Sustainable financing and business planning
Project summary
Sound business and financial planning is a prerequisite too often overlooked. Well-grounded assessments of start-up and operating costs, plus potential funding and revenue sources are critical to designing effective organizations and initiatives, and comprehensive business plans can keep stakeholders centered on organizational strengths, values and objectives.
Starling Resources creates tailored business plans for environmental initiatives and institutions. We work with our partners to refine objectives, identify core competencies, and develop strategies to achieve goals, and we couple these with assessments of markets and financing options to identify realistic operationalization scenarios. Over the course of more than a decade, our team has developed and refined a bottom-up cost and revenue model to support systematic consideration of the financing required to support environmental initiatives and organizations, and we have deployed these tools in dozens of projects across numerous geographies, in support of planning for protected area networks, CSO and private sector organizations, REDD+ projects, and non-timber forest product development.
Our team assesses both existing and potential revenue streams and designs strategies to maximize revenues from sustainable sources. In addition to traditional private and public sector financing, our team has designed and implemented payments for ecosystem services in conservation and carbon sequestration, user fees, and conservation trust funds to address financing gaps.
Selected Projects
Project summary
The Bird’s Head Seascape (BHS) in West Papua is one of the most bio diverse marine environments in the world and provides critical support for more than 700,000 people. However, these vital resources are under threat from poorly planned development, destructive and intensive fishing, climate change and other factors. Since 2005, a collaboration between local governments, Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and others has successfully established more than 3.5 million ha of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) across Raja Ampat, Kaimana, Tambrauw and Cenderawasih Bay.
After providing financial and operational analysis and advisory to the early planning and development stages of the BHS initiative, Starling Resources in 2012 began to develop and implement a comprehensive sustainability strategy for the MPAs to correspond with the eventual drawdown in donor funding and NGO presence.
Our services
Working closely with local governments, NGO partners, and local CSOs, Starling Resources designed and implemented a comprehensive sustainability strategy for the BHS protected areas focusing on developing the following:
Sustainable financing
- Maximizing government budget allocations by supporting medium-term development planning (RPJMD), annual strategic planning (Renstra), and annual budgeting processes (RBA)
- Increasing independent revenue streams by redeveloping an ecosystem services tourism fee that now generates over $700,000 annually; and the deployment of the first public service agency (BLU) for conservation in Indonesia
- Designing a multi-million-dollar conservation trust fund to fill financing gaps, including financial projections, fund structure and design, and other details
Capable MPA management
- Developing regulatory and political support for the MPA management body
- Strengthening the MPA management body through the development of organizational structure and staffing, management plans, and operational procedures and systems
- Providing individual capacity development and mentoring including the delivery of numerous management-related curricula and the seconding of a full-time mentor
Constituencies of support
- Working with our partner, SeventyThree, to identify and position local beneficiaries as strong advocates for the MPAs
Project term
2011 – present
Clients and Partners
Walton Family Foundation (Client)
David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Client)
Trust for Conservation Innovation (Partner)
Conservation International (Partner/Client)
The Nature Conservancy (Partner)
World Wide Fund for Nature (Partner)
73 (Partner)
Project documents and reports
Project summary
The Palau Conservation Society (PCS) was formed in 1994 and remains Palau’s leading local NGO dedicated to protecting Palau’s natural resources. PCS focuses on supporting various constituencies throughout Palau with regard to conservation and resource stewardship. Starling Resources has worked closely with PCS over many years to support development of organizational strategies, procedures, and capacities, and to improve financial sustainability.
Our services
PCS worked with Starling Resources in order to improve its financial and operational performance. Our team helped PCS develop a variety of management strategies and organizational development tools to promote more effective organizational management and worked one-on-one with key staff to support individual management skill development. Specific strategies and tools included an organizational business and strategic plan, cost recovery strategy, and an organizational cost model to monitor revenue and expenses, as well as timesheets, staff and supervisor evaluation forms, fundraising databases and internal budgets.
Project term
2009 - 2014
Clients and Partners
David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Client)
Trust for Conservation Innovation (Partner)
Project documents and reports
Palau Conservation Society Business Plan
Palau Conservation Society Cost Recovery Strategy
The project aims to implement and scale-up social and environmental safeguards at the project site by strengthening local economic development. In order to do so, a study was undertaken to analyze the local village economy and assess the potential of seven staple agricultural commodities that were found to be fundamental to local livelihoods in the area.
Our servicesStarling Resources conducted a business process assessment across 17 villages to identify the economic potential for the project area based on existing commodity production. The analysis detailed the productivity, potential financial performance, and cultivation/processing methods of selected commodities and identified potential interventions to increase productivity and value of commodity production. Our team assessed the financial feasibility, social adaptability and capacity, environmental sustainability, and market accessibility for each identified commodity and highlighted opportunities and challenges of each, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis. An Excel-based cost-revenue model was developed and deployed to capture detailed information in a systematic and comprehensive manner. Both quantitative and qualitative data for each commodity were collected directly from local farmers. The following commodities were assessed in depth:
- Rubber
- Jelutong
- Pineapple
- Rattan
- Banana
- Laos
- Coconut
Project term
2014 and 2016
Clients and Partners- Marubeni Corporation (Client)
- PT. Rimba Makmur Utama (Client)
- Yayasan Puter Indonesia (Partner)
Project documents and reports
- Potensi Pengembangan Industri Gula Kelapa Dan Kopra Di Kabupaten Kotawaring Timur (2016)
- Business Process Assessment for Smallholder Forest-Based Commodities in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (2014)
Starling worked with New England Aquarium to develop a business plan for PIPA including assessment of MPA management costs, revenue sources and potential financial management structures to provide a sound financial footing for the management of this critical oceanscape.
Our servicesStarling drafted the PIPA Business and Sustainable Financing Plan through a process of desk research, legal and regulatory review, in-country interviews with key PIPA stakeholders and the development of an Excel-based cost model to project PIPA costs and potential revenue sources in various scenarios. Starling examined organizational structures and processes to provide recommendations and considerations for design that would most effectively support the efficient funding of the PIPA partners (civil society, public and private sectors) from the PIPA Trust, and facilitate effective MPA management and operations.
Project term2012 – 2013; 2018
Clients and Partners- PIPA Trust
- New England Aquarium
- Conservation International
Project reports
Starling Resources designed and led a REDD+ cost analysis in order to better understand the hurdles facing REDD+ development and inform discussion of REDD+ benefit sharing. The project aimed to provide accurate and inclusive implementation costs data for REDD+ projects in three countries and provide a framework to analyze REDD+ project implementation costs across project types and geographies.
Our servicesStarling Resources has assisted CIFOR in selecting the project sites and in developing the criteria for selections. Our expertise and experience have enabled us to conduct comprehensive data collection in Indonesia while also directly supporting data collection in Tanzania and Brazil through the provision of data collection methodologies, training modules, cost modeling, analytical frameworks and supervision.
Based on our previous experience and knowledge on REDD+, a standardized common analytical framework, methodology and approach to REDD+ project cost modeling were developed in collaboration with CIFOR to be used to accurately capture REDD+ project implementation costs, including in kind and transaction costs across a diverse sample of projects in CIFOR’s six priority countries. The analytical framework is further designed to allow costs from different sites to be aggregated, compared and analyzed. Lastly, the Starling Resources team is also co-authoring a CIFOR publication on framework and methodology for quantifying costs of REDD+ projects, as well as an assessment of REDD+ project implementation costs and ramifications for project investment and benefit sharing schemes.
Project term2012 – 2014
Clients and Partners- Cifor
Project reports