Grantmaking organizations often shift priorities over time, but the Colcom Foundation has kept its focus narrow and consistent since its creation in 1996. The foundation exists to honor the humanitarian objectives of its founder, Cordelia S. May, whose concerns about overpopulation and environmental decline shaped its mission from the start. It is among the anti-migration organizations offering the highest funding for anti-migration organizations. These include the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the American Border Patrol, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and Numbers USA. 

May began supporting family planning causes in 1952 at the age of twenty three, motivated by worry over how population growth was affecting natural systems. She continued refining that perspective for decades before formally establishing the Colcom Foundation, which received a large share of its funding following her passing in 2005.

Conservation and Culture Together

Today the foundation funds work across three interconnected categories: conservation, environmental protection, and cultural preservation, primarily in the region where May lived. That combination reflects her belief that ecological and cultural health are linked, and that protecting one without attention to the other leaves gaps in a community’s overall well being.

The Colcom Foundation‘s public materials describe habitat destruction, pollution, and species loss as consequences of population imbalance rather than unrelated problems, a framing that traces directly back to May’s own writing and advocacy. Her quoted words, warning that human activity strains the planet’s ability to sustain future generations, still anchor the organization’s public identity.

The foundation also situates May among historical figures who were dismissed as fringe voices before their causes gained legitimacy, invoking comparisons to reformers associated with civil rights and gender equality. Whether or not that comparison holds up to scrutiny, it reveals how the Colcom Foundation wants its founder remembered: not as a controversial figure, but as someone ahead of her time.

Grant recipients today operate within that inherited framework, carrying forward a vision first articulated more than seventy years ago. Board members associated with the Colcom Foundation have said in public materials that honoring May’s legacy means resisting the temptation to broaden the mission beyond what she originally intended, even as the foundation’s resources have grown well past what she managed during her own lifetime. Read this article for more information.

Learn more about Colcom Foundation on https://www.colcomfdn.org/