Nature Impact Collective’s first Impact Report has landed! In line with our commitment to do things right from the start, the report explains what ‘nature impact’ means to the Collective and how we are tracking after making our first gifts in 2024.
Growing philanthropic funding for nature is an important goal, meaning that we look beyond our own membership for the resources nature needs. If a dollar from Nature Impact Collective leverages more funding for nature, that’s a dollar well gifted.
In our first year we were delighted to see our gift to one organisation matched by another donor. We were also happy for funded organisations to use this opportunity to bring on board additional funders or to encourage flexible funding arrangements.
The biggest potential source of leverage is where the organisations we support successfully advocate to the government for an increase in funding. With biodiversity receiving less than a 1% share of the Federal budget, there is a critical need for environmental organisations to push hard for more money for nature protection, restoration and management. Two of the organisations supported in the first gifts round are doing just that: Country Needs People and the Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance.
Earlier philanthropic investments in Country Needs People’s very successful campaign for bipartisan investment in the Indigenous rangers and Indigenous Protected Area programs continue to reap rewards. Most recently, the Albanese Government has announced over 1000 new Indigenous ranger jobs across the country, to the tune of $355 million over four years. Now that is serious leverage!
The newly formed Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance is aiming for billions of dollars for the repair of the Murray-Darling Basin. That is what it costs to restore a river catchment when it has been over-extracted and over-cleared. We would need to invest every philanthropic dollar in Australia to pay this bill. Or, philanthropy can back the Alliance and other worthy organisations advocating for an improved, resourced Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
View the Nature Impact Collective 2023-2024 Annual Report
Photo: Budj Bim Ranger Ben Church_Photo by Annette Ruzicka. Courtesy Country Needs People