Health and conservation groups grow program services. (NPT Top 100).

Conservation easements of land often make up a large territory of Ducks Unlimited, Inc.'s (DU) program servics numbers. The easements that are granted to the Memphis, Tenn.-based nonprofit usually fall into the $1 million-and-less range. But one easement, located at the eastern tip of Kiawah Island in South Carolina, multiplied that figure almost 40-fold.

"Little Bear Island was one particular easement for $39 million," explained Adam Webster, internal auditor at DU. "It's 151 acres of land located off the coast of South Carolina. That is grossly large for an easement. That $39 million is an oddball. We'd love to do a bunch of those but we don't. That is the number that pushed us to a significant increase."

The Little Bear Island property, owned by Kiawah Resorts Associates, was transferred to The Bear Island Holding Trust. The trust then granted the conservation easement to Wetlands America Trust, a DU affiliate.

Due in large part to the Little Bear easement, DU showed the most significant movement in a conservation category that saw six organizations record a combined $262.7 million in program services income. Those organizations were all holdovers from last year's NPT 100 and improved upon their category's fiscal 2000 numbers by 29 percent, or $58.6 million.

Overall, DU's program services more than quadrupled, netting $48.1 million as opposed to $11.3 million a year ago. Other conservation statistics of note include The Nature Conservancy's $21.1 million hike and the $2.3 million growth by Bronx, N.Y.-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

As a total, NPT 100 organizations recorded a modest 1.3 percent gain in program services income. Of the $172.2 million increase, approximately $146 million in gains came from conservation and health nonprofits. However, there were significant program services declines among human service groups.

Those in the health field combined to amass $964.1 million, which amounted to in an $87.1 million jump from the previous year. That 10 percent growth was realized by the exact organizations that were included in the study last year. Perennial big boys Easter Seals and City of Hope contributed heavily to the upswing. Easter Seals jumped by $34.8 million while Los Angeles-based City of Hope saw a $22.7 million boost. Of the 21 health organizations, 11 posted gains, seven reported zero program services income and three nonprofits saw numbers dip.

The Arthritis Foundation finished behind the previous year by $1.5 million -- a mere pittance next to the Fred Hutchinson Research Center (FHCRC) in Seattle. FHCRC was down $20.5 million, a 63 percent decrease from the. previous year. According to Controller Herbert Bone, it all came down to entering into a joint venture with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

"We previously had a patient care unit and we transferred that patient care facility, to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in fiscal 2001. That took Out $30-some-odd million in total of program services expenses. That decrease offset whatever increase we had in our grant and contracted funded revenue sources," Bone said.

The joint venture between Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center and the University of Washington Academic Medical Center that makes FHCRC one-third of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has affected how it records its numbers. FHCRC doesn't have enough revenue to consolidate under general accepted accounting principles, so it only shows its activity in one line under investment income, instead of showing the full detail of its patient care activity under program services, Bone added.

The financial transition should be complete for the fiscal 2002 report since there's still a small amount of outpatient costs that were incurred in 2001 that count toward 2002. Bone assured that by 2003 the rest of FHCRC's business will be "more apples to apples rather than apples to oranges" as a result of the tweaks to the organization's reporting procedure.