On her first trip to the United States after the poachings of Group 4, Fossey enlisted the aid of the National Geographic Society, which pledged $5,000, as did the World Wildlife Fund, over the objections of some of its members who had heard rumors of Fossey's anti-poaching patrols and other tactics she used against poaching. Fossey asked her friend Robinson McIlvaine, the head of the nonprofit African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, to serve as secretary-treasurer of the Digit Fund until she could find a salaried executive director to assume control over the operations. McIlvaine partnered with the International Primate Protection League, the Digit Fund, and his own African Wildlife Leadership Foundation asking for funds, to be made out to the AWLF. The Digit Fund received none of the money, and McIlvaine suggested to Fossey that the Digit Fund could be folded into AWLF, which Fossey declined; McIlvaine resigned as secretary-treasurer of the Digit Fund.