The Challenge
The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) is the world's leading scientific authority on cheetah research and conservation, operating across Africa, Europe, and North America. Despite the organization's global credibility and decades of peer-reviewed research, CCF faced a persistent structural funding gap: its grant revenue was heavily concentrated in a small number of long-standing relationships, creating an institutional vulnerability. Any shift in a single funder's priorities could destabilize the organization's research budget for an entire year. CCF needed a diversified, multi-jurisdiction grant pipeline that reflected both the scale and the scientific legitimacy of its work.
Our Strategic Approach
Elysian Trust conducted a full audit of CCF's existing funder relationships, grant history, and programmatic priorities to identify where strategic gaps existed and where new institutional funders were most likely to engage. We built a multi-jurisdiction outreach strategy targeting government science agencies, private conservation foundations, and international wildlife funds, with distinct narrative frameworks for each funder category. We coordinated submissions across UK government channels (DEFRA), US federal wildlife programs (Fish & Wildlife Service), and private foundation networks including the Baker Trust. Each proposal was tailored to the specific language, compliance requirements, and impact metrics that each funder used in their evaluation process.
Impact & Results
CCF secured $986,000 across seven funding sources, including $777,000 from UK DEFRA, $105,000 from the Baker Trust, and $36,000 from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. More importantly, the engagement established a replicable pipeline architecture that CCF could continue to develop independently, reducing long-term dependence on any single funder category and adding material institutional resilience to their annual budget.