National Fish & Wildlife Foundation’s Coral Fund

It can be relatively straightforward to assess the effectiveness of a single conservation project, but how can we know the cumulative impact of multiple projects? This is an issue with which many programs and donor agencies struggle. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is one of these agencies. In 2006 -07, FOS worked with NFWF to develop an evaluation system that will help NFWF gauge impact across the various coral reef habitat and species conservation projects it supports through its Coral Fund. To do this, FOS helped NFWF and NOAA, its partner agency, to develop results chains and associated indicators for commonly found target-threat-strategy combinations in the NFWF Coral Fund portfolio. FOS and the NFWF team researched information in project files to analyze gaps in the portfolio, cross-project learning potential, and future capacity needs – all in the context of the Coral Fund’s results chain.