The Great Outdoors Foundation is ramping up its water quality efforts with a new conservation fund that will directly provide money for individual projects but also provide matching funds for state and federal water quality programs.

The new fund, which was quietly launched last spring, was formally announced Thursday evening at the Wild Prairie Showdown, the annual fundraiser for the Great Outdoors Foundation.

The Great Outdoors Foundation is partnering with companies to generate dollars for the fund with a goal of reaching $20 million for water quality projects, with a focus on wetland development, which leaders say will enhance recreational opportunities while improving the environment in the communities where their employees live, work and play.

Up to now, the foundation has generally created awareness over the recreational and placemaking opportunities of ICON Water Trails, but Hannah Inman, CEO of the Great Outdoors Foundation, said ICON has always been seen as a catalyst for conservation and water quality improvement.

“We really thought ICON represented a great way to leverage more resources and investment into water quality,” Inman said in comments made ahead of the announcement.

She said the foundation started having conversations two years ago with stakeholders along the Des Moines and Raccoon river watersheds, including organizations, landowners, farmers and agriculture industry leaders.

“What we noticed was there is no lack of motivation of wanting to be more proactive in water quality, and there were things that were working really well, but they weren’t able to scale up and there were some significant barriers,” Inman said.

A task force was created, and through those conversations it was learned that while there were some great groups doing great work, “there wasn’t one group helping to pull all these people together, pull all these packages together and invest or help to put together the financing or vision to make it happen more quickly,” she said. “We saw that as an opportunity for us to come in and help.”

That coincided with a donation from Athene that was focused on water quality. That will fund a treatment wetland at the Harriet Street landing site to filter runoff flowing into the Des Moines River.

Inman said that led to conversations about whether there would be other corporate partners that have the same values that would be willing to help build a portfolio of water quality projects.

The Great Outdoors Foundation is bringing in private funding that is being stacked with other investments to fund water quality projects. Inman said there is currently a portfolio of projects — about $175 million in projects — most of which are upstream from Des Moines, she said.

Inman said the fund will also be used to tap into water quality funds that will be released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the next several years. According to Inman, every dollar invested in the conservation fund could leverage an additional $4 in public funding and remove 400 pounds of nitrates from the state’s waterways.

Grant Kvalheim, president of Athene and a member of the Great Outdoors Foundation board, said Athene got involved because it believes it should create a strong environment not only for the 1,750 Athene employees who work at the company’s campus in West Des Moines, but for the community and region as a whole.

“You want to make a positive impact in the communities where your employees live and work and I think every company needs to figure out where their passion is for doing that,” he said in remarks made prior to the announcement.

Athene has committed $375,000 a year for the next five years, Kvalheim said.

The initial goal is to raise $20 million in private money for the fund, he said.

“There is a long list of projects,” Kvalheim said. “We wanted to start with an amount that would get things going meaningfully.”

John Swanson, water resources supervisor for Polk County Conservation, said the conservation fund will help fund more projects in Iowa.

“Some of these government dollars are very competitive … and unfortunately we have a lot of really good projects that don’t get funded,” said Swanson, who works with landowners to set up projects. “By layering on these conservation fund dollars it’s going to allow us to fund more projects and spread those government dollars wider.”

Helping provide local matching funds is one of the more important aspects of the fund, Swanson said.

The fund will also help to potentially expand the scope of projects for greater effects on water quality efforts, he said.

“So say we’re working with USDA funds and we can build a 50-acre wetland because that’s how much the funding allows, but there’s space for a 75-acre wetland, that’s another example of how we can layer on those funds and expand a project to its fullest extent,” Swanson said. “We know the more wetland we build, the more water quality benefit we’re going to get.”

And while the conservation fund can help expand water quality efforts in the region and the state, Swanson said it can also have potential impacts downstream all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where nutrient runoff has contributed to a 4,000-square-mile hypoxic zone, or dead zone, where depleted oxygen levels can kill off fish and marine life.

The conservation fund creates “actionable steps toward conservation initiatives, promotes improvements in infrastructure and diversifies recreational opportunities in the region,” Dan Houston, ICON Water Trails co-chair and president and CEO of Principal Financial, said in a statement provided prior to announcement.

“To really move the needle on water quality, it takes a collective effort, which is where the importance of public-private partnerships come into play,” he said.

Houston said improving water quality will improve quality of life for communities for people to live, work and play.

“It reconnects us with our waterways and protects them for future generations,” he said.

Inman said the conservation fund will build on existing collaboration on water quality initiatives statewide.

“This is to our knowledge, the first time that it’s being done on this massive scale,” she said. “I think this is the first time where corporate and state and local partners are coming together and saying this is a model that we want to continue, and it’s one that works really well for water quality.

“It’s going to be very transformational.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the organization leading the new conservation fund that will focus on water quality projects.