So welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 132. Hey, everybody, today we're going to try something a little different yesterday on session 131. I spoke about what type of eco warrior do you think you are and what type I thought I was and we use the example of James Pivram, the interview last week last Wednesday. And we want to see what kind of equal or equal warrior we were and there were different types. Today, I want to talk about one specific one that is the donator that or the donor, I guess, but I like a call the donator because it sounds more like an Arnold Schwarzenegger thing. Anyway, that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what people do when they donate. I want to get feedback from people. And that's going to be our episode today. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast, your voice for the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, founder of speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. That's right. Everything I do in my business has to do with protecting the ocean. So welcome, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us. Today's episode, we're going to switch things up. Normally, I call this species Tuesdays, but I've been doing species Tuesdays for a while. And I kind of want to change things up a little bit, I think. And I don't know exactly what this Tuesday will be about like every Tuesday, but I like the idea of talking about different types of ocean conservationists or different types of ocean conservation that you can be or how you can act. So maybe we'll go on that theme for a little bit on Tuesday. So just to kick it off today, we're going to try something a little different with how we do things. We're going to try something. We're going to talk about what people do, like how you can -- sorry, I'm going to step back a little bit. What we're going to try and do is we're going to try and look at the way people donate. And the way the funding model is set up for ocean conservation. And I want to talk about it because there's never a lot of funds available for ocean conservation. I'm going to tell you that right now. There's not -- as a marine ecologist, I don't get paid the big bucks to do this kind of stuff. In fact, you know, this is my business, but right now I'm just doing it as a passion. And the way I wanted to do it as a business is because I want to dedicate my full time to educating people on ocean conservation. Now, there are a lot of other -- there are a lot of models out there that people can use to donate or spend their money on. And I kind of wanted to go on that because I want to -- it's not necessarily a guide, but I want to talk about what we do or what people can do and how they can donate and what you feel comfortable. And I want to get feedback from you at the end of the show in the comments section on our show notes at SpeakUpForBlue.com/session132. I want you guys to comment on how you like to donate or even if you do like to donate. What do you look for in an organization? Because that's kind of what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about it on the side of a marine ecologist, somebody who's on the board of three different nonprofit organizations, charitable organizations. And to just talk about -- because I'm getting into sort of the fundraising aspect of these nonprofits. And I always find it interesting when you're -- on the other side, when you're asking for money, you're asking people to donate the money that they earn, you know, eight hours a day or more, and they spend their life earning, you know, we're asking people to donate to us. And I always find it, you know, interesting because, you know, we always complain. We never have enough money. We never have enough funds to do certain things. Yet, you know, people we ask for people to donate their money and how do we -- how do we do that? You know, how do we ask for somebody to donate their money? What do they look for in people? You know, we want to be trustworthy on all the boards that I'm on. We want to -- you know, we do things out of the goodness of our heart. We establish this nonprofit organization and we continue to work on this nonprofit organization so that we can better the environment or we can put processes together to better the environment. I'm part of -- like I said, I'm part of three boards. The one is in Seattle at a Puget Sound. I'm, you know, we -- the board of directors on there and the organization is called Pacific Marine Research. And it's a -- it's a board where -- it's an organization where we take students out in the local Puget Sound area in Washington state and we take them out on a boat and teach them what the life of marine scientists is. What we do is marine scientists and teach them about Puget Sound, the different aspects of it and how they can be good marine stewards. And that's essentially the program. It's been running for over 30 years. We've educated over 100,000 students and they've come back as teachers and as parents and their kids are in those -- those programs. It's kind of cool to see that. It's a great, great program. Of course, it's run on a shoestring budget. We do pretty well. Part of the -- the way we earn revenue or earn revenue to run the program is through the -- I guess the field money, field trip money. So part of that's in there but we make it as cheap as possible so we can get as many students in as possible. We also run a scholarship fund for students who can't afford on a regular basis to run those programs and things like that. So all the -- all the money goes right back into the program. It goes into staff to pay for that program. It goes into the materials for the program. We have aquariums. We have stuff that sets up on the boat and all that kind of stuff. So that's what we do in that one organization. The other organization is called PACMARA, the