Maliasili Initiatives is a non-profit organization that supports leading civil society organizations in Africa working on sustainable natural resource management. They provide organizational development services, funding, and technical expertise to strengthen these organizations. Their goal is to improve livelihoods and conserve ecosystems by empowering local groups to sustainably manage lands and resources. Maliasili selects innovative partners and provides long-term, customized support to help them achieve greater impact through strengthened management, governance, skills, and partnerships.

1. ORGANIZATIONAL Overview

2. Maliasili Initiatives is a non-profit organization that supports
the growth, development and performance of leading
civil society organizations working to advance sustainable
natural resource management practices in Africa.
Investing in people for nature.

3. We partner with leading organizations to provide tailored organizational
development services, targeted bridge financing, and technical expertise
to strengthen and build leaders to advance sustainable natural resource
management outcomes at landscape, national and global scales.
Strengthening leaders.

4. In rural Africa the well-being of people and ecosystems is closely
interconnected. Successful rights-based management models are
fundamental to improving peoples’ livelihoods while safeguarding
ecosystems through the sustainable use of natural resources.
Improving livelihoods,
conserving ecosystems.

5. Local civil society organization(CSOs) are essential to achieving these
outcomes. They understand the key issues facing the communities they
work with and are committed to seeking long-lasting solutions.
Driving Change.

6. Leading African CSOs and social entrepreneurs often face challenges that inhibit
the scope and scale of their impact, and opportunities for transformational
change that benefit local people and ecosystems is foregone.
Confronting organizational obstacles.

7. Our partners’ common needs include:
Identifying needs.
Stronger and better articulated
strategy
Incisive business planning and
performance monitoring
Effective governance and
management structures/systems
Improved finances
Skills and career development
opportunities
Enhanced communications
Horizon-broadening and
networking opportunities
Cultures of open learning

8. There is an existing organizational development
marketplace in Africa, but the needs of these
leading CSOs and social entrepreneurs are not
being adequately catered to.
This is because often the services are generic,
one-off and time limited, and they lack a deep
understanding of the context, technical issues and
goals that are at the heart of organizations.
We want to fill this gap.
Overcoming Challenges.

9. We approach organizational development in a holistic way, working with our
partners to jointly identify and understand what their needs are.
Together we design an integrated program of organizational development
and technical support. Ultimately, we aim to help our partners achieve long-
term and sustainable internal growth that will lead to enhanced and scaled
up external impacts.
Our approach

10. Our services and their impact
Stronger and more
effective natural
resource management
civil society
organizations and
social entrepreneurs
Local livelihoods
improved & nature
conserved through:
• Strong local
resource rights and
tenure
• Democratic
& devolved
governance
• Incentive-based
stewardship
Organizational
Development
Technical
Expertise
Services Outcomes Impact

11. Provide long-term and holistic organizational development
support to our partners through integrating our organizational
development service offerings with our established technical
expertise in the natural resource field.
Contribute to the advancement of policy analysis, program design
and innovation in African natural resource management through
select technical assignments, initiatives and research.
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What We Do

12. We seek out outstanding and innovative civil society organizations and social
entrepreneurs with high potential for scaling up their reach and impact. We evaluate
their track record and need, the nature of the opportunity, and the value we can add.
How we work
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SCREEN DESIGN DEVELOP DELIVER EVALUATE
We select
exceptional local
partners for whom
we can add value
and who share our
values
We collaboratively
design a customized
organizational
development
support process
with each partner
We support
the internal
development of each
partner through this
change process
As part of the
change process we
support the external
delivery of improved
outcomes for
communities & their
ecosystems
We evaluate our
performance
and that of our
partners, for
continuing learning
& improvement of
each change process

13. Since we began operations in 2011, we have helped our partners improve the
conservation management of 142,323 hectares of land in East Africa; facilitate
enterprises such as tourism, sustainable forestry and carbon offsetting that
have generated $169,287 in revenue for rural communities; and have leveraged
$965,000 in third-party funding to support our partners’ work.
Increasing impact.

14. Partner Snapshot
Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) helped two indigenous minority
groups in northern Tanzania obtain a customary land title to approximately
61,000 hectares of land, enabling the Datoga and Hadzabe to permanently own
and conserve these areas and protect its boundaries from encroachment. It is this
kind of work that makes UCRT the leading grassroots organization working on land
and resource rights and community-based management across much of northern
Tanzania. We are helping them strengthen their organizational management
and performance, addressing a wide range of needs we’ve jointly identified.
This includes, strategic planning, work planning and performance monitoring;
fundraising assistance; communications support and documentation; building
collaborations to scale up UCRT’s work across northern Tanzania’s savannah
landscapes; as well as other technical programmatic support.

15. Carbon Tanzania is helping some of Tanzania’s last remaining hunter-gatherers
get paid to maintain their land and its resources as they always have for the last
40,000 years – sustainably. Carbon Tanzania is an early-stage social enterprise
that has developed one of Tanzania’s first certified forest carbon projects (REDD)
in partnership with the Hadzabe hunter-gatherers in the Yaeda Valley. We are
assisting Carbon Tanzania become the leading operator linking community land and
resource rights, forest conservation and carbon markets by helping them to develop
their business plan, build partnerships across their value chain, and enhance their
communications and branding approach.
Partner Snapshot

16. In the Amboseli ecosystem the same Maasai warriors who used to hunt and kill
lions are now protecting them, and populations in this area appear to be on the
rise. Over the last five years Lion Guardians has worked in this ecosystem with
Maasai Group Ranches, implementing a uniquely successful community-based
model for resolving human-lion conflict and fostering co-existence between people
and wildlife. We are working with them to develop and implement a new five year
strategic plan for scaling up the organization to work at multiple sites covering
much of Kenyan and Tanzanian Maasailand, through new partnerships and by
training other groups to use their model.
Partner Snapshot

17. During 2013-2017 Maliasili Initiatives aims to become a leader in our field
in delivering organizational development and change management support
to outstanding or high potential civil society organizations and social
entrepreneurs working on natural resource management issues in Africa.
Building Leaders.

18. We will work through a carefully built, expanding and diverse portfolio of
leading grassroots and national civil society organizations to build their
capacity, accelerate their impacts, and strengthen their performance.
We will build a proven track record, as demonstrated by
the organizational growth and performance
of our partners.
Facilitating long-term
change & Impact

19. We strive to achieve a wide range of documented and sustainable impacts on
landscape-scale conservation, strengthening community land and resource
rights, improved natural resource governance, and enhanced livelihoods
from our partners’ activities.
Creating sustainable
livelihoods & ecosystems

20. The Maliasili Team
Our board is small but active bringing in
expertise from sustainable finance and
business development, philanthropic
investing, conservation strategy, and non-
profit and business management fields.
Our staff currently consists of three technical
and management experts with combined
experience of over 35 years working on
natural resource and development issues
primarily in East Africa, with deep experience
in organizational strategy, communications,
project planning, and policy processes.
Staff and most board members have many years of working closely together pre-dating the
formation of Maliasili Initiatives. Both staff and board have strong personal commitments to
sustainable development, social justice and natural resource management issues in Africa, and
to developing Maliasili Initiatives as a leading vehicle to address these issues.
Fred Nelson - Executive Director
Kipp Baratoff - President of the board
Andrew Williams - Senior Program Manager
Scott O’Connell - Treasurer of the board
Jessie Davie - Communications Manager
Elizabeth Singleton - Member of board

21. www.maliasili.org