financing conservation Flashcards
1
Q
financing governmental organisations
A
- financed at least in part from government budget
- can often apply for specific additional government funding
2
Q
financing non-governmental organisations
A
- grant funding from governments, foundations etc, for specified purposes
- unrestricted funding, generated by conservation organisations, no restrictions on use
- released funding, indirect through tax breaks etc
3
Q
core vs operational costs
A
- funders wish to see their money spend directly on conservation activities, prefer core costs to be minimised
- charity rating organisations assess efficiency of NGOs by determining ratio of core to operational costs as a key performance indicator (KPI)
- NGOs seek to maximise unrestricted funds through effective fundraising and charging maximum overheads and management fees to grants and contracts
- seek to minimise core costs by packaging admin activities with conservation activities and charging time of core staff to projects
4
Q
unrestricted funds
A
- raised through donations, memberships, retail activities, legacies (money and property in will), endowments (gifts of large amounts of money where only interest can be spent
- used to pay for core costs such as salaries and overheads for staff not funded through grants e.g. senior managers, fundraisers, and office running costs
5
Q
membership
A
- successful in small and specialist organisations and large organisations
- less successful in middling organisations, as often non enough membership money to maintain activities and admin for members
- small specialist organisations have low numbers (<5,000) of enthusiastic members, low cost of servicing members, can be done by volunteers
- large organisations with mass memberships have higher costs, staff, databases, communications technology needed, required activities/magazines/conferences to attract and keep members (often more casual memberships)
- costly, may be supported by advertising or targeting particular postcodes or demographics for potential new members
6
Q
restricted funds
A
- grant funding
- relatively large pots of money
- raised under contract/agreement
- restrictive, must be spent on specific things
- usually operational costs for particular conservation projects
- often lots of reporting of how money is spent required, project manager needed
- often have to provide evidence of fair recruitment and buying of resources and equipment, quotes to prove best value for money or use of particular providers
7
Q
who should conservationists accept money from?
A
- often issues with accepting corporate funding
- usually spend smallest amount possible on projects
- ethical issues if they actively harm the environment
- accusations of greenwashing to improve corporation’s image would also harm conservation organisation’s image
- e.g. Friends of the Earth will not accept corporate funding
8
Q
source of restricted funds
A
- foundations, typically established by wealthy individuals often who have founded and sold successful companies to distribute some of their earnings to organisations they approve of
- governments, own government or foreign governments
9
Q
funding from foreign governments
A
- bilateral funding, government in one country funds NGO in another
- common in developing countries but can create political issues if countries are suspicious of foreign influence e.g. Russia, Putin made it so Western governments cannot fund NGOs easily
- e.g. Darwin Trust, administered in UK, funds conservation activities in countries will little funding, involves partnership between organisation in UK and abroad
- multilateral, many governments contribute to pot of money other countries can then access, more impartial
10
Q
overheads
A
- cost of supporting the conservation work in addition to actually doing it e.g. office running costs, HR costs
- funders may provide overheads
- as a % of direct project cost (indirect cost recovery agreements)
- as a % of salary costs, creates incentive to inflate salaries
11
Q
match funding
A
- donor only agrees to fund certain percentage of conservation activity
- requires that their funding is ‘matched’ by funding from other sources e.g. applicant’s core budget, funding obtained by other donors (cash or ‘in kind’ e.g. equipment, staff time)
12
Q
challenge funding
A
- type of match funding
- donor offers large fund which must be matched
- encourages other donors to give
- incentivises organisations to fundraise
- prevents organisations from becoming completely dependent on funding from an individual source
- e.g. Robert W. Wilson, offered US$20m challenge fund to Wildlife Conservation Society, amount recieved each year depends on match funding raised
13
Q
‘Debt for Nature’ swaps
A
- many countries that became newly independent in second half of 20th century acquired high national debts by borrowing money from countries/organisations to set up infrastructure and then not being able to pay it back
- debt is traded internationally at values below face value (depends on likelihood of country paying it back)
- can be bought by conservation organisations and given back to debtor country in exchange for conservation agrement
- can occur directly between 2 governments facilitated by conservation NGO
e.g. USA forgave Costa Rica’s $26m debt if they agreed to spend same amount on forest conservation, now global capital of ecotourism
14
Q
Trading in biodiversity units
A
- Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) legislation established in 2021 in England
- land developers must produce at least 10% net gain in biodiversity through
1. aiming to avoid/reduce biodiversity impacts through site selection and layout
2. enhancing and restoring biodiversity onsite
3. creating or enhancing offsite habitats
4. purchasing statutory BNG units if BNG cannot be achieved - where excess BNG is achieved, BNG units can be sold on the open market, conservation organisations can make money from conservation work by generating and selling credits