Pacific Marine Research Analysis Research -- Marine Research Analysis -- Pacific Marine Research and Analysis Association. Pacific Marine Analysis and Research Association. I always get that mixed up. Anyway, PACMARA, what we do is essentially we basically connect science with policy. We help the ocean planning community plan for a marine protected areas, plan for to use the -- to divide up the uses in the ocean essentially. So we offer services to people who are training to use specific software or tools that will help model those areas or configure those areas. We also run workshops with governments and organizations to help them better participate in planning stages and so forth. So it's a really -- it's a really interesting and necessary organization. It's why I joined the organization as a board director. I'm actually VP of that. We're going through a strategic plan at this point and trying to figure out where we need to go because our organization is a little different than other organizations. We'll talk about this in a bit, but we're an organization that not necessarily cater towards people because we don't just go out and save iconic species or focus on species at risk or the polar bear, males, dolphins, sharks and things like that, which are all great organizations who do such things. What we do is we make sure that we provide training and tools and access to information for the people who plan those marine protected areas, that protect habitats, that protect all the species. We provide tools for them to -- and capacity for them to actually be able to do it properly and work the tools properly because a lot of these modeling tools that people use to plan marine protected areas and just marine spatial planning in general are very complicated to use. If you don't know how to use them or you don't have experience in using them, they can -- you can misinterpret the results. So we make sure that the people who do use it are trained and that they can interpret the results correctly. And that's what we do. So that's one of our -- and then we also put together these documents that will help planners put things together like how to engage stakeholders, which are extremely important when you're putting together marine protected area process and so forth. So we do a lot of that kind of stuff. So that's the second board that I'm on. And that traditionally is difficult to get funding from regular bodies because we're -- like I said, we're not necessarily a traditional organization. We don't necessarily have -- our results don't necessarily reflect directly on marine protected areas, but they build capacity for governments and organizations to put it together. So there's not -- it's not like, oh, we save so many dolphins or we save so many whales. It's difficult to translate for people who are donating to say what do we do? You know, like what can you tell me that you do? We can say we've trained a certain amount of people and we've helped a certain amount of governments to get better in what they do and how they plan their protected areas or how they plan their oceans, but it's very difficult to come up with any kind of evaluation that people can really sink their teeth into. So we have challenges in that aspect. Now the third organization is more of an organization -- it's called Coastal Zone Canada. I just joined the board last -- late last year, in the fall of last year. And it's one of those organizations that really get together to put a conference together. In fact, we're actually putting a conference together in Toronto in 2016 called Coastal Zone Canada. The theme is collaborations of governments and stakeholders and so forth. And I'm really looking forward to it, but we essentially work on, you know, planning that organization. And we're in a little bit of a point where we want to engage more of our members. So we have an association. People pay membership and they get a little discount on the conference and so forth, but they get access. So we're in the process of really engaging a lot of our community, or trying to figure out how to engage our community by sharing information within Canada and international. It's an international organization, even though it's called Coastal Zone Canada. We have people coming from all over the world to these conferences, including the United States, South America, Europe and so forth. So it's a really cool organization to be a part of. But again, it's a little different. It's not necessarily something that you would get individual funders or individual donors to come up and say, Hey, we want to, you know, pay for your conference or we want to do this. So it's a bit of a traditional, it's a bit of an untraditional sort of model that's set up. It's a nonprofit organization, I believe it has charitable status. I have to check that. But it is a nonprofit organization. So these are three just different, very different types of organizations, ones in education, the other ones, more of services and government and providing building capacity for certain organizations. And the other one that Coastal Zone Canada is really to bring people together to share information. And that's what that one's all about. So very different goals, very different services, very different attitudes, different demographics of who you're targeting and so forth. And then of course, it extends beyond that with other organizations that I'm not a part of and that are very good and do some very great things. And to don't, but when you come from a donating, a donor perspective, you look at it and you say, hold on a second. Like, how do we like from for me when I donate, I want to make sure that my money goes towards the actual project. And that's what a lot of people do. But the difficulty about that is, how do you fund my question is, how do you fund a project without funding staff? People don't want it to