The Conservation Finance Alliance, together with strategic partners, seeks to establish the Conservation Finance Partnership Fund (CFPF) as an independent global Conservation Trust Fund (CTF). The Fund will have two principal objectives: 1) to support Conservation Trust Funds through a pooled fund architecture and 2) to build global conservation finance capacity by providing a source of sustainable finance for the CFA.

Application Process

Please send a CV and a cover letter highlighting relevant experience and daily rate to secretariat@cfalliance.org by EOB March 5, 2021. Please include the subject line: Partnership Fund.

These Terms of Reference seek for a consultant or consulting group to work with the CFA leadership to achieve the following tasks:

1) Work with the CFA Secretariat and Business Planning Task Force to clarify and expand the details of the concept of a Conservation Finance Partnership Fund (CFPF or the “Fund”).

2) Review existing pooled Funds such as the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund, Micronesia Conservation Trust, and Nature Trust Alliance to inform this study.

3) Identify the appropriate locality for establishing the Fund that achieves the Fund’s goals at a minimum of administrative and tax costs.

4) Determine how the investment management structure of the pooled fund concept would operate, outlining how such funds would be managed within an investment firm, and the reporting systems that would be available to meet the needs of the various member funds. Articulate the specific services that the CFPF would offer to the participating CTFs.

5) Explore the key governance considerations in creating a pooled fund within the Conservation Trust Fund community, including considering implications for each participating CTF’s fiduciary responsibilities, and propose the governance structure for the Fund.

6) Explore “Know your Client” and other anti-money laundering and Securities rules to assure that the Trust Fund is able to manage the endowments of other funds – and develop an appropriate asset transfer/management strategy in response.

7) Expand the CFPF concept to include practical details that would go into an operations manual and include in final report.

8) Identify 10-20 small to medium CTFs with under USD$10 million in assets and conduct interviews to ascertain their top priorities for pooling (building on Winter 2015, see below), as well as any legal or governance constraints that would need to be accommodated for them to participate.

9) Develop a financial plan for the Fund, including capitalization levels, number and size of participating CTFs, costs and cost sharing, impact of foreign exchange, and net revenue projections. The plan should include sensitivity analysis and cost-benefit analysis.

10) Conduct a stakeholder analysis to assess how the plan might be viewed by CFA stakeholders and key audiences.

11) Prepare a short PPT presentation that identifies the benefits of the Conservation Finance Partnership Fund to potential client CTFs.

12) Prepare a PPT presentation and spreadsheet that quantifies the overall value of this pooled approach to the CFA, Client CTFs, and other key stakeholders including donors. This is a fundraising document.

13) Prepare a draft Trust Charter that captures the main conclusions of the study.

14) Prepare a final report that summarizes the findings and includes the other work products as annexes.