Conservation Benchmarks partners with our clients to help them elevate to the next level of influence and impact. We offer organizational development and capacity building services including nonprofit management, philanthropy & donor engagement, communications, and outreach. With two partners, with unique backgrounds, we also specialize in providing analytic and planning tools to improve natural resources management and the overall health of the land, its flora and fauna, and the people who are its stewards. We help organizations make an impact on their community and conservation.
The Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland observed, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” The same holds true in organizational development, fundraising, natural resource conservation and land management. Determining the status quo, identifying practical alternatives, establishing best practices, measuring change, and evaluating progress – these five principles lie at the core of the Conservation Benchmarks approach.
Our Services
Our core services include:
Fundraising
Philanthropic Guidance & Leadership
Organizational Development & Effectiveness
Programmatic Assessments & Evaluations
Stewardship Audits
Natural Resource Policy & Conservation Initiatives
Strategic Planning & Project Management
What is a benchmark?
The use of benchmarks goes back hundreds of years, originating as a set of marks chiseled into stone that British surveyors used as a reference points for the calculation of heights and altitudes. Commonly a horizontal line with a vertical arrow marked the point of reference (see photo).
Lichens are frequently found on benchmarked stones. Lichens are composite, symbiotic organisms (usually a fungus and a photosynthetic partner such as green algae) coexisting in such a way as to be more successful within the partnership than if they were living separately on their own. Successful natural resource management also depends on partnerships and mutual coexistence which is why lichens are also part of the Conservation BenchMarks brand.
"Alice: Which way should I go?
Cheshire Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”