Jenny Sansom from Environmental Funders Network and Tom Colborne from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation share their reflections on the Environmental Finance and Learning Fund (EFLF), a three-year initiative to build confidence and skills in environmental investing, and increase the amount of funding for impactful environmental projects.
Environmental investing isn’t easy – we feel we learned as much from this programme as the participants – particularly in a rapidly changing political and regulatory climate. But it is an endlessly fascinating privilege and at its heart, behind the technicalities of financial forecasts, Biodiversity Net Gain metrics and risk registers are simple human principles of trust, integrity, community and shared determination.
Jenny Sansom and Tom Colborne
Organisations working to restore and protect our natural world need access to patient, affordable, flexible investment from funders that understand the contexts they’re working in and can help them grasp opportunities. This type of early investment can be transformative – whether used to purchase land or equipment, develop technology, build teams, engage communities or design new products. However, it is in short supply, in part because potential funders can be unsure where to start, how to find and assess opportunities or how to manage the risks involved.
The Environmental Finance and Learning Fund, a three-year partnership between Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Environmental Funders Network and a group of 15 participant environmental philanthropists and foundations sought to address these challenges. The programme, which concluded in March 2025, built an investment portfolio of six environmental impact pioneers: The Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, The Real Farming Trust, Kindling Farm, Common Nature Recovery, Ooooby, and Câr-y-Môr; with £2.9m of impact-first, flexible investment to enable innovation in community-led nature restoration and small-scale regenerative farming practice.
Running alongside the funding, participant funders took part in a structured learning programme led by Esmée and EFN, using an ‘open book approach’, enabling participants to learn, in real time, about Esmée’s social investment process, as well as from expert speakers and each other. The aim was to build the knowledge, skills, confidence and networks of participant funders in order to develop their own environmental investing practice.
An evaluation of the programme based on feedback from participant funders at different points of the programme, and reflections of the team, is below. The findings indicate that, as a result of the EFLF, the majority of participants are now more confident, better informed and better connected within the sector, and importantly more of them are now actively making impact-first environmental investments.
View the summary report in a bigger screen or download it here. A link to the full report is below.
How to learn more about environmental investing
While we reflect on the recommendations of the report we look forward to continued collaboration with other environmental funders through initiatives such as the Environmental Impact Investing Group (EIIG).
To be kept informed of other learning programmes and opportunities to get involved in environmental investing, sign up to the EIIG mailing list here.
We want to say a big thank you to everyone involved - particularly to our participant funders and our external speakers. External speakers are listed below:
- Jenny Barlow, Estate Manager & Angela Williams, Development Manager, Tarras Valley
- Dan Hird, Director, Nature Finance
- Dr Daniela Russi, Senior Policy Manager, British Ecological Society
- Martin Varley, Director of Nature Recovery, Cheshire Wildlife Trust
- Robert Fraser, CEO, Real Farming Trust
- Christoph Warrack, CEO, Woodland Savers
- Ann Rooney-Evans, Head of Grants and Trusts, Woodland Trust
- Patrick Begg, Outdoors and Natural Resources Director, National Trust
- Pete Russell, Founder, Ooooby
- Tracey Gilbert-Falconer, Funding Manager, Car-y-Mor
- Wietse Van De Werf, CEO, Sea Rangers Service
- Trewin Restorick, Sizzle / Enrich the Earth
- Hayley Mole, Consultant Researcher, Independent (working with Esmée)
- Thomas Slattery, Consultant Researcher, Independent (working with Esmée)
- Keith Tomkins, Nature Recovery Development Manager, Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust
