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Sponsors and Partners of the CFA Incubator:
The Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA) Incubator Program
The CFA launched the Incubator (“CFA Incubator”) to foster idea development and early stage pilots for creative solutions to conservation finance in order to demonstrate the economic feasibility of providing new financial innovations that advance the CFA’s conservation mission, benefit the public, and contribute to the understanding of the potential effectiveness of these creative solutions. The CFA Incubator supports a wide range of innovations including conservation finance ventures that can generate a financial return, and conservation finance concepts that lead to policy, regulatory or non-profit finance solutions.
All projects that enter the Incubator must be innovative approaches to conservation challenges that use finance or economic tools to create clear conservation outcomes or sustained conservation financing. Concepts can be from any sector (public, private, etc.) and can include ideas generated directly by CFA members, partner organizations, and independent organizations and entrepreneurs. Projects may or may not seek to return a profit yet must return long-term financing or clear conservation impact. Solutions can be designed as independent companies, financial products, or other mechanisms. Submissions can also include policy or regulatory innovations that create enabling conditions for profitable conservation investments, including such ideas as new regulatory markets. All accepted Incubator proponents will participate in an intensive training program and mentorship support.
The focus of the CFA Incubator is “idea” and “early-stage” projects. Strong candidates for these solutions are entrepreneurs or non-profits willing to invest their time and their own money to succeed. Desired outputs for the incubation period might include the preparation of a business plan, financial model, an investors’ deck, a completed feasibility study, an implementation guide or outside financing.
The CFA Incubator has now launched 3 rounds:
Incubated projects and companies receive mentorship from the CFA Incubator co-leads, Dr. David Meyers and Dr. Ben Guillon, as well as mentorship and targeted expertise from the CFA Incubator Manager, CFA members and partners.
Dr. David Meyers is the Executive Director of the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA). He is an environmental finance expert and entrepreneur with more than 35 years of experience in sustainability, business strategy and management, environmental economics, international conservation and development, training, education and research in ecology and evolution. David is the co-chair of the IUCN WCPA Sustainable Fin ance Specialist Group and a lead author of the Practice Guidance for Protected and Conserved Area Finance. From 2012 until 2018, David was a Sr. Technical Advisor for the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN/UNDP) where he led the methodology development including the concept of the Biodiversity Finance Plan. At the CFA , David has expanded membership, supported conservation trust funds, led two rounds of the CFA Incubator, provided strategic advisory for the Global Fund for Coral Reefs, and built significant capacity in the field. He holds a Doctorate in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy from Duke University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.
Dr. Ben Guillon brings 20 years of conservation finance experience and a unique blend of conservation science and financial expertise to his role as a conservation finance pioneer. His career spans from deploying capital for the World Bank's nature conservation enterprises in Africa to managing a $50 million private equity fund at New Forests focused on environmental markets. As founder of Conservation Investment Management, he helps investors put their money to work protecting nature while generating returns. When he's not structuring conservation deals, Ben dedicates his time to mentoring the next generation of conservation entrepreneurs. Ben has been a coach for the CFA Incubator since its inception and leads training programs for the U.S. Forest Service on innovative conservation business models. An angel investor in nature-tech startups himself, he combines hands-on investment experience with his background in veterinary medicine and environmental economics to help conservation entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality. His work spans from developing the first private species conservation bank in Colorado to helping corporations design and implement strategic conservation investments in forest health and biodiversity protection.
Questions?
Please send a message to incubator@cfalliance.org