The Rainforest Trust Brings Conservation Non-Profits Together
DocuSign employees designed and delivered capacity-building workshops to Rainforest Trust’s NGO partners working to protect critical ecosystems around the world.
Since 1988, Rainforest Trust has protected more than 24 million acres of tropical habitat across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. They plan to protect an additional 29 million, achieving their goal of 50 million acres by the end of 2020. Their work begins by identifying the most threatened landscapes for endangered species and creating strategies to protect these vital habitats. Rainforest Trust builds lasting partnerships built with local conservation organizations to develop and implement science-based sustainable solutions for permanent protection.
Over thirty years, Rainforest Trust has built NGO partnerships in local project areas. The staff of these NGOs comprise of committed national conservationists and volunteers who believe in preserving their natural resources by preventing deforestation. Often, they focus solely on this mission and could benefit from assistance to grow the administrative systems, infrastructure, and processes that would ensure organizational sustainability.
DocuSign Delivers Capacity Building Workshops as COVID-19 Response
The financial and organizational stresses created by the COVID-19 crisis put the future of these organizations in jeopardy. Several organizations are funded significantly by tourism dollars. They have lodging, offer tours, and receive unrestricted monies from these activities that fund their operational needs. Due to the pandemic, tourism halted and therefore the flow of tourism revenue also ceased. In some areas, organizations experience incursions into protected areas. They saw an increase in hunting, poaching, and illegal logging by people who have lost their income.
Ten DocuSign employees built upon the work started by their colleagues in 2019 to design and deliver capacity-building workshops to a group of Rainforest Trust’s NGO partners around the world. They broadened the panel of NGOs receiving capacity-building workshops in 2020. Also, the team focused on building organizational resilience.
Project Scope Reaches the Rainforest Trust’s Network
Virtual workshops presented a unique opportunity to benefit the entire network of Rainforest Trust’s conservation NGOs around the world. After the initial workshop presentations, volunteers made the recordings, content, and training materials available to help partner organizations in all of Rainforest Trust’s project areas. This project also gave Rainforest Trust a framework to support its partners and mitigate the future effects the COVID pandemic (or other future emergency situations) might have on their operations and fundraising efforts.
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If you would like to learn more about our work, subscribe to the Team4Tech mailing list. You can read about more projects with DocuSign that support capacity building for the Rainforest Trust. Other projects operate elsewhere in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. Then, you can follow the progression of other international projects and hear from the experiences of corporate and non-profit partners alike.