Improving the effectiveness of philanthropy for international conservation
How can we maximize the effectiveness of grant-making in the international conservation field? This article is based on my experience in international environmental conservation, both as head of implementing nonprofits for 35 years, and as a foundation grant officer supporting in-country organizations for 15 years. I have witnessed both very effective – and ineffective – grant making practices, and would like to share my perspectives on best practices.
Is a shift in consciousness the key to pushing back Earth Overshoot Day?
Today we hit Earth Overshoot Day, the day by which we’ve used up the ecological resources that the Earth could regenerate in one year – fully five months before the end of the year. This is utter madness: we have pushed the self-destruct button and piled our many possessions on top of it to hold it down. Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk may be choosing to launch themselves into the void to escape the – well, possibility of creating another void here on Earth – but what can be done to push that day back to 31 December or beyond? What is the role for philanthropy in creating human systems that cultivate life, rather than destroying it?
Ending UK support for fossil fuels overseas: key lessons from a big policy win
In December 2020, the UK Government announced an end to its finance for fossil fuels overseas, becoming the first major country in the world to take this step. This landmark announcement followed a multi-year campaign by a coalition of NGOs, which later won the ‘David and Goliath Award’ at the Sheila McKechnie Foundation’s National Campaign Awards. Adam McGibbon, the coordinator of the campaign, shares some of the key factors in the campaign’s success that led to this big – and unexpected – policy win.
Where the climate grants went in 2020
Given the urgency of the climate crisis and the shortfall in funding, current and prospective climate funders face extremely challenging decisions to ensure their grantmaking is as impactful as possible. Information on which particular issues, approaches and organisations other funders are supporting, and which are receiving less attention than others, can be very helpful to funders when making difficult grantmaking decisions. With this in mind, EFN initiated a mapping exercise in 2020 to gather information on climate-related grantmaking from funders that participate in EFN’s Climate Funders Group. This blog summarises our key findings which we hope will be of use to current and potential climate funders.
Grant funding versus the climate crisis
In the summer of 2020, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation were considering how they could help tackle the climate crisis. They engaged us – Lucent Consultancy – to help with some background research and have graciously agreed that we can share some of our findings and thoughts here. This blog focusses on what we learnt about green funders’ grantmaking, as one of the main – but by no means the only – tools funders use to influence change.
Defeating the “veggie burger ban”: how funders helped catalyse a big win for European food policy
From “veggie burgers” to “vegan sausage rolls”, Europeans have been enjoying plant-based meat and dairy for decades. But in October 2020, the European Parliament voted on a plan to ban the plant-based sector from naming their products with the everyday language people use to describe these foods. Following a funder-supported campaign from The Good Food Institute Europe in collaboration with other international non-profits, leading businesses and thousands of consumers, MEPs voted to reject this attack on plant-based meat. Richard Parr, Managing Director of GFI Europe, describes how the willingness of their funders to support a collaborative approach enabled their small team to have an outsized influence in defeating the veggie burger ban.
How can funders better support their grantees in measuring the impact of conservation efforts?
For conservation to truly be successful in stemming the ongoing biodiversity losses being experienced across the globe, we need to make concerted efforts to measure the impact of specific interventions, thereby generating evidence to inform the development of more impactful conservation strategies in the future. As part of an MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge, Salisha Chandra undertook a research project to generate insights into and best practices in conservation impact measurement and reporting. Here are the key recommendations to emerge from her research for conservation funders to encourage better monitoring and evaluation practice by their grantees.
COVID-19: The view from Possible
When coronavirus hit, like many other organisations working in the sector, we were determined not to let it stall the momentum for action on climate change that has been built in the last year. We know there is no silver lining to coronavirus. But we also recognise the pandemic represents an utterly unprecedented global ‘moment of change’, in which the regular patterns of hundreds of millions of people’s lives have been forcefully interrupted, not just as individuals but as part of local and global communities. Capturing this moment provides an opportunity to create a domino effect of climate-positive behaviours in communities across the UK, writes Patrik Ewe from Possible.
Communicating the Ocean in a COVID-19 World
How can we communicate about the ocean effectively in a COVID-19 world? It is a question that many members of the Marine CoLABoration, a network of ocean-interested organisations funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, have grappled with since the start of the pandemic. There have been difficult conversations over the need to communicate sensitively, while also protecting the hard-won gains that have been made in recent years and continuing to progress forwards. Natalie Hart from the Marine CoLAB explores how we can push for meaningful change, but do so in a way that does not cause harm.Featured publication
