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PASSING THE "TAXI TEST" WITH FOUNDATIONS OF SUCCESS

On a taxi ride to a meeting in Washington, D.C. recently, the driver and I were having a friendly enough conversation--until he asked the question I fear most: "So what do you do for a living?" Ugh . . . . I always squirm when a cab driver--or anyone else--asks me that question. There never seems to be an easy answer. I can't simply say "conservation"--that always requires a long explanation that, no, I don't restore old works of art . . . . I can't say "monitoring and evaluation" because I get either a blank stare back or pointed questions revealing suspicion that I work for some clandestine spy agency. I've even tried "project management consultant" but usually find myself trying to back-peddle as my new acquaintance breaks into a monologue on fads in management, referring to the likes of Peter Drucker, Jack Welch, and Peter Senge.

I'm sure I'm not the only conservation professional who has a hard time describing his or her work to individuals outside our field. I don't think it's our deficiency as communicators that is the primary obstacle. Conservation is a complex concept to describe because it is a difficult thing to do. Over the last 30 years or so--since the discipline of conservation really shifted into high gear--society has invested huge amounts of time, energy, and money to achieve conservation. But our real and lasting victories have been few and fleeting and the challenges we face have only grown.

We can't simply blame external forces on our inability to achieve conservation. Many of the obstacles are of our own making. In some quarters of the field of conservation, there seems to be a growing sense of frustration that we haven't done a very good job of reducing complexity to make conservation a more manageable and predictable science. We've had a hard time defining--in clear and measurable ways--what exactly we are trying to achieve. We haven't done a very good job of turning research into action--and learning systematically about how to make our interventions more successful. And we haven't necessarily been collaborative as a field to combine forces to address the major threats.

But there is great cause for hope. In the past few years, many of the leading conservation organizations--including Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Conservation International (CI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and African Wildlife Foundation (AWF)--increasingly have looked for ways to work together to make conservation more efficient and effective. There is new interest in learning--not only within organizations, but also among them. And there is a focus on systems for learning and measuring progress.

In this emerging environment of collaboration, learning, program improvement, and skills enhancement, my colleagues and I have established a new nongovernmental organization, Foundations of Success (FOS)--a legacy of the applied research divisions of the Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) [BSP was a USAID-funded consortium of WWF, TNC, and WRI. BSP ended in December 2001.] Our mission is to improve the practice of conservation by working with practitioners to develop and communicate tested knowledge about what works, what doesn't, and why. Our goals--or what we believe to be the three "foundations of success" in conservation--are

1. Define clear and practical measures of conservation success.

2. Determine sound guiding principles for using conservation strategies and tools.

3. Develop the knowledge and skills in individuals and organizations to learn how to make conservation more effective.

The first foundation is focused on developing precise and yet practical processes and indicators to measure success in reaching conservation goals. The second relates to determining the conditions under which different conservation actions are most likely to achieve success. And the third foundation relates to developing the capacity to do adaptive management.

We strive to achieve these goals through two main mechanisms: learning portfolios and special initiatives. A learning portfolio is a network of conservation projects--preferably including multiple host institutions--that use a common conservation strategy to achieve their goals. The members of the portfolio seek to define success relative to the conservation actions they employ while analyzing their efficacy and building their capacity to more efficiently execute projects. At present, we work with three active learning portfolios and are facilitating the establishment of many more. In the Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA) learning portfolio, for example, FOS and its partners work to bring together conservation practitioners and community members from across the South Pacific to learn about and improve on the use of community-based approaches to marine and coastal conservation.

Special initiatives are short-term, focused projects related to our three goals. These initiatives are designed to advance our knowledge on key issues faced by conservation practitioners across the globe. For example, FOS is currently undertaking a project with WCS and CI that is designed to survey key disciplines that share important characteristics with conservation to determine if there are some universal principles in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and impact assessment that are applicable to our field.

We hope Foundations of Success can make a contribution by helping to sort through some of the complexity in conservation. We aim to do this by being a catalyst for learning in action--by serving the conservation community as neutral broker, convener, objective researcher, facilitator, connector, and trainer. Given that we do not develop and manage our own field-based conservation projects, we see ourselves as a "value-added" resource that implementing and funding organizations can tap into.

Making a commitment to improving the practice of conservation through increased attention to learning is not for every organization. It requires greater investments of human and financial resources, a willingness to value mistakes, institutional structures that promote taking risks, a willingness to document learning, and investments in applied research. An organization doesn't become a learning organization just because it claims to be one. It takes hard work and commitment.

But there is a sea change happening in conservation being catalyzed by individuals and organizations that wish to pick up the pace of collaboration, systematic learning, and increased efficiency. Many major conservation organizations are restructuring themselves to be more adaptable to face current and future threats. Foundations of Success is happy to be a part of this movement and we hope we can make a significant contribution to this growing momentum to transform conservation.

As our field explores the complexity of conservation and makes it a more predictable and manageable science, our understanding of what it takes to make it work will grow. I still haven't found that magic two-liner that will communicate what I do to every cab driver and anyone else I meet. But as we all continue to improve the practice of conservation, I'm confident that it's only a matter of time before I can pass the "taxi test."

Richard Margoluis

If you're interested in contacting FOS about learning portfolios, project design, management, and monitoring, or other related topics, send an email to info@FOSonline.org or visit their website at www.FOSonline.org

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