Stronger organizations. Connected leaders.
More good funding. Improved partnerships. Shared power.
Here we share some of Maliasili’s top highlights from 2023
A Growing Portfolio of stronger organizations achieving greater impact
We added 12 new partners to our portfolio, bringing our total partners to 43 working in 12 countries.
Our carefully selected portfolio of leading local African organizations is working directly with communities to manage, benefit from, and steward their lands and natural resources. We help them develop clearer strategies and communications, attract more funding, and improve their leadership so that they can achieve even more for people and nature in the places where they work.
50 Maliasili Readers - making conservationists’ work a little bit easier
We drafted our 50th monthly Reader, a newsletter full of quick and useful tips, tools, and advice for more effective organizations.
“Maliasili readers are the workplace doctor. Just when you think your case is too unique or complicated, boom! They hand you the most mind-blowing tools and techniques to navigate workplace opportunities and setbacks to improve your efficiency and bring forth the best version of yourself.”
A new leadership program for emerging leaders to thrive
We launched a new leadership program, LeadUp, which targets rising and emerging leaders within our East Africa partner portfolio. This program is a response to long-standing requests from our partners to expand our leadership program offerings to reach younger, rising leaders. LeadUp is a collaboration between Maliasili, Blue Ventures, The Nature Conservancy, and Wildlife Conservation Network.
“The week we spent together was an excellent chance for me to reflect on my leadership style and learn from other participants. I feel that I have gained valuable insights into effective leadership, and I appreciate the connections that I have made with other leaders in the cohort.”
Expanding our reach in southern Africa
In April, we held our first-ever strategic planning workshop with a partner in Zimbabwe. Established in 2019, Wildlife Conservation Action (WCA) fosters human-wildlife coexistence in Zimbabwe's vital wildlife areas. WCA is founded, managed, and run by young, passionate Zimbabwean changemakers who want to ensure that people and wildlife coexist in their country. The team merges indigenous wisdom with scientific knowledge, collaborating closely with communities to develop effective solutions for human-wildlife conflict.
WCA's work is critical and urgent, and the organization is growing rapidly to meet the demand for its interventions. As a new partner, helping them forge a clear path forward with a strategic plan has been paramount.
“Change can be difficult, but taking time to reflect when you go through change can make a huge difference to the experience.”
Giving African community conservation a global platform
We launched a new webinar series entitled “Expanding Community Conservation in Africa.” The series attracted more than 500 individuals around the world, giving our partners an excellent platform to showcase how they are working to lead and scale community conservation in Africa.
Webinar Series: Expanding Community Conservation Across Africa
A data set of Maliasili’s Portfolio so we can measure, track, and learn about our work
We made significant investments over the past year to improve how we measure and track our partners’ organizational growth and impact and to use that data to inform our work. A major milestone in this process was collecting and analyzing partner growth and impact data through the end of 2022.
Fig 1: Average Partner Expenditure*
*Expenditure is our best proxy for organizational growth. It represents the amount of money an organization is investing in its team and work, which is directly related to the amount of change they can achieve.
Piloting a clustered approach to strategic planning in Madagascar
We piloted a new way to support our partners in developing their strategic plans in Madagascar. This clustered approach brings together three organizations, including GERP Madagascar, Association Tsimoka, and INDRI, to increase efficiency, encourage peer learning and sharing, and build trust between organizations that work in similar landscapes and contexts. After the first workshop, which brought together 18 leaders from 3 organizations, we could already see the connections that can lead to a more cohesive and impactful conservation community in Madagascar. “In this strategic planning process, we are crafting a roadmap to guide GERP in achieving its desired change while discovering areas of collaboration with other organizations,” said Jonah Ratsimbazafy.
This pioneering approach has proven effective in enabling organizations to recognize and harness their unique qualities. It is aided by valuable peer feedback as organizations come together to navigate shared challenges and collaborate on common objectives while appreciating their unique contributions.
Rooting for Change: a publication for improved partnerships in conservation
We published the report Rooting for Change, which explores partnerships and relationships between local African conservation organizations and international NGOs (INGOs). Local organizations in Africa often join forces with INGOs to enhance their impact. And these partnerships bring in funding, expertise, and resources that local groups struggle to access. However, such collaborations face challenges related to power dynamics, colonial legacy, transparency, and alignment of goals and agendas.
The report explores partnership challenges and identifies opportunities to improve them and bring about change.
“Ultimately, conservation impact will rise and fall on how these partnerships are approached, structured, and maintained. The rallying cry from local organizations is to trust them and invest in them as those working closest to the problem. International organizations now have the opportunity to demonstrate this trust by building strategically aligned relationships, which will finally rebalance the power and put us on the path to systemic change.”
Also in August…
We were excited and honored to be amongst the organizations supported and collaborating in a bold restoration initiative supported by the Bezos Earth Fund. This is a $22.8 million dollar investment seeking to accelerate the restoration of two African landscapes critical for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and human wellbeing: the Greater Rift Valley in Kenya and the Lake Kivu and Rusizi River Basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
Maliasili’s role will be to provide multi-year, tailored organizational development support to some of the local African restoration champions, working in close collaboration with the World Resources Institute.
