In 2019 we envisioned the Catalyst Fund as a prototype response to the “collaboration disconnect”—that is, the disconnect between what is generally understood about landscape conservation & stewardship (i.e., that collaboration is essential for working across jurisdictions to achieve ecologically significant impact) and how such efforts are funded (i.e., funders prioritize direct project implementation and little if any funding is focused on supporting the collaborative process).

An early grantee gave voice to this disconnect especially clearly: “Grantors are typically interested in the project. It’s like they think that the part that makes the project happen, the collaborative structure that allows us to do this work…all of that just happens on its own and doesn’t take any resources of investment.”

The Catalyst Fund’s core idea is that directing resources to the collaborative structure and process of place-based landscape collaboratives can be catalytic in positioning those collaboratives to more effectively advance their landscape visions and goals over time. A newly released independent evaluation of the program validates this idea, “affirming the premise of the Catalyst Fund,” and highlighting how collaborative capacity investments can enable greater conservation and stewardship outcomes. 

This report is valuable to us from a program perspective, but we sense it is more widely relevant too. Specifically, as we filter what emerged from the evaluation through our lens as practitioners in this field, we see a set of key insights for the field of practice as a whole:

• Landscape collaboratives are proven vehicles for scaling up, accelerating, and sustaining conservation and stewardship impact.
• A landscape collaborative’s performance (i.e., what it achieves) is directly connected to its function (i.e., how it operates)—and optimizing the former requires investing in the latter. 
• Collaborative capacity is critical to enabling collaboratives to generate a set of interconnected benefits—which build upon one another in a process that delivers conservation and stewardship impact. 
• Fostering practitioner capacity is vitally important.

Across seven grant cycles now, we have had the privilege of supporting 103 landscape collaboratives—including 36 that are Indigenous-led—and have distributed more than $2.5 million in collaborative capacity funding. As we consider what if any adaptations make sense in light of the evaluation and as we work to secure additional resources to sustain the Catalyst Fund into the future, we are pausing the program this year and will not be releasing an RFP. We continue to believe deeply in the premise of the Catalyst Fund and the critical need to strengthen collaborative capacity for landscape conservation & stewardship—and look forward to sharing more on the future of the Catalyst Fund soon.