Synchronicity Earth Living Endowment
“Any charity will tell you- every pound of unrestricted funding is worth ten times that of restricted funds. At Synchronicity Earth, this means we can support our partners’ core costs, fill funding gaps, and support our partners flexibly with their changing needs. Combine this with the endowment model, so your donation provides long-term support and can grow over time- this is the most impactful way to donate.”
Adam Sweidan, Synchronicity Earth co-Founder and Chair of Trustees
The Synchronicity Earth Living Endowment provides an opportunity for a one-off donation investing in our shared vision of a flourishing future for people and wildlife.
How it supports conservation
The freedom of the Living Endowment enables our team to allocate funding where it is most needed, fulfilling our long-term commitments to partners, allowing for flexibility where needs arise, and making it possible for us to explore and test new solutions.
This type of funding, unrestricted by project and therefore able to cover the ‘core costs’ for running an organisation, is the most valuable, sought-after type of support by non-profit organisations and has the greatest impact.
Our team closely monitors the needs of our programmes and partners as threats evolve and new conservation approaches emerge. Having unrestricted funding ensures we can support partners long-term as well as enabling us to grow and expand our programmes into some of the most vital areas of work.
Many of our partners require long-term core support which offers them the ability to maintain staff for longer (ensuring that skills, knowledge, and relationships which are built up over years continue to be developed and are not lost) and to carry out their work for long-term conservation impact, not purely for short-term gain.
Our shared future
Since 2009, Synchronicity Earth has been championing the overlooked players in conservation and supporting the under-funded issues through a growing network of partners. Learning from the organisations we work with and our allies across and beyond the sector, we have been refining our approach for over a decade to provide support which goes beyond funding.
Our approach is embedded in a model of creating and maintaining long-term relationships with organisations to facilitate lasting, effective change for the natural world and the communities which rely on them.
We’re not slowing down. We have so much still to learn, continuing to develop our approach, and discover new ways to engage with emerging groups and channels for change. The Living Endowment is critical for us to pursue opportunities as they appear and evolve in time with our rapidly changing world in the light of technological advancements and the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Explore new avenues of environmental impact
Through our network of partners and affiliates, we are often informed about individuals starting new organisations in line with our programme and regional priorities and can use the Living Endowment’s flexible funding to provide crucial early-stage funding for emerging projects when they need it the most.
Our affiliates, advisers, and partners are also often the ones to help forecast where the next wave of impact may come from, and unrestricted funding from the Living Endowment empowers us to follow the potential of new approaches. In the past, this led to the creations of the Biocultural Diversity Programme and Chrysalis Youth Fund.
The flow of secured funding from the Living Endowment also empowers the work we do through our strategic Culture strand. Recognising that conservation alone does not tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss, which are at the heart of our economic and cultural systems, we tap into our influential network of allies and supporters to promote and collaborate on cultural responses to the ecological crises we face.
People and organisations supported by the Living Endowment
Ameyali has over 15 years’ experience working with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and as an affiliate she has run an internal review of Synchronicity Earth’s philanthropic practice, as well as looking at ways we can influence broader environmental philanthropy, in the UK and beyond.
DOSI works to improve protection and management of the deep ocean. Flexible funding from the endowment has supported core costs, particularly communications, and the Challenger 150 programme, which coordinates a global research effort to fill data gaps on the deep sea, build research capacity, and provide knowledge and advice to decision makers.
Herp-Ghana is dedicated to the conservation of Ghana’s unique amphibians through research, awareness raising, and community engagement. As a small organisation with sizeable impact, providing core support as part of a long-term commitment frees up limited staff resources from fundraising and enables the team to focus on their conservation activities.
RSPN is the only Bhutanese led wildlife conservation organisation, and one of its key focuses is the most threatened heron species in the world, the white-bellied heron. The Living Endowment has supported building an aviary for the captive breeding programme and surveying potential heron habitats.
The ICCA Consortium is an international membership organisation dedicated to promoting the appropriate recognition and support of Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs). Our support means they can continue to provide technical and communications support their members in the Congo Basin.
SOS-UK runs the RACE Report, a research project which shows the racial diversity gap between the UK working population and staff in environment, conservation, climate, and sustainability charities and provides momentum for the sector to become more diverse and inclusive.
Building capacity within conservation
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Our approach goes beyond just grant-giving to conservation partners; when we embark on a relationship with a new partner organisation, we strive to understand what barriers there are to its growth such as lack of training, access to other funders, travel to important conferences, and time-consuming fundraising cycles.
Supporting Synchronicity Earth’s core costs through our Living Endowment allows us to provide support that goes beyond grants, including capacity building such as hands-on advice from our affiliates; helping to facilitate partner travel to global convenings; and provide training where requested (such as finance, communications, or fundraising).
Make a donation to the Living Endowment
If you are interested in making a donation which will create a lasting impact on conservation efforts where support is needed most by contributing to the Synchronicity Earth Living Endowment, please contact our Philanthropy team.