Blue Ventures Case Study Key words Science-led social enterprise, Expeditions programmes, Conservation, Replicable model, International expansion Blue Ventures is a science- Blue Ventures (BV) main focus is a remote coastal area of Madagascar called led social enterprise Andavadoaka where it has established a marine field station, although it also works that works with coastal in other parts of the country. During 2009 BV began recruiting for expeditions in Fiji communities to develop and Malaysia in conjunction with international partners. Blue Ventures achieves its transformative approaches objectives in a number of ways: for nurturing and sustaining • BV’s core income generating activity is the expeditions programme, a paid for locally led marine mixture of adventure, work and scientific research. Volunteers sign up for a six conservation. week trip where they work alongside field scientists to gather data on different They work in places where the aspects of the marine environment. Each expedition has a maximum of 18 ocean is vital to local people, participants, costs around £2,000 per person (excluding flights) and includes cultures and economies, and training in basic research techniques and scuba diving. where there is a fundamental need to support human • The founders of BV hit on this approach as a way of financing ongoing research development. that would otherwise be too costly. The purpose is to gather data that can Formed in late 2002 as inform practical conservation efforts and BV actively shares its findings with the an “expeditions and local community and local NGO’s as well as through research papers and other conservation” organisation. publications. Its purpose is to undertake, • BV also helps develop skills and knowledge through sponsoring young marine “conservation, education and biologists from Madagascar to take part in the expeditions. sustainable development in tropical coastal communities”. • Using the knowledge gained from its research, BV has worked closely with the local community around Andavadoaka to help establish a marine conservation area called Velondriake. Within this reserve, they have helped set up numerous projects to protect species and diversify income for fishing communities. These include a protected area for octopus (so they can be fished is a more sustainable way) and a sea cucumber farm, set up with EU funding. The government of Madagascar is now replicating this successful model elsewhere. • One of the key factors driving the overuse of marine resources is rapid population growth. Many young girls are having their first babies before the age of 16, and rates of HIV and other sexually transmissible infections are on the rise. This is a difficult issue to tackle, composed as it is of cultural, educational, and economic factors. In response, BV has developed a project with Marie Stopes International to run family planning clinics in the Andavadoaka area. These are staffed largely by fourth year medical students who spend up to 12 weeks working in the clinic as one of their “electives”. BV sees this approach as being at “the interface between conservation and population growth”. • In the first three years of operation all of BV’s conservation work was paid for from the proceeds of the expedition programmes; now it is able to attract an increasing amount of charitable funding for its diverse range of activities. Motivation Blue Ventures came about after a group of Edinburgh University students went on an expedition to chart and conserve coral reefs in the Western Indian Ocean. They had an incredible experience, which they wanted others to share, but at the same time saw the threat to these fragile ecosystems from commercial fishing and population growth. Two of the original group, Tom Savage and Alasdair Harris, decided to: • establish a social enterprise company that could work with local populations to • conserve these marine ecosystems, and manage them in more sustainable “We are redefining ways. They wanted to take an entrepreneurial approach which would generate conservation by income through paid for expeditions and link this to conservation, education and pioneering and sustainable economic development. scaling market- based solutions Company Structure that work for local communities.” Blue Ventures is made up of two parts: Blue Ventures (Expeditions) Limited, which is a company limited by shares and operates the expedition programme, and Blue Lalao Aigrette Ventures Conservation, a registered charity. Blue Ventures (Expeditions) donates all its profits to the charity and Blue Ventures Conservation also attracts grant funding for its wider activities. In effect, the two entities operate as one organisation, although the charity has its own board of trustees and a wide range of advisors. The share company structure was chosen for the trading part of the operation because it was felt to be more flexible and business oriented than a company limited by guarantee. However, had the CIC model been available at the time, it might have been considered and BV keeps the structure under review. “We’re looking to replicate what we are doing in Madagascar in other places, so we are looking at how to structure the company in the future”. Operation The BV operation is quite small, with only 4 FTE staff based at its London HQ to manage what is a complex and far flung operation. Richard Nimmo, the Managing Director, is based in London, but he co-manages with one of the original founders, Alasdair Harris, who is currently living in Madagascar and studying part-time for a PhD. (Alasdair is also an Ashoka Fellow, so BV gets some help with his salary). The London based staff are responsible for marketing, fundraising, recruiting participants to the expeditions, co-ordinating the research, health and safety and developing new partnerships. As much of its resources as possible go into its research and development effort, with 15 people directly employed in Madagascar. Around 10 of these are locals and the other 5 are UK/International staff, including an expedition manager and field scientists. Business Strategy The founders of Blue Ventures expressly set out with an “entrepreneurial” approach, that would generate income for its development projects through paid for expeditions. The Volunteer Market BV operates within a highly competitive “volunteer market” that is constantly evolving. Initially BV presented its expeditions as a gap year opportunity for young people, but as they have become more established as a conservation and community development organisation they have started to attract an older age group (average age 29 and creeping up) and now market the trips as career breaks or career development. For example, conservation professionals and other NGO staff now regularly join the trips, where they can see and experience new approaches.

