Green Entrepreneurs Assemble—The newsletter for green entrepreneurs and professionals.

A rising tide lifts all boats 🙂 

Hi, I am Akhoy, all the way from North-eastern India.

I put in 100s of hours every month to reach out and interview business people around the world, who are working towards creating a more sustainable future for the planet. Some of them are just starting, while others are generating millions in revenue. There are invaluable lessons you can learn from people at different stages of growing green businesses.

I live in a biodiversity hotspot myself that is undergoing rapid urbanization and deforestation (these two are BFF, to be honest). I understand the importance of successfully monetizing activities that are meant to protect the earth’s ecosystems.

Interestingly, there is very little first-hand content online on green entrepreneurship, which is why I decided to create this newsletter.

Podcasts demand a good deal of time to listen to, but the written format is easier to consume. I have also highlighted important words and phrases to make each interview a quick read.

Without further ado, let’s welcome today’s guest—

Table of Contents

1. Backstory

2. Circle Economy Foundation

3. Fundrasising Steps

4. Risks Associated with Fundraising

5. Example of a Fundraising Campaign

6. Tools for Prospect Research

7. CFSD and Grant Writing

8. How Fundraising Varies with Different Places

9. Sizes of Organizations

10. How Should a New Green Startup Raise Funds

11. Biggest Success and Challenge

12. Collaborate with Sarah

13. Jump to "1 Minute Summary" of the Interview

14. ***Bonus section***: Gunshots Near School

(Note: I have preserved Sarah’s voice but made light edits for readability.)

🟢 Please give an introduction. Tell me about your backstory and how you started in this field.

Sure. Hi. So, my name is Sarah Roberts. I was at university, and I was working at McDonald's. I was already a vegetarian, and I was already engaged with activism.

The French were dropping nuclear bombs in the Pacific, and I wanted to do something more. I heard from a friend that Greenpeace was hiring face-to-face fundraisers. And I asked her how to get a job, and they gave me a job.

So, I quit my prior contract, and that's how I began. Then I learned about all of the challenges that the world faces when it comes to our planetary boundaries and the planet and all of that sort of stuff. So, that's how I began.

🟢Tell me about the Circle Economy Foundation. You joined last year, right?

I joined the Circle Economy Foundation at the beginning of last year (2023). They are an organization that looks for solutions to the climate challenge through different sectors. For example, textiles, finance, food or the built environment—how do you build with nature-based materials as opposed to hard-to-abate sectors like cement and steel?

They've incubated a regenerative food and agriculture campaign. How do we minimize food waste and grow food in smarter ways that are not reliant on the chemical industry, which is often a hand in hand.

Unfortunately, now, a lot of our food is owned by chemical companies like Monsanto, Bayer etc.

So, Circle Economy Foundation works with cities, nations, and businesses to identify the different material flows for the different regions, and then how to reduce emissions and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and how to be more efficient, how to do things better.

🟢Could you please explain the different steps that are involved in fundraising?

So now I work mostly with foundations or individuals or through grants. I don't really work on government funding, but there are some really great people at Circle Economy that do amazing work.

To summarize simply, there are seven traditional stages. I've got four, which include—find, meet, ask, and keep.

So, find the donor, meet the donor, ask the donor, and then keep the donor. So, that means identifying who would be potentially interested in funding the work, then it's qualifying them.

You can look at the access that you have with them, their belief in your mission, and their capacity to give.

There's ABC (access, belief, capacity) and CIA (connection, interest, ability to give).

I learned CIA in the Global South and ABC in the Global North. These are two ways to identify whether there's a good fit.

And then if there is a good fit, you try and meet, have a call (like this), or meet in person, or catch up in some form or other. So cultivate, steward, and then ask.

Circle Economy Foundation receives funding from governments and corporates. It's just spun off the consulting arm, and so it's looking for grants and funding to do the gap reports and the work that it does.

🟢What are the things that can go wrong during fundraising? What are the risks, and how do you manage them?

Oh, good point, good question. So, "keep" is the last one I didn't talk about. It's having existing donors, so some of the risks are you haven't built a relationship with your existing donors or you don't know them.

For example, if there's not a proper handover, if you weren't handed over a relationship with an existing donor, you can't build a relationship with them because you haven't even had a chance to meet them.

So, it's really important to value the people that keep you in action and have started off enabling your good work to happen.

So, I think some of the other risks are focusing too much on new donors and not on your existing donors.

Also, not actively prospecting for new supporters, (not) reporting, (not) making the financial and narrative reports.

You know, there are many risks. You need to make sure that your accounts are up to date, and so then that needs a lot of good internal teamwork.

Other risks are… funders themselves may decide that the strategic focus is no longer relevant for them.

So, you need to either work out how to reframe the work you're doing to fit within that or to lead, however you want to lead, and then they will follow.

So, there are swings and roundabouts with that. And I've worked in different organizations—some that are reliant on donor funding so they have to follow the lead of the donors—and others that aren't relying on donor funding, so they get to actually determine the strategy themselves based on their own expertise internally.

