The CFA Incubator Program is Going Strong

With 3 months completed of the 4th round of the CFA Incubator, the 16 teams are well underway in refining their strategies and business plans. Many thanks to our great partners, mentors, experts, and coaches.

Common Themes Across Projects and their Progress

• Focus broad ideas into minimum viable products.

• Testing assumptions through customer discovery and stakeholder interviews.

• Exploring philanthropic versus investor-focused funding.

• Developing stronger investment cases.

• Learning from one another's finance mechanisms, especially around endowments, blended finance, nature credits, and outcome-based finance.

Shared Cohort Learning

Many teams asked the cohort for advice on similar issues, including:

• Making conservation finance attractive to corporations, resorts and tourism sector partners.

• Identifying outcome buyers.

• Managing demand risk in new environmental markets.

• Designing sustainable endowment structures.

• Structuring blended finance vehicles.

Stay tuned for upcoming announcements on this cohort! The CFA Incubator is financed by Milkywire's Nature Transformation Fund with support from Klarna.

Posted: July 7, 2026

The CFA Incubator - Update

The CFA recently closed (Jan 31, 2020) a call for proposals for its first round of virtual incubation.  The CFA Incubator will award 5 subgrants of $25,000 each and mentorship support to the top 5 proposals received.  Announcement of the successful proposals will be made next week. Many thanks to our partners and communications channels as well as all of the amazing conservation finance entrepreneurs whom applied. We received 75 fascinating and inspiring applications from a wide geography (42 countries) and diverse organizations with over a quarter being led by women.  The overwhelming positive response to this Call combined with the quality of the proposals received has encouraged us to expand the mentoring support for projects to an additional 10 proposals.  These additional 10 chosen projects will be supported through CFA Staff and Member mentors.  All 15 projects accepted into the CFA Incubator will have the opportunity to present their ideas during the World Conservation Congress at the CFA Pavilion. We are very excited to begin the mentorship process!

 If you are interested in being a mentor and are not part of the CFA Innovation Working Group, please join the Working Group via this link.   

The following is a quick summary of the applications received: 

The diversity of applicant organizations, their geographic distribution and ideas that they contain are truly representative of the CFA membership and indicate the growing interest in the CFA from conservation finance practitioners.  We are pleased to see such a positive response and believe that we can build a solid program that will stimulate additional conservation finance activities. The CFA Incubator Technical Review Committee is currently reviewing all applications using the previously agreed upon scoring criteria. Recipients will be announced shortly.

The CFA is currently seeking additional technical and financial partnerships for the CFA Incubator, building from our current partnerships that include:

·       Fonds Français pour l’Environnement Mondial (FFEM)

·       MAVA Foundation

·       Conservation International Ventures

·       Posaidon

Please contact David Meyers, Executive Director of the CFA for further information.

Again, if you are interested in mentoring one of these amazing concepts but are not yet part of the Innovation Working Group, please join the Working Group by visiting the Innovation WG page on the CFA website or contacting the Secretariat.

Recording of the first CFA Incubator Information Webinar is now available

The Conservation Finance Alliance Incubator seeks to identify, support and promote innovative ideas and solutions to conservation finance challenges that have significant positive conservation impacts. Innovation is essential to identify and develop conservation finance solutions and is especially urgent given the current rates of biodiversity loss. This virtual incubator will identify and support five concurrent projects for incubation for periods of 9 to 12 months. Support will be in the form of grants and mentorship by CFA members.

This info session answers questions posed by members and gives further information on the Incubator program.

Upcoming: Launch of CFA Incubator

The CFA is soon launching the Conservation Finance Incubator - a new facility to provide virtual incubation services for innovation in conservation finance tools and solutions. The Incubator will support two potential tracks: 1) Commercial Ventures that seek to generate a financial return and 2) Finance Concepts that lead to policy, regulatory, or non-profit finance solutions.  All solutions must be new ideas and show clear potential for conservation impact. 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.  The CFA will announce a call for concepts shortly.  The Conservation Finance Incubator is supported by FFEM and MAVA Foundation.

Save the Date for Relaunch of Innovation Working Group

We are pleased to announce that on November 15th, 2018 at 11am EDT we will have an online meeting to relaunch our Innovation Working Group. Hosted by Chair Ray Victurine, the meeting will cover the CFA Incubator as well as have a discussion around specific interests of the group for future activities.

Please RSVP on the Innovation Working Group page.