go just paying people because I have a feeling that there are a lot of people out there that don't trust nonprofit organizations or people that they don't need or charitable organizations that they donate their money to. They think that it goes towards people's bank accounts because there've been, there've been in other sectors, there have been a lot of examples where people have donated money and these, these executive directors and high level executive staff earn, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, for breast cancer societies and so forth and medical societies. And I'm sure it's happened where there's been a bit of corruptness in, in the nonprofit organization, but or the, the, the marine sort of conservation area, but I haven't, I don't know specific examples. So I have a feeling a lot of people distrust donors distrust, giving money because they want to know where their money goes. And I think the, the, the organizations that really do well are the organizations who keep a relationship with their constituents, with the people who are on their email list, with the people who have, who have asked for materials and things like that, and tell them exactly where their money goes to. Um, and usually, um, it's the smaller organizations that are very transparent because they want to say, Hey, this is where this money goes to. It's going most of the time it goes directly to the project and whoever's working on that project, it goes to them because it pays their salaries. It doesn't, it's, I don't know, you know, you don't get a lot of money donated to those smaller organizations that are run by two or three different people. You get a lot of money that are donated towards like larger organizations like Oceana, the Ocean Conservancy, World Wildlife Federation, um, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, all those organizations, those sort of larger organizations that have, you know, 200 plus staff, um, and do some great, great work. Uh, but they're, they're large and they have explicit, they have dedicated departments for that, um, for fundraising, right? Where they have people who are contacting you, they call you, they run events like World Wildlife Federation here in Toronto, uh, run a climb that the CN tower event. So people will raise money on their own towards people, uh, say, Hey, I'm climbing 75 flights of stairs up to the structure of the CN tower. Um, will you donate money? It's for good causes for World Wildlife Federation and they're saving endangered species like the polar bear, the Siberian tiger and so forth. And people are like, Oh, okay. And they donate to their friends who are doing this kind of event. Um, but you have a whole department that's in charge of that. It's not the scientists that are doing the work that are in charge of that. They get their salary gets paid out of that probably or portion of it. Um, but the rest of it, a lot of it goes towards running the organization, one, running the programs and of course paying for people that are part of those programs. And it's a very, probably a lot of money that gets made during those times because the organization is large enough and has a good enough name. Um, it's reputable, uh, for most and people will understand it for the people who are not, uh, they're not in the really know of ocean conservation organizations. They don't know the politics. And I'm not saying World Wildlife Federation is bad or any of these big organizations are bad, but a lot of the people look at them and say, Hey, I know that name and I know they do good work because I've seen them around. They're big. They've got posters everywhere commercials and so forth. And they've been around for, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. So they do really well in that. Um, you know, whereas smaller organizations, you're like, do we trust them? They're smaller. They don't really have that much capacity. What are they really doing? Um, you know, in terms of what their projects are doing? What are their, you know, what are their results? Do they have money? Do they, how do they work with money and all that kind of stuff? People may not tend to, they may tend, they may not, uh, donate to those towards those organizations because they're not as big. They don't have as much of a, uh, sort of quote unquote reputable name. And I find it interesting, um, to look at those different things because I find a lot of times with the smaller organizations, you can connect more with the, with the people who are involved and you can ask questions and you talk to those people and they're very passionate about their projects because I've talked to them. Um, and to be honest, I want to team up with them and that'll come in a few weeks when I, when I dedicate a whole podcast to what, where speak up for blue is going to go. But when you, you know, when you look at those smaller organizations, you can look at their projects and what they've done. They're very transparent of what they done. They're very proud of what they've done because they've done it with small budgets and a small amount of people, whereas a, or larger organizations, they do things maybe on a policy level or on various different levels from the ground, say to like a community beach cleanup to, um, policy to say, Hey, we found a lot of, uh, styrofoam in the, and this beach cleanup and we keep constantly seeing this. Let's start looking at ways to reduce how that waste is, uh, disposed and make sure that we reduce the way it's, it's disposed and how it gets into the environment. And let's really look at this thing. So they look at it from a policy perspective, they work with government, they lobby the government, and then it goes there. So those loads are large organizations kind of hit conservation on a variety of different levels. Whereas a small organization may not have that capacity because