A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE
FUNDERS FORUM
the funders forum
The capital exists. The knowledge exists. The ambition exists.
What is missing is the architecture that allows them to meet, at the right moment, in the right form, on the right terms.
The binding constraint is not capital. It is the absence of institutional infrastructure capable of making opportunities legible, sequenceable, and actionable for the capital that wants to engage.
The Funders Forum was created to address this gap.
It is an invitation-only platform for learning, orchestration, and capital design, bringing together senior leaders from philanthropy, public institutions, family offices, venture capital, impact investment, and science to work on a specific problem: how to move from fragmented effort to coordinated pathways that can deliver real-world deployment, healthy ocean systems, stronger biodiversity outcomes, and long-term impact across the interconnected domains on which economic and societal stability depends.
It is not a conference. It is not a network. It is a journey of growth, discovery and mindfulness to enable a healthy and resilient ocean and a better and prosperous future.
why it exists
The ocean regulates the climate, sustains food systems, underwrites economic activity, and contains within its biological complexity solutions to problems we have not yet encountered. Its health is inseparable from the long-term value of the systems built on top of it. The same is true across biodiversity, freshwater, soil, and atmospheric systems, the living foundations of economic continuity, resilience, and future prosperity.
Yet the policy and capital response remains disproportionate. Not because interest is absent, but because the conditions that make capital actionable, shared intelligence, scientific knowledge, policy alignment, sequenced risk, coordinated timing, and credible pathways from research to deployment, have not been built at sufficient scale.
Too often, the value of nature and ocean health is treated as external to capital logic rather than as part of the asset base that makes prosperity, resilience, and future solutions possible. As a result, promising initiatives remain isolated, enabling conditions remain underfunded, and the pathways through which scientific discovery, innovation, biodiversity protection, and system renewal could become real are left fragmented.
Philanthropies operate in silos. Public institutions are bounded by mandate and political cycle. Scientific knowledge remains under-integrated into decision-making. Private capital waits for conditions that have not yet been created. Each actor is rational. Collectively, they produce fragmentation, mistiming, and a persistent gap between what is possible and what is realised.
The Forum exists to change that, by creating the conditions under which knowledge, policy, and capital can align, and solutions can move from concept to deployment, and from isolated initiatives to system-level impact.
how it works
The Forum operates across two complementary modes.
Both modes are built around one discipline: the right capital, informed by the right knowledge and conditions, at the right moment, in the right form - in ways that make durable solutions, stronger ecological outcomes, and long-term system value possible.
The Forum convening
The convening creates shared orientation before capital moves. Participants develop a decision-grade understanding of where initiatives are emerging, where capital is already deployed, where it is fragmented, and where coordination could materially improve outcomes. It enables alignment without loss of mandate, and supports concrete actions such as co-funding, matched portfolios, and the development of new capita pathways.
The Forum Lab
The Lab goes deeper. It is an opt-in space for capital stack design, portfolio strategy, and the translation of complex challenges into fundable or investable opportunities. Participants work across the full spectrum of capital, from catalytic and patient funding to market-rate investment, exploring how different forms of capital can act in sequence rather than in competition.
the role of philanthropy
Philanthropy is not a gap-filler in this architecture. It is its foundation.
Foundations are uniquely positioned to absorb early uncertainty, fund the enabling conditions that other capital depends on but will not finance, and act as connective infrastructure between science, policy, and investment. In the ocean and biodiversity space, philanthropy has long been funding the public goods — observation systems, ecological intelligence, research, governance innovation, and early-stage translational work — that make later-stage investment, resilience, and large-scale solutions possible.
The Forum is designed to help philanthropy fulfil this role with greater precision: extending the impact of existing portfolios, shaping opportunities before they become fully legible to markets, and creating clearer pathways for public and private capital to engage.
At the same time, the Forum supports long-horizon investors and asset owners seeking better-timed entry into credible opportunities — including those that depend on the protection, restoration, and intelligent stewardship of nature and ocean systems as part of long-term value creation.
the arc of a growing funder community and impact journey
The Forum was first convened in 2025 under the Danish EU Council Presidency, with support from the VELUX Foundation. It has since grown into a widening community of philanthropic foundations, institutional funders, scientific actors, and long horizon investors across Europe and beyond.
Convened under successive EU Presidencies, most recently at EU Ocean Days in Brussels and next in Cyprus in May 2026, the Forum is developing not as a series of isolated events, but as a structured learning journey. Each edition advances a distinct set of capital, policy, and systems questions while building the political and scientific legitimacy required for this work to mature over time and travel beyond Europe into the wider multilateral system.
October 2025
Edition - Danish EU Council Presidency, Nyborg
Philanthropy, science and the missing middle in the ocean system
March 2026
Edition - EU Ocean Days, Brussels
Recasting the ocean as critical infrastructure and capital design for ocean health
Track 1: EU Council Presidencies - legitimacy, learning, orchestration and capital design
Track 2: Solutions and flagship initiatives - science-based testing and impact
Track 3: Research, mindset shift and reframing - civilisational options fund
May 2026
Edition - Cyprus EU Council Presidency, Limassol
Port - seascapes as driver for biodiversity protection
June 2026
Edition - Ireland EU Council Presidency, Limassol
Biodiversity as value at risk: allocating capital for planetary options
This journey is organised across three connected tracks. The first focuses on learning, orchestration, and capital design through senior convenings under the EU Presidencies. The second focuses on structured testing in real geographies and solution pathways, especially where science based innovation, impact, policy, and bold capital deployment must come together to move from research to deployment and scale. The third focuses on knowledge, foresight, and reframing, developing the deeper intelligence, new options, and institutional mindset required to understand ocean health, biodiversity, and long term value not as externalities, but as central to future prosperity, resilience, and continuity.
who is it for?
The Funders Forum is designed for senior actors across philanthropy, public funding, investment, and advisory roles who are concerned not only with where capital is allocated, but with how opportunities are identified, structured, and brought to scale over time.
It is for those interested not only in financing what already exists, but in helping create the conditions under which healthier ocean systems, stronger biodiversity outcomes, and new solution pathways can emerge.
Participation is by invitation.
