Two Years into Our Strategic Plan: Progress & Next Steps
At Blue Forest, our work evolves alongside the challenges we seek to solve. Now two years into our 2024-2029 Strategic Plan, we’re sharing our second 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 2025, we made significant strides:
- $25.4 million deployed through ten Forest Resilience Bonds (FRB) and the California Wildfire Innovation Fund (CWIF)
- 4 pilot FRBs and 1 scaled FRB launched
- New funding commitments from three beneficiaries
- 17 benefit evaluation requests completed to quantify the impact of proactive restoration
- $11 Million of additional value provided to CWIF portfolio companies
- 2 new conservation finance product pilots developed, expanding conservation finance to new geographies and restoration needs
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 2025, we decided to add one new objective, and split two objectives into four, to our strategic plan for 2026:
- Added: Develop and strengthen government partnerships
- Split: Explore, expand, and develop an engagement strategy for current and emerging beneficiaries to increase contributions to Blue Forest facilitated restoration work.
- Steward and expand relationships with current and potential beneficiaries to increase contributions to FRBs
- Deliver best-in-class beneficiary reporting and impact assessment that clearly demonstrates the value of their contributions to FRBs
- Split: Understand frontier benefits of ecosystem restoration and identify and develop associated benefit models to enable future investment vehicles
- Advance high potential frontier benefits by developing the business and scientific models needed to integrate new revenue streams into FRBs
- Advance applied research on frontier benefits to develop the metrics, tools, and evidence needed for future monetization
With nearly two-fifths of the plan completed, we remain on track to meet our goals by 2029.
As we look ahead to 2026, 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 | Five-Year Strategic Plan Progress |
| Develop organizational capacity for a nuanced understanding of ecosystem restoration in order to design and deploy effective financial vehicles |
40% |
| Attract and effectively manage diverse organizational funding to enable innovation and impact |
39% |
| Communicate mission and impact to the public, partners, and other stakeholders |
46.5% |
| Ensure respect for Indigenous communities and values across Blue Forest projects and partnerships |
75% |
| Continuously advance size- and stage-appropriate internal policies and processes |
42.5% |
| Steward and optimize financial resources toward organizational health and sustainability |
53.75% |
| Strategic Pillar: Ecosystem Restoration Financing | |
| Goal | Five-Year Strategic Plan Progress |
| Expand the set of financial products targeting ecosystem restoration |
45.5% |
| 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 |
47% |
| Enable the next phase of Forest Resilience Bonds to achieve landscape-scale impact |
27.67% |
| Mature institutional quality investment management platform |
27% |
| Strategic Pillar: Science to Advance Ecosystem and Community Resilience | |
| Goal | Five-Year Strategic Plan Progress |
| Ensure Science and Research is the backbone of project and product development |
45% |
| Strategically and meaningfully engage with research partners and the scientific community |
52.5% |
| Strategic Pillar: Culture of Empowerment | |
| Goal | Five-Year Strategic Plan Progress |
| Foster a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just organizational culture that enacts our organization’s values |
50% |
| Develop and maintain an organizational ethos rooted in empowerment, accountability, and feedback |
40% |
| Prioritize the well-being of our people for work-life fulfillment |
65% |