The 50th Anniversary Trust Fund was established 1978, during the 50th Anniversary of the CSPG. Funds were raised from corporations and individuals to endow an income that was used to finance the CSPG Student Industry Field Trip. Until 1991 the disbursements from the 50th Anniversary Trust Fund were used specifically to support SIFT. Although initially funded by an appeal to individual and corporate members and stakeholders the primary source of funding soon became the CSPG itself, with the Board of Directors routinely transferring Society surpluses into the Endowment fund.
Beginning in 1990 the Society began to broaden the scope of funding beyond SIFT, beginning with support of the EdGeo program and support of youth science fairs. The expanded scope of the 50th Anniversary Trust Fund was recognized and on June 1st, 1992, the 50th Anniversary Trust Fund was collapsed and its assets were transferred into a new charitable organization that established the CSPG Educational Trust Fund. The CSPG Educational Trust Fund provided funding for the advancement of geoscience education, with a special focus on petroleum geology, in a much more general sense. Subsequently the CSPG Educational Trust Fund was instructed to act as the primary source of Educational Outreach Funding for the CSPG, which still includes the CSPG Student Industry Field Trip.
Funding was provided primarily by the Society through the 90’s. The Board of Directors and the Executive recognized that the planned goal of having the Educational Trust Fund provide the funding for all of the CSPG’s outreach activities could not be achieved without contributions directly from Society revenues to Outreach activities.
In 2001 public and university outreach programs expanded. In 2004, 2005, and 2007 the Trustees and the Society made significant efforts to increase the endowment fund through corporate and individual donors.
In 2011 the focus of the fund was narrowed to be for, “the purpose of supporting and funding petroleum geoscientific education in Canada.”
In March 2015, the CSPG Educational Trust Fund changed its name to the CSPG Foundation. The CSPG Foundation aims to fully fund current and future CEGA Outreach programs.