Driving conservation and climate capital toward solutions most likely to succeed, generating valuable benefits for nature and people.
Conservation Science. Systems Strategy. Communication. Partnerships. Impact.
Scientific due diligence, strategy, and systems thinking for foundations, philanthropists, impact investors, and mission-driven partnerships.
Your biggest challenge isn’t finding worthy causes. It’s knowing which strategies are most likely to create lasting impact.
Conservation Value Solutions helps foundations, philanthropists, and impact investors reduce related uncertainty — combining ecological and climate science, communication and behavior change science, systems thinking, and stakeholder engagement to inform major investments. Refined over 25 years of collaboration with diverse partners.
Integrative Conservation & Climate Strategies: Three integrated disciplines. One framework. One outcome.
Solving complex challenges that no single discipline can overcome alone.
Why They Call Us
- “We need help synthesizing scientific consensus to vet whether to support, partner with, or invest in a solution.”
- “We need confidence that our investments will achieve meaningful conservation and climate outcomes.”
- “We need an independent scientific perspective before making a major investment.”
- “We need help understanding the root causes of a challenge we’re navigating and designing a strategic framework to invest in scientifically credible and impactful solutions.”
- “Why isn’t philanthropy already solving this? Where are the highest-leverage opportunities that other funders may be overlooking?”
How We Create Value — Four Integrated Service Lines
A. Scientific Due Diligence for More Effective Investments
We serve as trusted advisor, thought partner, and translator of science — vetting strategies and opportunities against scientific consensus and consulting with leading experts. We don’t simply evaluate scientific merit — we assess whether credible solutions are positioned to be implemented, supported, and sustained.
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This Strategic Conservation Intelligence enables clients to confidently invest precious capital in solutions most likely to create the greatest long-term impact. It helps clients distinguish robust evidence from sleek-sounding pitches that lack scientific credibility and are unlikely to deliver their claimed benefits. And it identifies high-leverage opportunities where relatively modest investments remove systemic barriers and unlock substantially greater conservation impact — for example, publicly flagging the U.S. beef-sustainability funding gap in 2018.
Clients: Embers Foundation · Conservation X Prize (Fire Grand Challenge) · NRDC · BurnBot · Philanthropy & Impact Investor colleagues
B. Partnerships That Catalyze Systems Change
for coalitions, funders & cross-sector initiatives
Partnership-building, facilitation, and convening that turn shared goals into aligned action — the connective work behind every program in this brief that scaled beyond one organization.
The Result: not just funding the next good project, but identifying the missing piece that unlocks an entire solution system.
Clients: Grasslands Alliance · NRDC · Embers Foundation · ROTHBURY Think Tank · WWF · HeadCount · Redband Trout ESA Petition
C. More Effective Philanthropy & Impact Investment Strategies
The value isn’t just the deliverable — it’s the process. Each strategy applies implementation science — integrating ecological and climate science, communication and behavior-change science, and direct stakeholder input — to build the buy-in needed to catalyze results and impact.
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Applied across wildfire resilience, working lands, landscape conservation, climate adaptation, organizational strategy, incentive program design, and conservation and climate communication.
The Result: strategies designed to earn support and adoption — not just get built and shelved.
Clients: BurnBot · Audubon Conservation Ranching · Grasslands Alliance · Embers Foundation · NRDC/Montana FWP · HeadCount
D. Sustainability Strategies for Portfolio Companies & Business Initiatives
Helping companies ask — and answer — five key questions that produce more impactful sustainability strategies, improving product quality, brand reputation, efficiency, and resilience while reducing supply chain and reputational risk.
The Result: sustainability strategies that create real business and environmental value — not just claims.
Clients: Beef Supply Chain Sustainability · Beef Industry Roundtables · SASB · Sustainability Consortium · Spaldin Sleep Systems
(“five key questions” links to the Five Key Questions Methodology page.)
Signature Case Example
CASE EXAMPLE · Embers Foundation — Rewild (2022–2023, Senior Program Officer)
A corporate foundation wanted to launch a major wildfire resilience initiative — but first needed a trusted advisor and thought partner to ensure it was investing in the right strategy. The Embers Foundation found that partner in Conservation Value Solutions.
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As Senior Program Officer, served as advisor and thought partner to the President & Executive Director, translating the question of “where should we invest, and why?” into an operating strategy.
- Co-authored the strategy, presentations, and public materials that communicated the foundation’s approach to grantees, partners, and its broader network.
