Contract-based nature conservation or payments for nature conservation measures are de facto sporadically implemented in forests. Against this background the joint research project “Nature Conservation Contracts in Forests (WaVerNa Project)” aims to analyze the current implementation status as well as opportunities and constraints of nature conservation contracts in the field of forest ecology, economics, and law. In this context foundations were asked in a nationwide online survey referring to their financial involvement in forest nature conservation. The answers of 38 foundations which financially sponsor or intend to sponsor measures of forest nature conservation were assessed. When asked, foundations stated to sponsor or intend to sponsor a broad range of measures of forest nature conservation. Most of the foundations are actively supporting almost small areas outside of nature reserves. Consequently, most of the foundations deal with an annual funding budget for nature conservation measures in forests of less than 50,000 €. The number of foundations which sponsor nature conservation measures in third-party forest areas in Germany is unknown. Based on assumptions referring to the response rate, the basic population of foundations could roughly be estimated by an approximate dimension of 90 to 170 foundations. Based on this dimension the annually funded forest area of all German foundations involved in forest nature conservation is estimated between approximately 14,000 and 17,000 hectares, while the corresponding estimate of annual funding budget ranges between 2.7 and 3.7 million € at mean. Due to an almost positive assessment of their experiences of nature conservation contracts in forests, two third of the participating foundations are planning for the future to continue their engagement in the same manner.