We fund and work with a broad range of people and groups who share our commitment to conservation. There is no fixed template for what a partner should look like; if we trust them and believe they are doing good conservation work, then we will do our best to support them in any way we can. We support:

• Small, local NGOs taking approaches that are often community-led to conserve species and ecosystems.
• International NGOs working to protect a particular species or ecosystem that is overlooked and/or underfunded in one of our priority regions.
• Alliances and coalitions working to conserve an overlooked species or type of ecosystem that gets less conservation attention.
• International bodies such as the IUCN.

At the core of our work is a focus on our grantees/partners to enable them to do the best they can for the communities, species and ecosystems they seek to protect.

We often support small local organisations which can struggle to secure funding yet have the most in-depth knowledge and understanding of the local context and are using innovative and dynamic approaches to resolve conservation challenges.  Building their capacity by providing strategic funding and connecting them with appropriate international groups or support is a key priority.

Trust is key to building relationships with local groups. We look to identify partners who share similar values to us and those that work well with other groups that we respect. The majority of our contacts have come through word of mouth.

Once the relationships develop, we often find local partners to be very open about their work, what works and what does not and about what they need in order to be more effective.

At Synchronicity Earth we try to support and bolster alliances where they exist already, by providing:

• Core support to build capacity
• Links to potential new funding sources
• Access to a network of knowledge and expertise
• Our voice to amplify key messages

Where there is a need for better coordination, we work to develop a more joined-up response by creating programmes to bring effective conservation groups and funders together. Our programmes are designed to:

• Unite donors and foundations around a strategic and coordinated action plan to address an overlooked and underfunded conservation issue
• Provide a template for collaborative conservation for both donor and conservation community
• Amplify the impact of the most effective local conservation organisations

Understanding what works and feeding forward

We help our partners develop monitoring systems that work for them and follow progress toward conservation targets through our tailored reporting system. By building close relationships and discussing progress, as well as challenges and set-backs we develop an enabling relationship. In addition to conversational catch-ups at regular intervals, Synchronicity Earth also undertakes annual reporting which feeds into our analysis process.

Understanding complexity and the need for long-term support

Conservation work is complex and often long-term, as such we try to ensure measures of success are meaningful. Sometimes this will mean capturing steps towards ultimate goals and it will only be after years of work can we say, for example, that a species has been brought back from the edge of extinction.

As we develop each of our focal programmes further, we are working to develop our impact assessment processes to assist donors and to inform our work.