it just doesn't have that amount of people. It may have the capacity if it collaborates with a lot of organizations, but it doesn't have a lot of capacity in terms of the staff So with that said, um, I'm kind of ranting and going on, on tangents here. So I apologize. Um, but this is something that's, that's important to me because, um, a lot of these organizations, World Wildlife Federation, the, the bigger organizations, they don't mean to speak badly of them and I'm not. Um, they're very good organizations and they do a lot of great things, but their revenue generation system is better because they can constantly generate that revenue. They have bigger budgets because they're a bigger organization and they dedicate staff towards that. The smaller organizations have a difficult time getting funding. Um, there's a couple of things that, that really restrict them from getting funding. One is they're small. So organizations that foundations that actually fund organizations, um, may see that, Oh, they're small. They may not have the capacity to, um, handle money or they may not trust them in handling money, even though they have some results or they may give them less money because they do more with less. Right. Um, the other, the other challenge is the fact that the smaller organizations don't have the people who are experts in raising money. So when you write out a grant, you know, and you send it to a foundation, it may not be the best grant compared to others and you're competing with a lot of other smaller organizations. Right. Um, so it's very difficult in that kind of aspect. Uh, and what happens is, you know, you say, well, why, why don't we see a lot of smaller organizations collaborate or even amalgamate into one larger organization. And that make that would make sense. However, each different organization has a different purpose. Um, even though they might look for the same result, they have made a different way of doing things, um, different way of fundraising, different way of actually doing specific methods. Sometimes just the politics of both organizations, they don't mesh. Um, or the fact that there are some people who just say, no, this is my organization. I want to do it the way I want to do it. And I'm just going to try and get funding based on that because people like me and, and that's the way it goes. Um, so it can be very difficult in that respect. And some of my, you know, in, in a lot of the organizations, we've talked about teaming up or joining other organizations, amalgam, merging organizations. And a lot of times we, we steer away from it because we, we want to keep our identity. We want to keep our programs the way they are. We don't want to have to change or compromise on them. Um, we don't want to compromise the quality of content that is actually put into these programs. So we want to make sure that those stay proper. Um, so that it could be, you know, you kind of wonder about that, right? Like you, you know, you see a lot of smaller organizations and you're like, oh, well, why don't they, they, they come together? Well, they have very different ways of doing things a lot of times. And that's why they don't come together. But then what happens if it's the same organization, say there are multiple smaller organizations that are dedicated towards sea turtle research or sea turtle conservation. Well, now what happens is there's only a number of foundations that will provide money for those organizations. And, uh, then what happens when they, they actually put out, they actually put grants in for those foundations, they're competing against each other. So there's the, the case to put amalgamate or emerge them actually makes sense when you're actually doing the foundation, when you're applying to foundations. A lot of them will collaborate on projects, but, um, that becomes a problem. And it's the same thing with individual like academics. You know, when you're, when they, you've got academics who have specific areas, conservation, health and all that kind of stuff. And they, in the States, they go for NSF funding, National Science Foundation funding. And that funding is ever being cut as it is with the different politics going on in the States about more of an anti science politics. So you see a lot of that kind of funding getting cut. Uh, and so you're getting more competition between professors and researchers, um, and less money being divvied out because of that. So it can be affected the way there's a lot of people out there who think the way that the funding model is going right now is just dead in the water. It's, it's not a successful funding model where people are competing for different funding because to be honest, there's just not enough foundations. There aren't enough foundations in the world to support the amount of work that needs to be done to save the ocean. Uh, that could be difficult. And especially like you look at the difference between the foundations in the States and the foundations in Canada. They're just the number of foundations in the States are just this is quite 10 to a hundred times more. So in Canada, even though we have a longer coastline, um, more water to protect more water to manage, we have less funding from an individual basis. We rely heavily on government, which is again is underfunded in that kind of area and understaff to actually protect our oceans. And this is why we start to become behind on these things because we just don't have the capacity to do so. Or we're behind the, you know, we're behind everybody else to get up to speed to protect our oceans. You know, so the foundations for nonprofit organizations, conservation, non governmental organizations is very difficult for them to survive. And you see a lot of them go bankrupt or a lot of them just collapse or dissolve just because the funding is just not there a lot of times, not because