Sponsors and Partners of the CFA Incubator:
The Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA) Incubator Launches its 3rd Round!
UPDATED DATE: Call for Proposals Deadline - Feb 28, 2025
The CFA 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 Global Biodiversity Framework targets and the explosion of interest in sustainable finance for nature. Download the Informational Flyer!
If for some reason you can't use the Google Form, please download the forms' alternative version and send them together with any attachment to incubator@cfalliance.org.
The third round of this virtual incubator will identify and support ten projects, with five of them receiving grants of up to 25,000 USD. Incubation support will include a combination of promotion, technical support, group learning, and mentorship from CFA members and staff. The third round of the CFA Incubator will run over 2025 with financial support from the Nature Transformation Fund run by Milkywire, in collaboration with Klarna.
The CFA Incubator is focused on innovative finance – not simply conservation enterprises!
The CFA Incubator supports a wide range of innovation in conservation finance, 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 application process for the CFA Incubator will take place over two concurrent windows, the Concept Feedback Window and the Open Call for Proposals.
The Concept Feedback Window is designed to provide rapid feedback and refinement of initial ideas and is available to any proponent who submits a short concept via this link. Once short concept applications are received (open until January 27) the CFA will provide either written feedback or will offer a brief discussion session (30 mins). Written feedback and discussions will occur on a rolling basis through February 12th. The Feedback Window seeks to generate stronger full proposals.
Full proposals are sought during the entire Open Call for Proposals and can be submitted without passing through the feedback process, via this link. The closing date for full proposals is February 28th, 2025.
The CFA Incubator Technical Review Committee will assess all full proposals and choose the top 10 projects for grants (5) and mentorship (all 10). The successful projects will be announced in mid-March 2025.
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. David has launched and managed various companies including a financial services company providing online marketplaces for impact investing and environmental assets, a triple - bottom - line bamboo - floor ing manufacturer in Madagascar, and a technology incubator. 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 signi ficant capacity in the field. David has spent well over a decade in Madagascar and has worked in 50+ countries. In Madagascar, he helped the country plan and execute a doubling of the area under conservation including establishing the 370,000 ha Makira Nat ural Park using REDD+ financing. 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 – he's 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, Ben 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.
CFA INCUBATOR Timeline:
Concept Feedback Window
Applications: Now - January 27th, 2025
Feedback period: Rolling until February 12th
Open Call for Proposals Applications: Now through February 28th, 2025
Cohort Announced: March 2025
Incubation Period: April-November 2025
The CFA Incubator is a recurring program of the CFA and has run two rounds supporting over 22 projects or companies through a combination of finance, technical support, and mentorship. Past CFA Incubator partners have included Conservation International Ventures, Mirova, BNP-Paribas, and others. The previous CFA Incubator cohort members are listed below!
Informational Webinar - Watch the recording
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Previous Winners
CFA Incubator Round 2 Projects - 2022
Seven finalists were accepted into the second cohort of the CFA Incubator, following a competitive open call that generated 73 impactful conservation finance concepts. The CFA Incubator’s Technical Review Committee reviewed all proposals and chose seven projects for the Round 2 cohort. Five of the seven proponents also received a grant of USD 20,000 to support their initiatives.
Incubation and Financial Support
Blue Recovery Bond - Planet Tracker – Reversing financial incentives for overfishing.
Microfinance for Community Conservation - WWF and Kiva – collaborating to bring microfinance to conservation enterprises in the Amazon and beyond.
Mwenzi Capital - Conservation Capital – Blended finance mechanism for sharing profits in nature-based enterprises in Africa.
Ocean Eye – Tourism platform facilitating micro payments to coastal communities based on wildlife sightings.
Ng’wala Inventions – Designing and operating digital solar-powered organic pesticide and fertilizer dispensing machines for rural farmers in Africa.
Incubation
Decentralized Finance “DeFi” Registries in Water Quality Markets - Ecomarket Services, AQAIX, and i2 Capital - transforming water quality markets using blockchain technology.
Nature 4 Climate Fund - Natural Strategies Investments - Bridging commercial interests and long-term sustainable solutions by effectively connecting capital with conservation.
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CFA Incubator Round 1 Projects - 2020-2021
Image: Matt Curnock
The first round of the Conservation Finance Alliance Incubator ran from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021. Five (5) projects were selected to receive mentoring and grant funding of 25,000 USD each. Funding was provided by MAVA. An additional ten (10) projects received mentoring only, for a total of fifteen (15) projects. Projects presented their work to the CFA and potential investors at the end of their mentoring process.
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Mentors and Partners
The CFA Incubator builds its mentorship roster from the CFA’s Innovation Working Group. If you are interested in becoming a mentor for selected projects or partner with the CFA Incubator, please fill out This FORM.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Questions?
Email questions or partnership inquiries to incubator@cfalliance.org.
Questions?
Please send a message to incubator@cfalliance.org
Informational Webinars
Don't miss the last informational webinar on February.
