Facts and Sources

The essential facts about The Biodiversity Group, each with a public source you can check. If another page on this site disagrees with this one, this page is current.

Last verified October 22, 2026

Who is The Biodiversity Group?

The Biodiversity Group (TBG) is a US nonprofit public charity, tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its employer identification number (EIN) is 20-3091062.

TBG was formed in Arizona in 2005 and is based in Tucson, Arizona. It is classified as a public charity under section 509(a)(2) (Form 990, 2024, Schedule A).

Its mission, as stated on its Form 990: “We protect Life Overlooked through ground-breaking expeditions, developing novel technologies, and supporting a global alliance.” Life Overlooked means the species that conservation funding tends to miss, especially amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates.

What does TBG do?

TBG works in three distinct ways.

1. Its own field programs

Expeditions in Ecuador, Mexico, Vietnam and the United States to find species presumed lost and to document new ones; the first 3D scanner for wild animals that fits in a backpack and is run by one person, built with Sony Electronics, whose four cameras swing around a living animal and take about 100 photos for a 3D model before the animal is released; and conservation photography and film.

2. Fiscal sponsorship

TBG fiscally sponsors conservation organizations and projects around the world. TBG receives donations for a sponsored partner as its own funds, decides how they are used under a written agreement, reviews each partner’s spending every year, and remains legally accountable for the money. Where a partner has a US nonprofit corporation, TBG appoints a director to its board.

Many foundations and donors can only give to a US charity. TBG’s sponsorship is what lets that critical funding reach partner field teams, along with the infrastructure the work depends on: banking, compliance and oversight.

Current partners: Centro de Rescate, Rehabilitación e Investigación de Fauna Silvestre (CRRIFS), Project Triplefin, Biotrópicos A.C., James Brown Wildlife Rescue Center Foundation, Scion Trust, Congo Biotropical Institute (formerly Paradis des Primates), Fundación Cóndor Andino, Creative Conservation Alliance, Earth.fm, Whale Wise, Association Mitsinjo, BeeSip, Community Restoration Partners of Cameroon (CREPAC), Manuae Enua Conservation Trust and The Unfinished Agenda Africa.

3. Free tools that fill coordination gaps in conservation

The conservation sector has lacked a shared picture of itself: who is doing the work, where the money goes, which species no one is watching, and where to find funding, resources and colleagues. TBG builds tools that fill those gaps and offers all of them free. Before them, most of this information had not been compiled anywhere. Grant opportunities were published, but scattered across funders’ websites and often behind paid subscriptions.

  • Connect & Conserve traces conservation funding organization by organization across thousands of charities, using US Form 990 filings and the charity registers of the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland, so anyone can see where conservation money goes and where it does not.
  • The Species Black List tracks species that are slipping away without anyone counting them as at risk: those the IUCN Red List records as Data Deficient or has never assessed, along with species that are newly described or lost.
  • The Conservation Portal is a curated directory of more than 600 resources for conservationists in 48 categories, from funding directories and species data to field technology and training.
  • The conservation grants database holds more than 1,000 conservation grants with their deadlines and eligibility, kept current and free to TBG’s sponsored partners.
  • The conservation conference list gathers conservation conferences from around the world in one table, refreshed every month.
  • Ask Darwin is a research assistant for conservation questions.

Together these tools let funders, governments and conservation organizations see what conservation is doing in the world, where its money and effort go, and where the critical gaps are. That is the case TBG made in its peer-reviewed definition of conservation: the sector cannot plan systematically or allocate its resources well until it can say which organizations and actions count as conservation and measure them, and that measurement reveals the gaps and inefficiencies an effective sector has to close (Trageser and Hamilton, Journal for Nature Conservation, 2025). Connect & Conserve uses that definition to decide which organizations it includes.

How is TBG funded?

TBG does not apply for grants to fund its own operations. It is funded by its fiscal sponsorship fee: 5% of the first $100,000 a partner receives each year and 3% above that. The only other charge to partners is Arizona’s state filing fee for incorporating a partner’s US nonprofit, passed through at cost. See fiscal sponsorship.

