The straight line, sustained.

Choose your magnitude.

Each tier is named for a Nevada native organism or ecological event whose scale or frequency mirrors the gift. Read the tier you’re drawn to. The right one will pick you.

Major gifts of $50,000 and above are personal: see the note below.

1. Pleistocene

   $1,000,000 · one-time

   Pleistocene.

   Nevada’s underground water is older than civilization. During the Pleistocene, when this land was wetter and cooler, vast pluvial lakes filled the basins. Lake Lahontan covered more than eight thousand square miles across the north. Lake Bonneville reached into the east. Alpine glaciers carved cirques into the Ruby Mountains and the Snake Range.

   When those lakes receded, the water didn’t disappear. It seeped down. Today, the aquifers under Diamond Valley, the Carson Sink, the Amargosa Desert, the Las Vegas Valley, and dozens of other basins hold fossil water that took ten thousand years to settle. We pump it out faster than it returns.

   A Pleistocene-tier gift is geological in scale. It honors the slowest cycles of Nevada’s land, the patience required to renew what’s been spent, and the responsibility we carry to spend it well. Once-in-a-lifetime giving for once-in-millennia formation.

   Get in touch How water shapes the food future →

2. Monarch

   $250,000 · one-time

   Monarch.

   Western monarch butterflies are at less than one percent of their historic population. Each year fewer return to overwinter in California’s coastal groves. The monarch is the signal we’re losing, and the species we can still save with coordinated habitat work across millions of acres. A monarch-tier gift funds restoration at landscape scale.

   Get in touch The species cast →

3. Bristlecone

   $100,000 · one-time

   Bristlecone.

   The Great Basin bristlecone pine grows on Nevada’s highest sky islands: the Spring Mountains above Las Vegas, the Snake Range on the Utah border, the Ruby Mountains, the Schell Creek Range. The oldest documented specimens reach four thousand years and beyond. They are among the longest-lived non-clonal organisms on Earth.

   They survive by going slow. They put down deep roots in mineral soil, pull moisture from thin alpine air, and grow rings so tight that a century of growth can fit under a fingernail. When the wind kills part of the tree, the rest keeps living. Half-dead bristlecones a thousand feet high are still feeding cones into the wind.

   A Bristlecone-tier gift takes the long view. It funds work that will outlast the donor, the foundation, and several generations of researchers. It honors the Nevada landscape’s most patient teachers.

   Get in touch The four-layer framework →

4. Sage Grouse

   $50,000 · one-time

   Sage Grouse.

   The greater sage-grouse depends on intact sagebrush. So do native bees, monarchs, songbirds, mule deer, and pronghorn. Sagebrush covers more than half of Nevada’s land area and supports more wildlife than any other plant community in the state. Where sagebrush goes, the food web goes with it.

   Sage-grouse populations have collapsed across most of their historic range. Cheatgrass-fed megafires, oil and gas development, mining, and habitat fragmentation have pushed the species toward the federal endangered list more than once. Nevada holds the second-largest population left in the country.

   A Sage Grouse-tier gift funds the ground that pollinators stand on. It supports sagebrush restoration, native seed banks, fire response, and the policy work that keeps sage-steppe public and protected.

   Get in touch Where habitat lives →

5. Major gifts are personal.

   Joseph Schmitt, XPDSHN’s founder and director, handles every Pleistocene, Monarch, Bristlecone, and Sage Grouse inquiry directly, with the foundation’s board and advisory team where it serves the donor. The right path differs by gift: wire transfer, stock contribution, donor-advised fund, or another arrangement. All gifts to XPDSHN, Inc., a 501(c)(3) Private Foundation, receive proper IRS tax treatment.

6. Bumble

   $10,000 · one-time or annual

   Bumble.

   Native bumble bees are the workhorses of Nevada pollination. The western bumble bee, once common, is now a candidate for endangered species listing. Bumble-tier gifts fund the work most directly: native plant restoration, pesticide-reduction advocacy, and habitat protection across the region.

   Give once Give annually Bumble bee species profile →

7. Hummingbird

   $1,000 · one-time or monthly

   Hummingbird.

   Hummingbirds are migratory pollinators. They return each season, covering thousands of miles to do their work. They’re also one of Nevada’s most visible reminders that pollinators are everywhere, not just on farms. Recurring support, like a hummingbird’s return, is what the work needs.

   Give once Give monthly Hummingbird species profile →

8. Honeycomb

   $100 · monthly

   Honeycomb.

   Honeycomb is one of nature’s most efficient structures, built one cell at a time by thousands of bees working together. No single bee builds honeycomb alone. This tier honors the architecture of collective contribution: regular, modest, structurally essential.

   Give $100 monthly Why pollinators matter →

9. Pollen

   $25 · monthly

   Pollen.

   Pollen is the actual currency of pollination. A single grain transferred between flowers can determine whether a crop produces. Small, mobile, essential. Pollen-tier gifts fund the everyday work of BTD: research, editorial, partnership coordination.

   Give $25 monthly How pollination works →

10. Mycelium

    $5 · monthly

    Mycelium.

    Mycelium is the underground network that connects all life. Fungal threads beneath the soil link plants, transfer nutrients, and support ecosystems no single organism could sustain alone. The underground internet. Mycelium-tier gifts are small but they connect. Together, they hold everything else up.

    Give $5 monthly The systems frame →