenas Island, an estimated 100‑acre stretch of rocky, forested terrain in the Strait of Georgia, 15 kilometres north of Nanaimo. The BC Parks Foundation, established in 2017, is an independent charitable partner of BC Parks that works to protect valuable places across British Columbia. The foundation had only days left to raise the C$1.7 million needed to acquire the island, as reported in a BC Govt News release on the province’s parks protection and nature conservation efforts.
The man behind the match
For several months, the donor remained anonymous. The matching funds later turned out to have come from the Wilson 5 Foundation, the family charitable trust of Chip Wilson and his wife, Shannon. In 2021, the foundation donated C$4 million toward protecting 365 acres of threatened Coastal Douglas-fir habitat on Lasqueti Island, Saturna Island, and West Ballenas Island.
Wilson's interest in conservation traced back to a visit to Vancouver's Stanley Park, where he said he was impressed by the vision of whoever had set aside the land many years earlier. He said he wanted to be able to do something similar for his family in the future. All three properties lie in the Salish Sea and contain rare Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystems, including old-growth forest and Garry oak meadows.
Why these islands matter
The Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem preserved by these islands is among the most threatened ecosystems in British Columbia. The BC Parks Foundation described the C$4 million contribution as the largest contribution it had ever received. As per CBC News Canada, this milestone would later be surpassed by contributions from the Wilsons themselves. In 2022, the Wilson 5 Foundation donated C$100 million to the BC Parks Foundation to support the launch of its 25x25 campaign, a multi‑year initiative to protect 25% of British Columbia’s land and waters by 2025.
Model for conservation fundraising
What makes the West Ballenas story remarkable is not just the amount raised, but the process that got it there. Individual students raising almost C$3,000 through a school fundraising campaign could not have stopped the development of an island on their own. By adding to other donations, they helped build the groundswell of support that made a private matching gift possible. Wilson’s foundation helped leverage a campaign started by residents, including teenagers trying to save part of the coastline near their school. The West Ballenas campaign demonstrated how crowdfunding and matching funds could bring together local supporters and major private donors to help protect privately owned conservation lands.
Another instance where a shifting strategy has been employed to secure lands for conservation in Canada is the West Ballenas Island campaign. In the case where BC Parks Foundation needed to act fast and there was a $1.7 million shortfall to buy the island, a crowdfunding effort by the community, spearheaded by local students, showed their dedication. This led to the foundation getting a massive donation match from the Wilson 5 Foundation and other private donors, which saw the purchase of the island as well as other islands being protected.