TBG received no government funding in 2023 or 2024, and paid its executive director and board nothing.

Where does the money go?

FY2023 FY2024 Source
Total revenue $189,852 $328,753 Form 990-EZ (2023) line 9; Form 990 (2024) Part I line 12
Total expenses $179,247 $277,452 990-EZ line 17; 990 Part IX line 25
Grants paid $154,540 $227,873 990-EZ line 10; 990 Part IX lines 1 to 3
Grants paid, share of expenses 86.2% 82.1% Grants paid divided by total expenses
Executive director and board pay $0 $0 990-EZ Part IV; 990 Part VII
Government funding $0 $0 990-EZ; 990 Part VIII

Revenue grew 73% from 2023 to 2024, and grants paid grew 47%. Most grants paid are funding that foundations and donors give for the field programs TBG sponsors.

Most of what TBG holds at the end of a year is money received for sponsored partners’ programs, released in stages as the work proceeds. Net assets at the end of 2024 were $151,754 (Form 990, 2024, Part I line 22). More detail is on Where Your Money Goes.

What these figures do not show

A high grants share and an unpaid director describe a lean organization. They do not measure what the money achieved for wildlife, and no study has compared TBG’s conservation results per dollar with other organizations’. The results we can document are listed below, each with its source.

Who governs TBG?

A board of five directors: Scott Trageser (Executive Director and Board Chair), Nicki Boyd, Ryan Crutchfield, Randy Lockwood and Scott Waters. No director is paid. Biographies and the board of advisors are on the board page.

The board votes on every organization that joins the fiscal sponsorship program and on program changes as they come up, rather than saving decisions for a large quarterly agenda. Directors are in regular contact between votes. TBG finds this more effective, and the board has stayed together: no director has left in the past three years.

The board reviews each Form 990 before it is filed. TBG’s 2024 Form 990 reports a written conflict of interest policy with annual disclosures, a whistleblower policy and a document retention policy.

Who leads TBG?

Scott Trageser has been executive director since 2018. TBG’s Form 990 lists him at 40 hours a week, and he receives no salary.

He runs his own consulting business, which gives him the income and the flexibility to give TBG consistent time without pay. TBG has also automated most of the routine work that consumes small nonprofits’ time, including website maintenance, software development and most bookkeeping, with a person checking the accounts.

How TBG has grown since 2018

  • Revenue rose every year from 2021 to 2024: $91,897, $113,807, $189,852 and $328,753 (IRS filings).
  • Grants to sponsored partners rose from $154,540 in 2023 to $227,873 in 2024.
  • TBG began fiscally sponsoring partner organizations in 2020.
  • New programs since 2018: the live-animal 3D scanner, Connect & Conserve, the Species Black List, Ask Darwin, the Conservation Portal, the grants database and the conference list.
  • Coverage of TBG’s work includes Mongabay (2023) and the Royal Photographic Society magazine (2024) on the 3D scanner, and New Scientist on the rediscovery of Fugler’s shadow snake. More on the press page.

What has TBG achieved, and how do we know?

Each result below has a public record you can check.

Habitat protection, led by partners

Rio Manduriacu Reserve, Ecuador. TBG’s expedition surveys there since 2017 have documented species new to science or believed extinct. According to TBG’s partners Fundación Cóndor Andino, which founded the reserve, Fundación EcoMinga, which manages it today, and neighboring Los Cedros Reserve, that work was critical to defeating the mining concession that threatened the reserve from upstream, to doubling the reserve’s size, and to its 2025 declaration as a national Wildlife Refuge. The Wildlife Refuge declaration, made in November 2025 by Ecuador’s environment ministry, brings the reserve into the National System of Protected Areas: World Land Trust (2025).

Scientific results

Each of these is a species found or described. None is, by itself, evidence that a population is recovering.

Independent records

Our Form 990 is available on request through our contact page, which is also the place to send questions about anything on this page.

Want to support our cause?

There are many ways to support us, please visit our “Get Involved” page to know how you can contribute.

Back To Top