Our Take: IFNF Field Notes No. 4. – The Team You Build Determines the Capital You Raise
In conservation finance, “community engagement” has become almost reflexive. Projects mention it in their opening paragraphs, check the box in their logic models, and schedule a round of stakeholder meetings before implementation begins. Yet across the Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) program, this language often masked a deeper problem: communities were being informed about decisions, not invited to shape them.
