One Year into Our Strategic Plan: Progress & Next Steps
At Blue Forest, our work evolves alongside the challenges we seek to solve. Now one year into our 2024-2029 Strategic Plan, we’re sharing our first progress update—a look at what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve learned, and how we’re refining our approach as we continue to scale impact.
In 2024, we made significant strides:
- $17.8 million deployed through four Forest Resilience Bonds and the California Wildfire Innovation Fund (CWIF)
- Completed capitalization for both CWIF, at $50 million, and the FRB Catalyst Facility, at over $15 million
- $19.6 million in additional capital raised for restoration efforts
- New funding commitments from three utility beneficiaries and one non-utility beneficiary
- 21 benefit evaluation requests completed to quantify the impact of proactive restoration
Our work is dynamic by nature, and as projects and partnerships progress, we recognize the need for continual reflection and adaptation. So, too, is our approach to strategic planning. When we took a step back to analyze progress made in 2024, we decided to add two new objectives to our strategic plan for 2025:
- Explore and design new catalytic conservation finance products
- Provide value to conservation finance investors through best-in-class reporting, compliance, and portfolio management.
With nearly a fifth of the plan completed, we remain on track to meet our goals by 2029.
As we look ahead, 2025 marks 10 years of Blue Forest, a milestone that challenges us to both execute on what we’ve built and prepare for what’s next. This year, we are focusing on scaling proven solutions, refining new financial models, and aligning our resources to maximize impact. Wildfire risk reduction remains our top priority, alongside expanding our work in broader ecosystem restoration and watershed health.
Below, you’ll find a snapshot of our progress for the length of the strategic plan across our four strategic pillars: Organizational Capacity Building, Ecosystem Restoration Financing, Science to Advance Ecosystem and Community Resilience, and Culture of Empowerment.
| Strategic Pillar: Organizational Capacity Building | ||
| Goal | Objective | Five year strategic plan progress |
| Develop organizational capacity for a nuanced understanding of ecosystem restoration in order to design and deploy effective financial vehicles | Continue hiring employees who meet the organizational expertise needed to develop ecosystem restoration financial vehicles | 13% |
| Develop and deliver comprehensive training in conservation finance and ecosystem restoration for employees | 10% | |
| Continue to ensure that the Board of Directors is properly constituted to complete its responsibilities | 10% | |
| Attract and effectively manage diverse organizational funding to enable innovation and impact | Design and implement a fundraising strategy to fully fund the strategic plan | $6.5 Million |
| Communicate mission and impact to the public, partners, and other stakeholders | Develop a communications strategy aligned with the brand and strategic plan to maximize effectiveness of communications | 31% |
| Articulate organizational impact and value proposition to partners | 5% | |
| Ensure respect for Indigenous communities and values across Blue Forest projects and partnerships | Develop the capacity to build authentic relationships with Native Nations and Indigenous communities | 35% |
| Continuously advance size- and stage-appropriate internal policies and processes | Create a resource planning process that is tied to decision-making and funding in order to align workstreams | 5% |
| Develop processes that facilitate integration, engagement, and collaboration among teams | 20% | |
| Steward financial resources toward organizational health and sustainability | Continuously strengthen internal controls and enhance compliance | 20% |
| Improve financial reporting and analysis for internal and external audiences | 12% | |
| Improve cost recovery | 23% | |
| Grow unrestricted net assets and refine the way they’re managed | 6% | |
| Strategic Pillar: Ecosystem Restoration Financing | ||
| Goal | Objective | Five year strategic plan progress |
| Expand the set of financial products targeting ecosystem restoration | Explore future Blue Forest Asset Management investment strategies | 5% |
| Complete fundraising for California Wildfire Innovation Fund and FRB Catalyst Facility | COMPLETED | |
| Explore and identify new conservation finance products focused on ecosystem restoration and community resilience | 3 new conservation finance product concepts developed | |
| Explore and design new catalytic conservation finance products* | N/A | |
| Deploy conservation finance products that are proven to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and reduce catastrophic wildfires across the Western United States | Deploy investment capital through Blue Forest Asset Management’s (BFAM) California Wildfire Innovation Fund (CWIF) in line with investor expectations | $7.5 million CWIF capital deployed |
| Provide additional value beyond financing to CWIF portfolio investments | $19.6 million of value added | |
| Provide value to investors through best-in-class reporting and compliance | 20% | |
| Provide value to conservation finance investors through best-in-class reporting, compliance, and portfolio management* | N/A | |
| Accelerate the pace and scale of restoration through FRBs | $10,305,580 deployed through 4 FRBs | |
| Build and strengthen foundational relationships and enabling conditions that advance FRB opportunities | 3 projects moved to design phase | |
| Enable the next phase of Forest Resilience Bonds to achieve landscape-scale impact | Refine and expand the impact of implemented FRBs | 15% |
| Scale pilot FRBs through the development of systems, processes, tools, and investment vehicles | 5% | |
| Explore, expand, and develop an engagement strategy for current and emerging beneficiaries to increase contributions to Blue Forest facilitated restoration work. | Funding commitments from 3 new utility beneficiaries and 1 non-utility beneficiary | |
| Mature institutional quality investment management platform | Ensure best in class transaction and investment management | 25% |
| Explore new revenue streams from Blue Forest products and services | 10% | |
| Strategic Pillar: Science to Advance Ecosystem and Community Resilience | ||
| Goal | Objective | Five year strategic plan progress |
| Ensure Science and Research is the backbone of project and product development | Enhance and formalize a benefit evaluation process, focusing on our cornerstone benefits of wildfire risk reduction and water supply security, to support current initiatives | Delivered 21 benefit evaluation requests |
| Understand frontier benefits of ecosystem restoration and identify and develop associated benefit models to enable future investment vehicles | 20% | |
| Develop internal expertise and actively incorporate and amplify Indigenous Science and Knowledge through the science team | 18% | |
| Strategically and meaningfully engage with research partners and the scientific community | Develop a strategic roadmap with science, research, and partnership priorities to support the development of the conservation finance sector & position Blue Forest as a thought leader | 25% |
| Identify and partner with Indigenous scientists and communities | 20% science projects have Indigenous partners | |
| Strategic Pillar: Culture of Empowerment | ||
| Goal | Objective | Five year strategic plan progress |
| Foster a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just organizational culture that enacts our organization’s values | Embed robust and enactable values that motivate our employees and drive our organization | 10% |
| Foster a work environment that prioritizes ongoing DEI learning, development, and action | 10% | |
| Develop and maintain an organizational ethos rooted in empowerment, accountability, and feedback | Foster a robust, adaptive, and innovative culture of feedback | 10% |
| Establish a comprehensive professional development program | 5% | |
| Prioritize the well-being of our people for work-life fulfillment | Ensure employment and benefit practices enable ongoing employee support | 45% |
*new objective added in 2025