A community conservation forum focused on power and partnerships
We convened our largest-ever gathering of our growing community of partner organizations. This ‘African Community Conservation Forum’ brought together 175 people representing more than 90 organizations traveling from 20 countries, including 40 of our portfolio partners. The group spent the week exploring ways to shift greater power and impact to African conservation organizations and networks through stronger partnerships and leadership.
We were proud to partner with The Nature Conservancy, Blue Ventures, Wildlife Conservation Network, Tusk Trust, and Women for the Environment Africa on the event's development and to co-create the sessions with Maliasili’s leadership networks.
“We are unifying our voice for community and conservation”
More and better funding for local organizations leading African community conservation.
We issued the first round of grants from the Maliasili Conservation Fund, distributing 21 direct, core grants totaling $2.4M to organizations in 8 countries across three key geographies - the East African Rangelands (9), KAZA (7) and Madagascar (5) driving organizational stability, self-determination and conservation impact.
“Wow I was not expecting anything like this at all. Maliasili has done so much for us already with the Strategic Plan, training and of course guidance in so many aspects such as the communications component currently underway...We are bowled over, simple as that.”
A leadership program in one of the world’s most important carbon sinks - the Congo Basin
This year, Maliasili and our long-term collaborator, Well Grounded, launched an exciting new leadership initiative in the Congo Basin. The Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest tropical forested landscape and is critical to mitigating global climate change and conserving biodiversity. It is also central to national and regional economies, and the livelihoods of people who depend on them for survival. The protection and sustainable management of the Congo Basin's forests, and their great social, economic, and environmental values, depends on the role and capacity of committed, effective, and innovative African civil society organizations (CSOs) and communities to drive change in the region.
The new initiative - the Canopy Leadership Program - supports 20 senior leaders from 10 local African civil society organizations deeply involved in community forestry efforts in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. The program integrates content from Maliasili and Well Grounded’s leadership curricula and weaves in knowledge inspired by philosophies from across the African continent.
In late November, the leaders met in person in Cameroon for a week-long workshop facilitated by Maliasili and Well Grounded, focused on strengthening their self-awareness and leadership skills while building peer-to-peer connections.
“I am like a ‘maman’ (mother) who has gone to the market to fill my basket with lots of ingredients, so that I can cook recipes that will improve myself and others.”
Essential issues in conservation making headlines
One of Maliasili’s core pillars is to help our partners increase their influence and funding in conservation. As part of this, we look for ways to bring attention to key issues that often go unnoticed.
→ Conservation Community Must have Conversations Around Power | The Standard | READ
“The conservation community must start to have conversations around power. There is a need to shake the system, reimagine it and rebuild it more aligned with the needs of the current realities. The era of big NGOs and governments bullying communities into leaving their areas for conservation is gone. Conservation must be with communities.”
-Njenga Kahiro, Maliasili Portfolio Director
→ Better Climate Funding Means Centering Local and Indigenous Communities | Standford Social Innovation Review | READ
“Funding practices and grant design need to change in ways that actually enable local groups to access, manage, and benefit from funds more easily and more quickly. All of this ultimately requires major changes in the culture, infrastructure, and practices of climate and conservation funders, including international NGOs, private foundations and philanthropies, and government funding agencies.”
-Co-authored by Fred Nelson, Maliasili CEO
→ Improving Partnerships Will Help Our Planet | Alliance Magazine | READ
“There is no time for us to keep getting things half right. We may have gotten to the stage where these partnerships exist, and where locally-led organizations are recognised as critical to the success of conservation actions, but we must now move beyond recognition to a place of better communication, simplified bureaucracy, and shared credit for success.”
-Resson Kantai Duff, Maliasili Portfolio Funding Director
Moment of Pause
Maliasili’s team has grown significantly. We brought on 9 new team members this year making the total 43, strengthening our internal capacity and helping us provide more OD support to our partners.
Photo credits: The Maliasili team, Jjumba Martin, Josh Muya, Merline Touko Tchoko
Thank You to Our Key Funding Partners
Collaborating Partners
Blue Ventures
The Nature Conservancy
Well Grounded
Wildlife Conservation Network
Strategic Funding Partners
Anonymous
Acacia Conservation Fund
BAND Foundation
Bezos Earth Fund
Dry Creek Foundation
Greenwood Place
Liz Claiborne & Art Ortenberg Foundation
Lucy Foundation
Mulago Foundation
Personio Foundation
Pilot House Philanthropy
Sall Family Foundation
The Green Park Foundation
Supporters
Anonymous (2)
Africa Nature-based Tourism Platform
Cartier Philanthropy
Imago Dei Fund
Linden Trust for Conservation
Tusk Trust
UK Government through the Darwin Initiative
World Wildlife Fund
Alana Hendrickson
Carl Spector
Charles Fritz
Crane Family Charitable Fund
Edward McAdams
Jane and William Stocklin
Jill Nelson
Jonathan Wechsler
Matt Hill
Richard and Judith Gilmore
Sarah and Jed Nussdorf
Susan and Sanford Fitch Charitable Fund
Susan and Warren Nelson
Vanguard Charitable/The Hattendorf Kau Social Impact Fund
