Clean water
starts upstream.
Headwaters protects and restores the high-country streams where the American West's rivers begin — the source land that decides the water quality of everyone living downstream.
$2.4M raised in 2025 · 148 restoration projects funded
Why it matters
The damage doesn't start at the tap.
It starts nine thousand feet up.
More than 60% of the West's surface water begins as snowmelt and seep in a narrow band of high country — the headwaters. It's the most important water infrastructure we have, and almost none of it is engineered. It's just land: meadows, forests, and the small cold streams that braid through them.
A century of logging roads, abandoned mines, unmanaged grazing, and subdivision has frayed that band. When a headwater stream warms and silts, the harm travels downhill — to trout, to farms, to the taps of cities hundreds of miles away. Protect the source, and everything below it gets easier.
Across nine Western states, EPA-assessed as impaired for temperature or sediment, 2024.
Residents of 240 downstream communities rely on headwater flow for drinking water.
Two in five acres of critical source land carry no permanent conservation status.
What we do
Four kinds of work, one watershed.
Every program feeds the same outcome — cold, clean water leaving the mountains. We measure each one in the field, by the mile and the acre.
Land protection
Permanent easements and acquisitions that keep source land intact, forever.
Stream restoration
Rebuilding channels, replanting banks, and reconnecting floodplains on damaged reaches.
Water-quality monitoring
A volunteer network sampling temperature, sediment, and chemistry, season after season.
Community partnerships
Working with ranchers, tribes, and towns whose livelihoods depend on the same water.
Impact
Proof, measured by the mile.
Cold-water reaches reopened to native fish since 2004.
Source land secured by easement or acquisition.
Citizen scientists logged in the field, 2024–25.
Restored streams now within cold-water limits.
Where your money goes
Fiscal year 2025, independently audited.
- Conservation programs84%
- Fundraising9%
- Administration7%
Cumulative river miles restored
2016 → 2025, verified by post-project survey.
A restoration story
How fourteen miles of a dead trout stream came back.
For thirty years, Pine Creek ran warm, wide, and empty. A straightened channel and cattle-grazed banks had stripped the shade and filled the gravel with silt. The native westslope cutthroat — fish that had spawned there for ten thousand years — were simply gone.
In 2021, third-generation rancher Dale Brockett called Headwaters. Over three seasons we fenced fourteen miles of streambank, planted 14,000 willows, and re-meandered the channel so it ran narrow, deep, and cold again. Dale kept ranching the land — the water just got a corridor of its own.
By the summer of 2025, the creek had dropped six degrees. And in a side channel below the old county bridge, a monitoring volunteer found something no one had recorded on Pine Creek since 1994: wild trout, spawning.
"I'd given up on that creek. My granddad fished it; my kids never could. Now my granddaughter can."
Donate
Put your gift to work upstream.
Every amount is restoration with a return address. Pick a gift and we'll tell you exactly what it does in the field.
- $25
- funds a full day of water-quality testing at one monitoring site.
- $50
- puts 100 native streamside plants in the ground along a restored bank.
- $100
- moves an acre of source land toward permanent protection.
Give today
SecureTax-deductible · cancel a monthly gift anytime · no fees taken from your gift
Spring Headwaters Fund · 19,408 donors so far
Ways to give
More ways to protect a river.
River Guardians
A monthly gift is steady funding — the kind that lets us commit to ten-year restoration projects.
Start monthly →Employer matching
Thousands of companies double a gift, dollar for dollar. It takes 30 seconds to check yours.
Check your employer →Legacy giving
Name Headwaters in your will or estate plan and join the Headwaters Legacy Society.
Plan a gift →Land & easements
Own watershed property? Donating land or a conservation easement protects it permanently.
Talk to our land team →Volunteer in the field
Join a monitoring day or a planting crew — no experience needed, training provided.
See the calendar →Not sure where to start?
A one-time gift is the simplest way to fund this season's work.
Donate now →Transparency
Where your money goes, in the open.
Headwaters is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our finances are independently audited every year, and the full picture is public.
EIN 84-4408821
Funded by foundations, partners, and 31,408 individual donors
FAQ
Questions donors ask.
Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes. Headwaters is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 84-4408821), so gifts are fully tax-deductible in the U.S. to the extent allowed by law. You'll get an emailed receipt immediately and a year-end summary every January.
How much goes to programs vs. overhead?
In fiscal year 2025, 84¢ of every dollar went directly to conservation programs, 9¢ to fundraising, and 7¢ to administration. These figures come from our independently audited financials, which you can read in full above.
Can I restrict my gift to a specific river?
You can. Gifts of $1,000 or more can be designated to a named watershed or active restoration project, and we'll report back on that specific work. Unrestricted gifts let us move money to the reach that needs it most this season — which is usually the most effective choice.
How do you measure restoration success?
Three measures, tracked for at least five years after a project: water temperature against cold-water standards, sediment and chemistry from monitoring stations, and the return of native fish through electrofishing surveys. A reach only counts as "restored" once it meets temperature standards for two consecutive seasons.
Do you accept land donations?
Yes — donated land and conservation easements are among the most permanent gifts we receive. Our land team will walk you through appraisal, tax implications, and stewardship. Property doesn't need to be pristine; some of our best projects started as degraded ground.
Be the reason a river runs
cold and clear again.
A single restored mile reopens habitat that took ten thousand years to build. Your gift starts the next one.