I think it's really about how you make sure you're in regular contact and having tough conversations.

Also, some of the risks are you may say you're going to do something and then for whatever reason you're unable to do that.

That could be because someone else is doing that, or that could be an external factor, maybe something changed in the political landscape or you've decided that you need to pivot to a new strategy but the funder is giving you funding to do one thing. That's definitely happened before.

Then, I think as long as you've got an open channel as to why you're changing what you're doing and communicating that back and sharing that information and just having an open conversation, that's quite important as well.

🟢Could you give an example of a successful fundraising campaign that you led in the past and how you carried it out?

I worked with a fantastic supporter in a previous role with New Energy Nexus who gave core support. And again, that was just responding quite quickly to the questions that they asked, identifying them, following up with them, responding really quickly to the questions that they asked, setting up a call, and then delivering a proposal in a quick turnaround time.

And that resulted in much-needed support for the organization. But I think you need to be positive, you need to persist, and you need to be proactive.

Three P's: positivity, persistence, proactiveness.

🟢Are there any tools that you use for prospect research?

I'm pretty old school, and I just Google. But you can use AI now. People would do that and pop it in AI, you know, give us a list of the top philanthropic funders in India, please, or wherever it is.

I started old school, like having to go out and just, I didn't know who to approach, and in a way, fundraising is a bit the same.

You've just got to start somewhere. You have to start. You have to build a list, and then start reaching out.

When I was doing face-to-face fundraising, you put on your T-shirt, and you're standing on the street, and you just approach whoever's walking towards you and ask them a question and see if they respond and keep going and hope for the best.

🟢How do you approach ‘case for support development’ and grant writing?

With the team that are the experts in that field. I rely more on them than maybe I should. But because it's hard when they're the ones that are also delivering on the program and getting folks' time.

But, yeah, having an outline of what questions you need to answer and then co-creating that together. I've learned a lot from Tamara in my team about how she does that. She's quite good at the collective work.

But, yeah, identifying what the problem is, what the solution is, and what you're doing as an organization, pulling out key facts, keeping it succinct, bringing out those figures.

Like with Circle Economy Foundation, you know the stats. For example, only 7.2% of the world is circular. It's quite shocking. At Greenpeace, we used to say, "Have a guess what percentage of the population supports environmental issues?”

Only 3% of philanthropic funding goes towards climate-related issues. That's terrifying, considering it's the biggest environmental threat we all face, and everyone's in the same basket there or boat or whatever you want to call it.

We all live on this little spinning Blue Dot, and we're irreversibly changing our planetary systems, and that's terrifying because we will see more glaciers melting, we will see more flooding, more natural disasters. It will impact the world's most vulnerable populations, and it is happening.

We know we have a timeline. The science has been crystal clear for decades. So, we just need to get on with it with solutions, and that means we have to stop burning fossil fuels.

That means we absolutely cannot continue to build new coal-fired power stations. We need to transition the power structures and the political structures that are holding on for dear life to that.

Because otherwise, people aren't going to have a planet to live on. They're not going to have food to eat. Crops will fail. It's going to happen. So, we got to get on our bikes and get it done.

🟢You have worked in different places around the world. Are there any factors that change from place to place as far as fundraising is concerned?

Yes, definitely. Different countries have different cultural ways of communicating. You can learn about those. You know, the Americans are very clear, and they're very good at asking, and they're very, you know, they got that whole movie thing going on like “we’re gonna save the world”. The Dutch are a bit more direct. I shouldn’t generalize haha.

Everyone's got different cultural ways of doing things. I'm sure in India, Asia, Southeast Asia or Indonesia there are so many, you know, different nuances that you have to learn.

And I don't know them all. But ultimately, we need to focus—when it comes to fundraising—on securing the much-needed support that is needed to implement the campaigns and projects and programs or initiatives or whatever they are that are going to result in solutions to the climate challenge or in research.

🟢Do fundraising strategies differ with regard to the sizes of organizations?

Yes.

So, I've worked in different-sized funding organizations. If it's a capital campaign, like if you need to build a building—for example, we built the Taronga Institute of Science and Learning here in Australia.

That was a bricks-and-mortar capital campaign, but that will have a legacy for future generations that are visiting Taronga Zoo or are going to school, and they get to learn about it.

So, that was a capital campaign, and there's normally a lead gift, and you want much of that funding secured.

A wonderful woman led that initiative with a $10 million donation. She led the way. The organization had got the government funding, then we had a gap of $9 million. There was $22 million secured, so it was finding that $9 million.

But in other cases, if it's not a specific capital campaign, it doesn't always work like that. So sometimes you just have the operating budget of what the organization's working on, and then you increase that each year by whatever the cost of living is, and a bit more to adapt and grow.

I worked a lot with Greenpeace Australia Pacific. We used to grow incrementally every year, sustainably over time.

You can also do a specific call to action to incubate a new project, for example, or to set up a new office.

