Dear Friends of the RRI,
Over the past months, the Ravenscroft Reserve Initiative has continued to work diligently towards the preservation of the 11 Collier Avenue property, an undisturbed urban forest with a stand of 22 tall mature native oaks.
We truly thank all the generous donors and idealistic supporters who have donated to our cause! Your support has helped sustain our determination to save this precious ecosystem. Plus, it has continually lent validation to our work!
Together with the other members of our recently formed board, we are now gearing up for a major effort to raise the funds to purchase the forest.
As part of this process we have left MountainTrue as our fiscal sponsor in order to enter seamlessly into a similar agreement with Asheville GreenWorks, effective July 1, 2020. As a result, our GoFundMe page will be closed at the end of this month, and we will have a new fundraising page on GreenWorks’ website. Since GreenWorks has recently made Urban Forestry a major focus, the RRI feels a perfect alignment of causes with GW. We will share more about this new partnership in early July.
We want to take time here to thank MountainTrue - and Julie Mayfield in particular - for its steadfast assistance since the inception of the RRI 4 1/2 years ago. Thanks to our fiscal sponsorship agreement with MountainTrue, your donations have been tax-deductible, as they will under GreenWorks. Without MountainTrue’s support the RRI would not be where it is today.
Since the RRI’s inception in 2015, the awareness of the impact of the ongoing tragic loss of trees in Asheville and Buncombe County has grown tremendously and has been recognized as an existential crisis in the minds of many residents. This trend gives us the unwavering belief that together we can preserve this entire forest in perpetuity. It is our hope that the preservation of this last coherent stand of trees in downtown Asheville will be the first of many urban forest preservation projects throughout the area.
We will be in touch again after our move to GW is complete.
In the meantime, we hope you are staying safe and well.
Best regards,
Inge and Imke Durre
for the RRI Board
ravenscroftreserve@gmail.com
Follow us on Facebook at Ravenscroft Reserve Initiative
P.O. Box 833
Asheville, NC 28802