Below is a table showing the steps that will be taken to initiate, send out and report on an MCF grant

Having co-created a pilot with our partners (the Maasai Landscape Conservation Fund), and collated diverse views through the Greening the Grassroots report, six main features of the Maliasili Conservation Fund that make it different and responsive to the needs of local organizations are:

• Growth Capital: This fund aims to provide substantial growth capital to partners, calculated at approximately 10-25% of their project budgets, with a maximum grant size of $250,000.
• Multi-year support: Each partner will receive funds from the MCF for 4 years
• Core support: The grants are primarily to invest in the organization and its growth, leveraging funding that goes into specific programmes or projects, and allowing the organization to invest in itself, remain stable through shocks and grow. 
• Minimal reporting: We want to ensure that our partners can get on with the work, and not feel that they are tied down by laborious reporting, so we keep our requirements to the minimum.
• Strategic Goals: The MEL data collected every year will be essential to ensuring reporting requirements are low. The grants will be tied to the strategic goals of each organization, not to any specific goals of ours, as is the case for many granting organizations.
• Organizational Development Support: There will be an allocation for organizational development support to allow us to work with the partner through the year on various aspects of their growth and vision as an organization.

There were several concerns raised around the issue of compliance during the team retreat. This section tries to address some of them including how we avoid corruption and what happens if funds are misused or used unethically. 

Our grantmaking to partners is built on trust in the due diligence process and through the relationship with them as part of our portfolio. What we have gathered about the partner’s capability will bolster confidence in the partner to be able to use the money in the ways that we are expecting. There is a crucial need for Portfolio Managers to communicate any concerns they have from working with grantees or through observations they make or feedback they receive from members of the community. 

Secondly, we rely on Portfolio Managers to have conversations to determine the readiness of these partners to absorb this funding effectively and in alignment with acceptable accounting practices. The initial discussion with the Portfolio Manager about getting an MCF grant will be critical because that is the discussion that will determine what the funds will be used for and ideally will help fill the sections of the Expression of Alignment. That process requires the partner to be honest and to really flesh out what they are hoping to do with the funds and how they are hoping this grant will help with their team growth, their core work, and how then this ties back to their strategic goals.

Unlike the MLCF however, the MCF grants will not require a detailed budget to report on. This means the MCF is practicing trust-based philanthropy in a very literal sense - we must trust the partner to do what was agreed upon and to let us know if they change their plans through the year. What the MCF is interested in is impact. Coming back to the strategic goals set to see how the partner is progressing and also to watch the trajectory of growth of the organization (number of funders, team growth and health, pay scales, etc.) will show us if the fund is having the effect we are expecting over time.

The answer below attempts to cover questions around the partner’s capacity to absorb funding, how we support the partner to aspire to grow not just to get funding, and how we reduce dependence.

Partner Capacity: We have a basic model showing what is available for each partner in the fund. That is not to say that the partner must take up the full amount immediately. It simply means that the money is available. In terms of the partner capacity to absorb this funding, the portfolio manager in consultation with their portfolio director can determine what amount a particular partner should be offered and therefore should be planning for.

Growth and Dependence: Our organizational strengthening plans already work towards making sure that partners, regardless of whether they are receiving MCF funding, should be growing and becoming less dependent on any one funder. Over time, our OD support should help diversify their portfolio, and their funding streams to be able to attract new sorts of funding.

Getting this injection from the MCF is just like getting funding from any other new funder. Considering the grant is only a small percentage of their total budget (10-25%), this should not deter this partner from continuing down the path of diversification of their funding flows. On the contrary, it should stabilize the partner and allow their leadership space and time to plan, innovate and leverage the rest of their funding. 

Discussions the partner has with their portfolio team should reinforce the partner’s strategic thinking about their future and the sustainability of their organization. Remind the partner that this four-year period will end, and keep an eye on the indicators that are showing their fundraising diversification over time.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning of the MCF is embedded in the Amplify pillar. Since May 2023, the Amplify pillar team has been receiving critical inputs from the Conservation Impact Accelerator group which seeks to “help partners establish a baseline of their current approach to impact assessment, and then lead them through a collaborative visioning process to devise a strategy for updating their impact framework and embedding it across their portfolio.” The group includes Stephanie Dolrenry and Meghan Jones, working with Salisha and Kasmira. So far, the group has helped clarify the Theory of Change of the Amplify pillar, and has worked on ascertaining that some of the recent outputs of the pillar including the Rooting for Change report and the Forum align with the original purpose and are achieving the results they set out to. Their scope includes work on the MCF, which, together with the direct partner fundraising efforts across the board will need to show that over time, we are supporting the change we want to see with regards to providing more and better funding to the point of impact.

The MCF will not fund for-profit activities, and will also not fund individuals. All MCF funding is directed to local organizations.

The answer below will attempt to reflect on how we are trying to ensure that we do not become like the granting organizations we are now working to change.

First, we must go back to our core. Maliasili’s purpose is to build stronger organizations and stronger leaders for greater conservation impact. Our core mandate is to walk the journey with partners through strategy, communications, fundraising, MEL etc and to help them flourish as leaders. This bears repeating because, unlike other organizations, our primary work is not funding. So as we are searching for partner organizations, our criteria will not change. We will still do thorough due diligence based on the criteria that we have always held, looking for organizations that share our three-legged-stool approach to CBNRM of rights, governance and benefits. So even as we anticipate that we may get more Expressions of Interest to join our portfolio merely for the funding, our criteria, partner selection and due diligence processes will keep us aligned to our mission.

All this said, every grantor starts with the best intentions. We therefore have clear plans in place for ourselves to keep the power dynamics equitable.

1. Holding to our grantmaking principles: Power dynamics often arise from scarcity. When a grantee doesn’t know if they will qualify for a new grant, or if they think that conditions will change, they will often hustle to keep the grantor happy. In our case, each partner knows that their money is in the bank for the four years of the granting period, and that the funds are tied to their strategic goals. This should reduce scarcity concerns and allow for us as partners to share challenges, changes and progress more freely. 
2. Co-creation with partners: The Maasai Landscapes Conservation Fund was co-created by Maliasili and the partner grantees of the fund. Together, the grantmaking principles were created, including core funding, multi-year funding, and some exploratory grants. The MCF will be constituting an advisory body representative of the geographical regions of the fund in keeping with this system, to ensure that we keep the partnerships equitable, and that any concerns are addressed.
3. Ringfence the portfolio team

The MCF is built to fill a specific niche, attracting funds from donors and granting organizations who would not ordinarily be able to reach dozens or hundreds of small organizations across Africa. For this reason, it is unlikely that any of the donors to the fund would have been funding a local organization directly in a small part of a country and are now instead putting money into the MCF. If we hear about such a scenario, we would discourage any funder from diverting their funds to us.

We continue to hold to the principle that if funders are able to give directly to local organizations, they should, and we will find all possible ways to help them reach these local organizations across geographies. The MCF is only one of a suite of mechanisms that serves to hasten the localisation of funding to the point of impact. 

Lastly, we will continue to support our partners who are outside of the MCF geographies to fundraise and keep their organisations thriving and achieving impact. We will be developing a matrix to show who we have supported and introduced to partners, to ensure all the partners in our portfolio are supported.