- Actively participated in the Wildfire Resilience Funders Network — building relationships with peer funders, agencies, NGOs, and tribes to align funding around shared goals.
- Tracked emerging science, technology, and policy to surface funding opportunities other funders were missing.
- Conducted due diligence on grantee proposals, delivering funding recommendations directly to the President & Executive Director.
Outcome: Designed and led the “Rewild” strategy — a three-pillar program (Replant / Reduce / Research) integrating science, Indigenous cultural burning, NGOs, agencies, and philanthropy into one coordinated investment framework.
Questions We Help Clients Answer
“We need help synthesizing scientific consensus to vet whether to support, partner with, or invest in a solution.”
The hard part is not finding studies that support an idea — it’s identifying where scientific consensus lies, so you know which solutions and claims are credible and which only sound that way.
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We authored a 100+ study synthesis distinguishing scientific consensus from contested claims on the climate, biodiversity, water, economic, and social benefits of regenerative grazing — helping NRDC establish an evidence-based, nuanced position on this controversial topic.
“We need confidence that our investments will achieve meaningful conservation and climate outcomes.”
Plans don’t fail because they’re wrong — one important reason they fail is because the people who have to execute them weren’t included in their development.
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The Embers Foundation designed its Rewild framework — Replant, Reduce, Research — with input from the scientists, Indigenous fire practitioners, and agencies who’d execute it. The native replanting projects that we funded through NGO grantees replaced fire-prone Eurasian grasses with resilient natives and cut wildfire risk for neighboring communities. That’s what confidence in an investment actually means: not just a great pitch, but a plan that incorporates the local knowledge of the people who’ll carry it out.
“We need an independent scientific perspective before making a major investment.”
Independent means we have nothing to gain from any particular answer.
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For the Conservation XPrize Fire Grand Challenge, we scored proposals on their merits — including their funding recommendation — while Conservation X Labs made the final call. At the Embers Foundation, we conducted due diligence on proposals and delivered recommendations directly to the President and Executive Director.
“We need help understanding the root causes of a challenge we’re navigating and designing a strategic framework to invest in scientifically credible and impactful solutions.”
Understanding root causes becomes most useful when it lets you build a framework rigorous enough to earn buy-in from stakeholders who don’t usually agree.
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An evidence base identifying the key barriers to improving ranch stewardship practices — many of them root causes of poor management — paired with ideas of solutions to each barrier, shaped every step that followed: a draft standard that we (1) benchmarked against four existing certifications, (2) revised after independent expert review, and (3) further refined via two national NGO convenings and pilot audits across three geographic regions. The result: support from ranchers, retailers, and conservation groups.
“Why isn’t philanthropy already solving this? Where are the highest-leverage opportunities that other funders may be overlooking?”
The highest-leverage gaps are often structural and unglamorous, so nobody owns them.
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We flagged the U.S. beef-sustainability funding gap publicly in 2018, and in 2011 named the lack of an FSC-equivalent certification for grasslands and ranching — then spent the next decade building it as the Grasslands Alliance Standard and helping Audubon Conservation Ranching scale their approach.
What People Say
“Jonathan is one of those rare scientists who successfully pairs his deep technical knowledge with effective, clear communication for the layperson audience… He is results-driven, strategic and articulate. I highly recommend Jonathan.”
— Debbie Hammel, Director, Land Markets Initiative (former NRDC co-manager)
“Jonathan does an excellent job balancing the need to maintain the focus required to execute detailed, science-based, high quality, long-term work products, such as the Grasslands Alliance standard, while advancing complex stakeholder processes… He is extremely knowledgeable, well organized, thorough and timely with a strong commitment and vision.”
— Doug Sims, Managing Director, Green Finance & Economic Development, NRDC
“At NRDC, Jonathan was an excellent fundraising strategist and collaborator. His deep knowledge of conservation science was valuable and respected by major donors… a strong development proposal writer. He is a creative problem solver, and with his outgoing and warm personality, a delightful partner to work with.”
— Sheila Dennis, Managing Director, Individual Giving, Brookings Institution (former NRDC colleague)
“Audubon sought Jonathan’s assistance in providing a comprehensive assessment and guidance on key questions to position the Audubon Conservation Ranching program for continued success as the program continued to expand toward 10 million acres… Our final product far exceeded my expectations. It was a pleasure working with him!”
— Christopher Wilson, Director, Conservation Ranching Certification Program, National Audubon Society