Conservation Collective

2022 was another year of growth for Conservation Collective in terms of money raised (£4 million + across the network). From 2021 to 2022: we increased the amount raised across the network by 45%; we increased the number of foundations by 26% and grants activity by 27%. This year looks set to follow a similar trend.
This is a testament to how our network of foundations around the world is delivering and funding work directly towards driving the following environmental impact goals across land, marine and freshwater ecosystems, as per our theory of change:
• Regenerating, restoring and protecting habitats
• Helping native species to thrive
• Reducing pollution
• Adapting to and slowing down climate change
At Conservation Collective, we break the work of our central team down into five main activities which are focussed on driving benefits for the network:

Launching new foundations
Since 2017 we’ve grown from five to twenty local foundations, and our pipeline is growing! Our goal is to launch two new foundations each year. Each foundation receives onboarding training.
and a best practice toolkit adapted to the local context. We also provide 30,000 in funding over the
first three years (local currency). We aim to launch two new foundations a year and continually enhance the best practice toolkit for our model of place-based philanthropy.

In its first year (2022), the Cyprus Environment Foundation gave out £82,011, and the Turquoise Coast Environment Fund (Turkey) gave out £105,437 in grants, exceeding the target ratio of 70% of income. In 2023 Sicily (Italy), the Dalmatian Islands (Croatia) and Malta will give their first grants.

We proved the concept for spinning out branches (incubated under our charitable umbrella) with Tuscany (Italy) and Lamu (Kenya) now operating under independent local charitable entities. We learnt that local directors have a vastly increased leadership responsibility once operating independently and are building up our guidance support package and training to enable a smooth transition.

We explored creating an overarching Greek Foundation to capitalise on economies of scale and reduce competition with institutional funders. After consulting with the three Greek steering committees, we decided we needed more time to prepare and to align approaches to avoid losing the local identities.

As part of our expansion plans, we’re exploring bringing existing place-based, environmentally focussed regranting organisations into our network to share best practices and resources, where there is also a clear value-add for CC and its members.

Fundraising
We have been growing and diversifying core income streams to boost network benefits and to increase funding channelled to our foundations and their projects. In late 2022 we received a significant three-year commitment from the Grantham Foundation. To access this funding, we registered with an intermediary platform NGO Source, this now means all our members can benefit from donations from US trusts & foundations at 8% lower fees than through CAF America (our usual US donations route!)

We secured new corporate and strategic partnerships bringing funds and brand visibility. In 2023 we’ve attracted a significant new partner, Depeche Mode; through its world tour will donate $1,250,000 to projects fighting plastic pollution through Conservation Collective. Regatta Clothing is supporting with £60,000, a mixture of unrestricted core funding, three local foundations, and a commitment to champion projects. Edmiston Yachts, Coldplay, and Brora are supporting again.

Our members who launched pre-2020 provided feedback to us, to increase our focus and develop support packages for our mature foundations since as they grow, they face new challenges. We did this by increasing our focus on increasing fundraising and PR efforts towards our more established members. We also built an organisational development fund, known as our ‘Growth Pot’, as inspired by the Oak Foundation which has given us additional funds for safeguarding and leadership training.

We continue to work on building out our outreach to unrestricted private donors for members. We will work with luxury travel partners and brands to host events to build engagement opportunities for the remainder of 2023. We also plan to develop donor experiences - with a built-in fundraising element - for our foundations, their projects, and other inspirational nature regeneration sites.

Knowledge Sharing
Connecting our members to inspire each other, share expertise, replicate successes, share lessons learnt and encourage collaboration. Last year we ran a series of Webinars including seagrass protection, regenerative agriculture, and blue carbon. We hosted our Global Gathering bringing together members from across the network for knowledge sharing earlier this year in Corfu (Greece) which was another huge success, generously hosted by Kontokali Bay, and we’ll look to do this again next year, venue and date tbc – ideas welcome!

The benefits are already showing - a fishermen-led marine protection project was replicated within Greece; a sea turtle project and marine data tool for artisanal fishers was replicated in the Caribbean; Our three Balearic (Spain) foundations collaborated on a plastics campaign for young people.
We developed a global advisory panel to provide additional support to boost local expertise. From Sri Lanka to Ibiza, we were delighted to see members of the panel engaging with members in a meaningful way last year. We will continue to build out this resource and are open to suggestions of new skills and areas of expertise which would be useful.

Risk management and governance
Building on our Theory of Change we created a new shared grant and donor management system for gathering data that feeds into our impact monitoring, project evaluation and learning framework. We have invested over £75,000 in this project with external and internal resources. It continues to evolve as we now set to identify common indicators against which to measure our work. This will allow us to reflect and report (locally and in aggregate) on our impact, telling great stories and constantly improving on the difference we are making.

Our rapid growth led to adding new processes to streamline monitoring and risk management. This affected the culture of being a small, people-led organisation; we are now working hard to be participatory-led. We have taken steps to improve this by hiring a consultant from one of our local foundations to drive the next stage of the impact project (rather than external). We are exploring a plan to recruit an SC member to our CC trustee board on a rotational basis. We will also host quarterly ‘town hall’ style drop-in meetings for people to share challenges and queries amongst colleagues.

We improved how we look after our people, from hiring an HR consultant now overseeing contracts and appraisals, developing a welcome handbook, and building an annual leadership coaching programme. A presentation training opportunity begins soon! We’ve built additional benefits to retain and contribute to high-performing teams…

Speaking with a Collective Voice
We work to amplify and enhance local stories on a growing global platform via digital marketing, press, speaking engagements and events. Last year our brand featured on screens at sold-out Coldplay gigs worldwide, shop window displays across the country at Brora’s stores, and this our partnership video will show at Depeche Mode gigs!

In 2023 we invested in support from a PR firm; they conducted a brand strategy workshop, are developing a press kit and will proactively seek targeted PR throughout the rest of the year. We hope to share learnings with members through our new Communications ‘team’; as of June 2023 we have part-time PR/Comms support and part-time digital comms support to improve storytelling, increase brand recognition and develop marketing materials at CC and foundation level.

Goals

2023-2025 we continue with our mission of opening new channels of philanthropic funding to protect and restore nature, building and developing robust institutions positioned to deliver systemic change for the long term. We strive to develop a participatory-led organisation to promote shared learnings and maximise collaboration to catalyse long-term change. Goals:

1. Developing and managing central brand partnerships to unlock funding and visibility for Conservation Collective and member foundations. Identifying new private donor supporters which can provide unrestricted funding for our local foundations; and identifying larger source of funds for scaling existing projects, to increase flows of funding through CC to members.

2. Strengthening the toolkit for Conservation Collective foundations; retaining high-quality growth as we scale through spreading effective best practice processes and resources. We are working on corporate partnership guidelines, an operational manual update and a financial manual, to accompany the existing manuals and are available to members through our CC network resources SharePoint folder.

3. Embedding our new grant management tool and working towards a shared impact measurement tool for insightful evaluation, monitoring and learning. As well as developing our knowledge-sharing facilitation to ensure successes are replicated and lessons learnt are avoided.