Foundations of Success

Develop frameworks & tools:fos develops intellectually rigorous yet user-friendly frameworks and tools to overcome the practical hurdles of planning and monitoring conservation projects. Using insights gained from our experience working with different teams and across disciplines, we identify the innovations and adaptations required to make project management better and easier.accomplishments include:- fos released the pause and reflect toolkit to provide facilitators with a centralized collection of resources, enabling them to find everything they need to lead and support a pause and reflect process. These resources range from instructions for facilitating stoplight diagrams to addressing common facilitation challenges. Toolkit and other-how-to guides are store on the us agency for international development's (usaid) biodiversity site httpswwwbiodiversitylinksorg fos expanded its take-conservation-to-scale initiative and developed the conservation to scale challenge tool to help conservation practitioners apply fos's framework and take their conservation programs to scale. To share the results of this work and engage others, fos hosted a symposium at the july iccb conference, launched the scaling framework at the achieving impact at scale forum in Washington dc in october; and, created the fos scaling website to make all findings and products readily available httpswwwbiodiversitylinksorglibra... fos's five-year engagement on usaid's measuring impact 2 ended in september with a closeout event in Washington dc that showcased an adaptive management case study synthesis and 30+ years of usaid's commitment to adaptive management. Thanks to fos's leadership, adaptive management is now an integral component of usaid's conservation work. - fos enabled usaid famine early warning systems network (fews net) to design the fews net 8 initiative, drawing lessons from fews net 7. This involved conducting comprehensive stakeholder consultations, facilitating results chain workshops, and developing a robust monitoring and evaluation framework. This work gave fos an opportunity to test and refine our adaptive management framework beyond the field of conservation. These broader frameworks allow fos to reach new audiences and better make the case for using adaptive management within and beyond conservation work- fos released first the major miradi desktop update in four years. Miradi share migrated to microsoft azure servers to improve system performance, improve data security, and support geo-located miradi share instances for interested organizations. The miradi team enabled single sign-on (sso) for organization to enhance user-control of data security and simplify the onboarding process for teams to start using the software. Some major enhancements include (1) the completion of a second "wizard" to support new users with development of their first theories of change, (2) the continued expansion of bulk data import functionality to enhance the ability to use miradi in combination with other common software systems used in conservation, and (3) the release of a beta version of the forthcoming indicator scorecard to support roll-up of indicator data across multiple theories of change. This is the precursor to providing similar indicator roll-up functionality across multiple miradi projects within a miradi share program space.

Foster communities of practice:fos convenes conservation practitioners, donors, and educators in vibrant learning communities. Fos helps these communities develop and promote common frameworks to catalyze cross-project sharing and learning. The result of this coordination is improved conservation practices, the ability to demonstrate collective impact, and increased societal support for conservation. Accomplishments include:- fos continued to support cross-organizational learning through the coordination of and participation in the conservation measures partnership (cmp). The 2023 themes covered a range of high-priority conservation topics, including policy impact, threats and actions classifications updates, and climate-resilient conservation.- fos organized a retreat for the cmp, providing an opportunity for cmp colleagues and others from the conservation standards community to plan, learn, share, and collaborate. Fos also led or co-led a number of retreat sessions, including ones focused on cmp strategic planning, collaborative learning evaluation, taking conservation to scale, and evidence-based learning.- fos convened a group of experts to update the standard threats and actions classifications and re-unify the cmp and iucn red list versions of these classifications. The group, led by fos, submitted a manuscript to conservation biology entitled the iucn - cmp classification of direct threats. In collaboration with the international union for the conservation of nature (iucn) world commission on protected areas (wcpa), fos leads the conservation outcomes theme and the defining & measuring conservation effectiveness/outcomes task force. Fos co-facilitated and participated in the iucn wcpa steering committee meeting held in kinabalu park in sabah, malaysia. The meeting included 34 participants from around the world representing the iucn secretariat, wcpa advisors, regional vice-chairs, thematic vice-chairs, and specialist group leads. Fos co-authored "a standard lexicon of terms for area-based conservation version 1.0, which was published in conservation biology online.

Provide training and coaching:fos helps conservation teams define clear conservation goals, prioritize strategies with the greatest likelihood of Success, and use practical tools and systems to support their conservation work. Fos provides training and coaching in methods and tools so that teams can learn what's working and adapt accordingly. By systematically planning and measuring, conservation teams can learn from their successes and failures and use resources more efficiently.accomplishments include:- to continue building on the accomplishments of usaid measuring impact 1 and 2 programs, environmental incentives and fos were awarded two new 5-year contracts: improving design, evidence, and learning (ideal), which will continue to support usaid and its partners in the application of the usaid program cycle, and building evidence for decision making (be4d), which will support usaid and its partners in using evidence in the environmental and other sectors.- fos continued to support the usfws's combating wildlife trafficking (cwt) branch to incorporate adaptive management across their portfolio. In 2023/2024, the cwt branch used their current contract to provide access to fos's services to other groups within international affairs. As a result, fos continued supporting efforts to address tortoise and freshwater turtle (tft) trafficking and marine turtle trafficking. Fos also helped the branch to (1) reflect on their progress implanting their own strategic plan through a series of pause & reflect workshops, and (2) refine the strategic priorities for their human dimensions work.- fos provided extensive coaching and training on the application of miradi and the conservation standards to the san diego zoo wildlife alliance (sdzwa) to grow both their in-situ and ex-situ conservation efforts. As a result, sdzwa has adopted the conservation standards and miradi to manage all of their conservation work. With fos's support, sdzwa has refined their core project development and reporting processes to incorporate miradi, and is helping its programs think about scaling their work. Sdzwa also worked with fos to design and co-host a session at the world association of zoos and aquariums / conservation planning specialist group (waza/cpsg) meetings on the utility of the conservation standards for this type of work. - fos helped four first nations on the northern tip of vancouver island develop the broughton aquaculture transition initiative's (bati) first healthy territory plan for salmon (htps). Bati used the plan as the primary input to their application for continued funding to support the organization and their work to decommission fish farms and protect their territories. Bati and first nation leadership noted that this was the first time they had been able to draft a comprehensive, common vision that represented the interests of the four nations and their members.- fos supported fishchoice to develop a theory of change to document the assumptions behind their work. This theory of change served as the basis for identifying objectives and indicators and developing a monitoring scorecard. Fishchoice will use this monitoring scorecard going forward to better track their progress.- since 2021, fos has been supporting a strategic planning process, working closely with the university of Connecticut, mass audubon, and other partners working on great gull island (long island sound, ny). The strategic plan represents collective thinking on how this island can continue to support some of the world's biggest breeding colonies of roseate and common terms.

Build capacity for the future:fos partners with universities and conservation organizations to prepare tomorrow's leaders to tackle growing conservation challenges. Fos develops practice-based curricula and teaching materials that provide students with the real-world skills needed to manage complex conservation projects. Together, we are creating the next generation of conservation leaders. Accomplishments include:- fos facilitated a one-day introductory training to interested participants of the international congress on conservation biology in kigali, rwanda. This training was a great opportunity to reach a broad audience of both academics and practitioners. This generated a lot of interest in the conservation standards and, more importantly, in effective approaches to conservation planning, monitoring, and adaptation.