the mission isn't worthwhile. The mission is usually worthwhile, but they can't get it. So with all that said, it's, um, I guess what I, what I'd like to do is encourage people to become the donor or the toner as I like to call it. Um, but become a donor for organizations, look up organizations, do your research, call people that are part of those organizations and say, what am I funding? Where's my money going through? I'm interested in, in sponsoring something or I'm interested in putting a little money here and there, you know, look up individuals even, you know, I got Andrew David Taylor, who's on Patreon, just like we are on Patreon. You've got, um, Wallace Jane Nichols, who's through, you can donate, you can support his work who and what Wallace, he's also a, he's a sea turtle biologist. He has a doctorate in sea turtle biology, but he also is heavily involved in just conservation and amalgamating how we've, how people react around water. Um, he calls, he has a book called the blue mind out and, you know, he really focuses on how our mind benefits from blue water and we can actually do things. You know, we, we actually need water to make ourselves feel better, healthier. Uh, we do healthier things around water. We are more in touch with nature around water. We take care of our planet better around water. Um, he talks about the reasons why when we go away, we want to be around water. We want to be on a beach and it's just relaxing and the color blue is relaxing. So he goes into all that neuroscience that really, especially focusing on water and the sort of the blue mind and how it actually benefits us. He's doing some great work. Not only does he work on blue mind, but he works with sea turtles. He works with bringing organizations together. Um, he just does a great job and you can fund him through the ocean foundation and the ocean foundation provides the administrative work for him and he does all the work in terms of the ocean conservation and the, the, the ocean foundation provides sort of that charitable status for his work that he does. And it's just phenomenal. Uh, uh, can Canada tie, tied, tied Canada here is the, a similar foundation to the ocean foundation where you can put scholarships together. You can put money together. So if you all get together and you put a fun together, you can do it through tied to Canada. They'll handle all the administration. You can put in the money and you can say what it's for if it's for ocean and things like that. So there's a lot of things that you can do as a donor to really focus in on a specific aspect of the ocean and ocean conservation. It'd be fantastic if we got together and we put together a fund, you know, like a speak up for blue fund or something like that that goes right towards smaller organizations that can really put, you know, do things and change things locally. Um, so anyway, so I guess the final question that I have for you guys is what do you guys look for as a donor? Do you, one, do you think about donating ever to who would you donate to? Would you donate to a large organization or a small organization? Um, what sort of makes your mind take in terms of how you feel about donating to a nonprofit organization, charitable organization? Do you look for a tax bracket or a tax receipt or is it one of those things where you're like, Hey, you know, if I see like a social enterprise, such as speak up for blue, if I see a social enterprise, like speak up for blue, um, put out a product and some of that money from that product goes towards ocean conservation projects, uh, then I'm willing to do that or I'm willing to support an organization that is willing to put people together and take on organic, like, you know, team up with organizations, small organizations who don't have the capacity to do some virtual work, such as data analysis, data reporting, things like that and pay, uh, speak up for blue to do something like that. I'm not asking you. I'm like, I'm not asking that's, that's not what I'm going. Um, but it's something that I've always thought about. Would you, um, pay for a product or pay for a service bias, uh, a social, uh, enterprise to do that kind of work? You know, that's that where you wouldn't get a tax receipt. You know, does the tax receipt really matter? So those are the questions that I'm looking at for feedback by the, you know, by you guys that speak up for blue community. See how you feel about being that type of ocean conservationist is the donor because maybe you don't have time to go out and do field work or be a citizen scientist or, um, you know, participate in research. Um, maybe you want to put your money towards something. You want to see your money do some good. What, what are you looking for? What return on investment are you looking for in that kind of thing? So if you go to speakupforblue.com/session132, you can tell us, uh, tell me what, what kind of ocean conservation, if you're the donor and what kind of, as a donor, what you look for in an organization or how you want to spend your money as a donor, even if you do, if you don't, that's fine too. I understand. But that's what I'm kind of looking at. Um, I want to know what you would be like as a donor. Uh, if you become one, or if you already are one, what do you, what do you look for when you donate? Um, so thank you very much for listening. I appreciate it. I know this is a bit of a tangent. I hope you like this kind of episode because this is the stuff I really want to get into. I really want to discuss because of the stuff that we actually can do things about. And of course, donating money is a huge aspect of, of conservation these days, the way the model's done. So, um, thank you very much for listening to speaker from Blue Podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. I want to hear your feedback. Happy Tuesday and happy conservation. [Music]
