Greg Low with Australian Efroymson participants

Greg Low with Australian Efroymson participants

The CCNet evolved from The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Efroymson Coaches Network and was chartered in 2009 to help meet the growing need to train and support coaches of the Open Standards. Coaches not only teach practitioners and teams the basic principles of the Open Standards; they also help teams identify strategies, develop measures, explicitly articulate and capture their uncertainties, and encourage on-going assessment and continuity of effort. Coaches link practitioners with other support services and identify peer projects where project leaders can find additional review and support for similar challenges. Coaches also actively promote the Open Standards around the world.

The original Efroymson Fellowship Program was launched in 1998, made possible by a generous gift from Dan and Lori Efroymson. The Program was conceived and grew under the creative leadership and indomitable passion of Greg Low, a 35-year conservation veteran and former U.S. Director of Conservation Programs for TNC. The Efroymson Fellowship was a response to requests from all over the world to learn TNC’s version of the Open Standards: Conservation Action Planning (CAP). In its first five years, more than 200 landscape teams, including more than 1,000 conservation practitioners from 15 nations and 49 U.S. states, and more than 100 organizations applied CAP in the Fellowship Program.

Dan and Lori Efroymson

Dan and Lori Efroymson

Dan Efroymson was a champion of community-based conservation action. By fostering development of effective landscape conservation plans in a manner that would inspire insights, new strategic approaches, the exchange of knowledge and the development of new alliances for landscape conservation, Dan and Lori’s original gift changed the way that TNC, and many of its partners approach conservation. Their gift has spawned many new insights, new strategic approaches and new alliances, and TNC committed to honoring their contribution as it continued to evolve the original Fellowship Program.

CCNet, representing the evolution of the Efroymson Coaches Network, offers real assurance that some of the conservation community’s best tools, brightest insights and most hopeful strategies will be shared freely, distributed broadly and implemented effectively among conservation practitioners throughout the world.

CCNet has developed a global reach since being chartered in 2009 by the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Greening Australia and Foundations of Success. As of 2018, a network of fourteen formal CCNet Franchises supports more than 650 Coaches from more than 200 organizations operating in over 60 countries on all continents.