The name California Fire Safe Council (CFSC) has been used for two very different organizations. The original use of the name, from 1993 through mid-2002, referred to a loose consortium of local community-based fire safe councils and other organizations that shared the mission of making California's communities less vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire. It was funded by the state of California Resources Agency, Department of Conservation, Division of Forestry, also called CDF or CAL FIRE. It was led by staff from the CDF Prevention Bureau. In mid-2002 a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization was formed by members of the former CFSC using the name California Fire Safe Council, Inc. (CFSCI). At the moment the CFSCI came into existence, the former CFSC ceased to exist because the CFSCI was specifically set up as a non-membership corporation. (Subsequently, the Board amended the bylaws to create a class of "at-large members." However, these "members" have no voting rights.) The reason for creating the CFSCI was for it to be able to administer grants and collect the administration fee for operations rather than using grant funds for that function, since CDF had ceased funding for the old CFSC due to budget restraints. The California Fire Safe Council: initially an inclusive coalition A need develops: prior to 1993 In the early 1990s, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF or CAL FIRE) was facing increasing costs for wildfire suppression due to the influx of people building homes in what had previously been unpopulated wildlands. This area of mixed homes and wildlands is variously called the Wildland Urban Interface, Urban-Wildland Interface, or the I-Zone (where I=Interface). Now during a wildland fire, more and more CDF firefighting resources had to be used to defend homes and lives, which meant that it was taking increased time and resources to get fires under control. Also, since over 90% of fires are started by human activity, the number of fires was increasing due to the increased population. In response, CDF stepped up its efforts to educate the public in "fire safe" principles, generally referred to as defensible space, which can prepare a home to withstand an approaching wildfire and allow the firefighting resources to focus on controlling the fire. These same principles reduce the chance that a house fire will spread to the wildlands. In 1991, the CDF Fire Prevention Unit introduced the "Fire Safe - Inside and Out" program as