This report, a product of CMP’s Collaborative Learning Initiative, represents the first comprehensive attempt to systematically and rigorously assess the effects of the CS on funding success. Nonetheless, we faced numerous challenges and limitations, which provide useful guidance on what a future “ideal” evaluation of the CS could look like. We challenge future funders, practitioners and researchers to invest in the kind of long-term research needed to answer the broader question of whether the CS leads to more efficient, more effective conservation projects. An ideal study would involve randomized assignment of projects to apply the CS (“treatment”), and long-term measurement of conservation outcomes, although the costs and time required for such a study are substantial. But we think it would be worth the effort to rigorously test the CS, once and for all.
View this initiative’s webinar presentation here:
Citation: Raboy, B. E., Muir, M., Neugarten, R. A., McKinnon, M.C., and Edwards, E. M. 2020. Does the use of the Conservation Standards result in proposal funding success? Assessing the business case for the Conservation Standards by exploring the relationship between best practices and funding outcomes. Report for the Conservation Measures Partnership.
