The Environmental Conservation Program consists of initiatives and program grants that pursue measurable conservation outcomes. Our goal is to change the ways in which important terrestrial and coastal marine ecosystems are used, by creating resilient and productive habitats that are effectively managed, appropriately regulated, and supported by sound science, good policy, appropriate economic incentives, and engaged stakeholders. 

As of July 2011, the Foundation had awarded more than $1 billion for environmental conservation projects. 

Among other outcomes, the Foundation has helped the World Wildlife Fund create 28.5 million hectares of new national parks, ecological stations, and biological reserves in the Amazon, changing the uses of land roughly the size of Nevada; supported Woods Hole Research Center and others in developing a computer simulation model that allows policy makers to visualize and forecast conservation threats and increase the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation throughout the Amazon region; helped re-launch the Marine Life Protection Act, protecting marine ecosystems of the California coast; and secured critical salmon habitats in vulnerable salmon systems, including conserving land within the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia and the Kol River watershed in Kamchatka.

The Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals.  Foundation staff research organizations as potential contributors to fill specific niches and achieve the outcomes within the Foundation’s program areas. Once potential projects and grantees have been identified, the Foundation may request a formal proposal.

The Foundation implements its initiative strategies with well-defined objectives. We conduct research to identify environmental conservation projects that advance our initiative and standalone goals and satisfy our four filters, which ask if a project is important, makes a difference and has enduring impact, has measurable outcomes, and contributes to a portfolio effect. We identify appropriate organizations that have compatible interests and are active or potentially active in seeking results supportive of our objectives. We then work with these prospective grantees to design, fund, and manage a series of interdependent interventions that should produce the desired outcome.

The Foundation takes an active approach in its relationship with grantees. The Foundation works as a partner to help shape, monitor, and evaluate projects in order to achieve the desired goal. The Foundation works with grantees and others to coordinate multiple actors and to address changing circumstances. The Foundation is invested in the outcomes of its grants and takes a long-term view of how each grant contributes to an initiative’s success, and in turn can positively impact future generations.

The Foundation focuses on measuring outcomes to assure that we and our partners are accountable for results and so that we can manage adaptively based upon objective information. Focusing on measurement enables us to evaluate our progress toward, and attainment of, our goals. Grants are structured so that payments are based on milestones or outcomes met by the grantee. In the end, the Foundation holds itself accountable for the effectiveness of its grantmaking.

The Foundation funds international organizations to the extent the work of those organizations advances the goals and strategies of the Foundation’s initiatives and program grants.