Program Design and Project Selection

• Focus your program on a narrow range of stages and set of strategies for achieving conservation. Conservation of biological diversity is a complex and dynamic process that can take years to complete. At any given project site, there is a broad continuum of stages that a project must pass through in order to achieve an adaptive management regime that ultimately promotes conservation. The specific stages that have to occur at any given site depend on local conditions. In general, however, these stages can be characterized as follows: 1) Promoting social organization, 2) Identifying problems and threats, 3) Continuing institutional organization, 4) Developing interventions to counter threats, 5) Monitoring the success of these interventions, and 6) Responding accordingly. Furthermore, within each of these stages, there are a number of strategies that might be employed to move the project through the stage. In designing a hypothesis testing grants program, you need to select the specific stage or stages that you will focus on as well as the specific strategies that you will consider. The "pace" of the project must be determined by the local people in response to local conditions. It is better to focus on a single stage and narrow set of strategies and do it well than to rush a community through multiple stages and types of strategies.

  Examples: 1) Early on, BCN staff realized that owing to our three-year grant window, we could not fund projects that were in the initial stage of developing relationships with the community. Instead, we needed to seek out projects where implementing groups had a long history of relationships with the community and could thus focus on developing interventions to counter threats and monitoring the success of these interventions. 2) Within our efforts on the interventions stage, we are not focusing on enterprise-oriented strategies for countering threats. We have deliberately chosen not to consider other strategies such as direct protection or environmental education.

• Maintain your focus, but enable your partners to consider other strategies. In any given project location, there is generally a wide variety of different strategies that can be undertaken to move through a given stage. Furthermore, these strategies are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- your partners may need to do both environmental education and direct protection. This creates a tension in an organization that is trying to both achieve conservation and test a hypothesis. On one hand, effective conservation at a given site often requires using many of these strategies. On the other hand, effective hypothesis testing requires that you focus on one or two strategies. As a result, while you should not abandon your focus, you should also encourage your partners to undertake the proper mix and sequence of strategies warranted by the conditions at their site.

  Example: A commonly heard misperception about the BCN is that we encourage our partners to focus only on enterprise-oriented approaches to conservation and ignore other approaches such as direct protection, indirect economic development, or environmental education. In reality, while we do focus on enterprise-oriented strategies for countering threats (as above), we do recognize the need to consider other strategies and we encourage our partners to find ways in which to do so.

• Develop analytical criteria for selecting a portfolio of projects as early as possible. A hypothesis-testing grants program needs to select a portfolio of projects that will enable it to complete a rigorous analysis of the ideas in question. You can most effectively undertake this selection process by identifying the program goals, hypotheses to be tested, and sets of key dependent variables as early as possible. Loosely defining an "ideal" mix of projects will ultimately facilitate the process of requesting proposals, selecting projects, and performing analysis of the results.

  Example: The relatively narrow focus of the BCN on enterprise-oriented strategies for conservation enabled us to bypass project proposals that did not have an enterprise linked to biodiversity at their core.

• Be prepared to solicit proposals to fill gaps in your portfolio of projects. A strictly "open-access" grant making process means that your portfolio will necessarily be drawn from the groups that choose to apply to you. In many cases, however, you may find that this pool of applicants is not broad enough to permit a full test of your hypothesis. You may thus need to proactively solicit proposals to fill gaps in your portfolio.

  Examples: 1) In BCN's early stages, we received almost no proposals from South Asia including especially India. We thus had to spend time soliciting proposals from this region. 2) Despite proactive efforts, BCN received very few proposals from private-sector entrepreneurs. As a result, our test of the BCN hypothesis will necessarily be somewhat restricted in its scope.

• Assist NGOs in project design. Many of the proposals you will receive may have interesting ideas that may not have been fully developed or that only partially fit within your program's criteria. If you have allocated time and staff resources to work with the project teams, you can often revise the projects to meet both your needs and theirs. A "project mapping" or "conceptual model" approach to project design can be an effective tool for working with teams to develop projects to meet all parties' needs.

  Example: The most consistent shortcoming across the nearly 500 proposals and concept papers reviewed by BCN staff was a breakdown between a project's stated goals and objectives and the set of interventions that were proposed to achieve them. BCN staff were able to work with projects that had already received Implementation Grants, but the program would have been greatly enhanced if we had the time and resources to work with prospective grantees prior to awarding the final grants.

• Integrate monitoring plans with project design. Project monitoring efforts will provide projects with both the information that they need to manage their projects and the bulk of the data that you will use to evaluate your hypotheses. A major constraint to monitoring, however, is that field-based staff implementing the project and monitoring plans may not always clearly understand what information is most needed or how to collect this information in an efficient manner. Integrating monitoring plans into the project conceptual model and workplan will help all project staff understand what data need to be collected.

  Example: At a BCN monitoring workshop, one local NGO staff member said: "In the past, the foreigners used to come in and tell us what things to do without telling us why these things are important. Now we fell like we can develop an understanding of why we are taking all these steps."

• Take risks on projects with strong leadership and the potential for good working relationships. In selecting projects, you should generally follow the criteria that you have developed. In some cases, however, it may be worth funding projects that do not fit all your criteria, particularly if the projects have strong leaders with whom you think you can develop a good working relationships. Strong leadership is characterized by a) credibility within the community, b) willingness to adapt to a challenging situation, and c) long-term vision of how the community should change to ensure a higher quality of life. It can often outweigh initial inadequacies of design.

  Example: Many of the BCN-funded projects that have provided the most interesting results are characterized by having strong and visionary leadership.

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