So yes, the strategies differ depending on what the need of the organization is.

🟢Suppose a new startup that is working for the environment wanted to raise funds, what would be your advice to them?

Oh, good question. I'd tell them to go and visit the team at New Energy Nexus (https://www.newenergynexus.com/). They support startups that are working in the environmental space or the clean energy space, and they do that through All Climate Collective in India. There’s also New Energy Nexus India.

There are some great support organizations out there if you're a startup that is looking to raise funds for a specific business.

Focus on what your vision is, what you want to achieve, and who's going to be able to help you get there. What are the risks along the way, and how do you overcome those challenges or those risks? Who's your competition? How can you either work together with them or be different in a way that is complementary?

🟢In your 20 years of experience, what has been your biggest win so far and what has been your biggest challenge?

It's a very good question. I mean, it was great when I moved to Greenpeace International, I secured some core support. The organization secured some core support.

And then the biggest challenge, on the flip side, is always securing core support.

So, most organizations need unrestricted funding, and they do it in different ways. So big organizations secure a lot of their unrestricted funding from lots of people giving a small amount.

So, for example, at Greenpeace, 90% of the income that comes in is from people giving, you know, $30 a month or $10 a month or whatever that amount is. It's a significant portion of that. Same with Doctors Without Borders.

So, it enables the organization to be independent and act where it needs to act strategically. Legacy funding is also a really important source of funding for that, people who decide to leave a gift in their will.

But having that unrestricted funding enables staff costs to be covered and paid for and to act with the experts internally. But that doesn't necessarily mean that funders who are coordinating, collaborating also aren't strategic and don't have, you know, a helicopter view of how different initiatives can, or different organizations can work together for the greater good.

One of those challenges is really determining, as an organization, where you really fit and then working with the best stakeholders to kick off an initiative or build on something that you're already doing.

🟢If you would like any of our readers to have the Circle Economy Foundation in anything, what would it be?

Circle Economy Foundation needs core funding, although they're not going to rely on it anymore, but they definitely need that core support.

And on the actual website now, there are four or five different ways to donate. We need an economic system that ensures a planet all living beings can thrive.

You can donate monthly, give a one-off gift, but there's a little area on our fundraising page and it lists, five different ways that donors can make a difference because there's different horses for different horses.

So, you can make a one-off donation, give monthly, create a fundraising campaign, so do something like run a marathon or do a bicycle ride or leave a gift in your will or give through a donor-advised fund.

Donor-advised funds are more a US kind of vehicle for giving core support, just unrestricted support, allowing the organization, and the experts internally, to build on what's working, what they see is working.

Connect with Sarah on Linkedin: Sarah Roberts | LinkedIn

🟢“1 Minute Summary” of the Interview

• Background:

  • Sarah Roberts initiated her career while working at McDonald's, driven by a passion for activism and vegetarianism.

  • Her journey into activism was sparked by concerns over global issues like French nuclear testing in the Pacific, prompting her to join Greenpeace as a face-to-face fundraiser.

• Circle Economy Foundation (CEF):

  • Joined CEF in 2023, focusing on finding solutions to climate challenges across diverse sectors.

  • CEF addresses issues in textiles, finance, food, and the built environment, aiming to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and enhance efficiency.

• Key Fundraising Steps:

  • Sarah outlines four crucial steps in fundraising: finding potential donors, meeting them, making the ask, and maintaining donor relationships.

  • Emphasizes the importance of understanding donors' interests, effective communication, and building strong relationships.

• Risks in Fundraising:

  • Risks include neglecting existing donors, overemphasizing new ones, and failing to deliver promised outcomes.

  • Sarah advocates for regular communication, transparency, and adaptability in managing these risks.

• Successful Fundraising Campaign Example:

  • Sarah gives the example of a successful campaign for New Energy Nexus involving prompt responses, efficient proposal delivery, and effective donor engagement.

• Approach to Prospect Research and Grant Writing:

  • Sarah relies primarily on traditional methods like Google for prospect research. She emphasizes the importance of having an outline for the questions that need to be answered for grant writing and ‘case for support development’. She does this with her team.

• Variability in Fundraising Strategies:

  • Strategies differ based on organizational size and objectives, including capital campaigns, operating budgets, and specific project initiatives.

• Advice for Environmental Startups:

  • Recommends focusing on vision, identifying potential supporters, understanding competition, and seeking support from organizations like New Energy Nexus.

• Challenges:

  • The biggest challenge is securing core support.

• Call for Collaboration

  • Urges support for CEF through various donation channels.

🟢The interview was supposed to end but Sarah wanted to know my story and we chatted for some more time. I forgot to tell her a few key points, so I have included them too (in italics).

The next interview is with Tim Coles. His purpose-driven company is handling multiple ecological restoration projects that collectively amount to over 100 million dollars.

He is a true green hero and has been working for the environment for several decades.

The best part about his business model is that he seeks to create economic opportunities for local communities in the regions where he carries out his ecological restoration work.