3 Marketing Over the last few years the volunteer market has exploded, with big companies now organising trips for gap year students. As a small player Blue Ventures has to work hard to be visible and has recently changed from paying for listings on specialist websites to using Google. This works by paying for a listing that comes up when people search by specific words, like conservation and volunteering. “Once we have The BV website gets 30,000 unique visits each month so this has become their main developed a marketing tool. Although BV pays for its listing, they get reduced rates through model that works, Google’s Foundation. we support communities Finance to share their From 2006 onwards, BV has generated considerable grant funding for its charitable experiences work. In the current financial year (2009/10) the trading company will make around and encourage £500,000 and the charity around £250,000. adoption by others. The results of our work help us to Vision for the Future propose new ways BV is now well established in the Andavadoaka area of Madagascar, particularly in of safeguarding and around the village where they have their dive base. Their immediate plans are marine biodiversity to raise finance for a purpose built “community lodge” that can be used to generate and traditional additional income for the community through tourism. livelihoods The longer-term plan however, is to shift their focus to other areas of the country that benefit and replicate what they have achieved in Andavadoaka. They have also recently coastal people started recruiting participants for expeditions in Fiji and Malaysia, where they work everywhere.” in partnership with other international organisations, and hope to expand this in the future.

4 Challenges and Lessons • Tourism is not a very profitable business, and scuba diving is not a cheap option, with all supplies having to be taken out to Madagascar, so it has been a challenge to generate enough cash to re-invest in development. • The sheer distance involved is a challenge, with the London HQ 5,000 miles away from Madagascar. E-mails and mobile phone connections are occasionally possible, but BV has to depend on self-reliant and motivated field staff. This puts a lot of pressure on staff. • Madagascar experienced a political crisis in 2009 which had a drastic effect on tourism. Although the civil disturbances were mainly in the capital, the UK Foreign Office issued a blanket travel ban; within two weeks, 75% of the 250,000 people employed in tourism in Madagascar lost their jobs. BV suffered along with everyone else, with a sudden drop in their participant numbers from 24 to only 3. The London HQ had to support the Madagascar operation for several months, taking pay cuts to make this possible. • BV realised they needed new revenue streams and new projects to spread the risk in future, so “It was perfect timing to have got the new projects (Fiji and Malaysia) this year; if not we might not have survived”. • BV is tiny in comparison with the big “gap year” providers, offering a total of 180 places per year against the 10,000 trips by their competitors. BV feel that much of what is marketed as doing good works on overseas projects are really little more than holidays, which has created a bad press for the sector. • Grant funding for conservation and development programmes in the field don’t cover HQ costs, and sometimes not even all the direct costs, so this is a constant challenge and, “as we expand this will put even more pressure on the four people here”. The London HQ “really needs another two staff”. • For the long-term, BV wants to extend its partnerships and find sustainable destinations to take people to. “Being able to make this a self-financing model will be a challenge”. • As BV starts shifting its resources from the original base in Andavadoaka they foresee some resistance from the local population and “some jealousies” that will have to be overcome.

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