Annual Report Summary
2023-2024
Small-scale fishers are the key to rebuilding fisheries and restoring ocean life
Ebrima Saidy, Chief Executive Officer
Ebrima Saidy, Chief Executive Officer
Fiona Holmes, Chair of The Board of Trustees
Fiona Holmes, Chair of The Board of Trustees
Welcome from our Chief Executive and Chair
Dear friends. Our oceans are facing unprecedented challenges. Over the last 40 years, the rate at which they're getting hotter has quadrupled. Temperatures hit record extremes for 450 days straight in 2023 and 2024. The climate crisis is accelerating, with devastating consequences for marine ecosystems and the coastal communities that depend on them. Small-scale fishers – the hundred million who feed a billion – are on the frontlines of this emergency. Yet they also hold the key to reversing its impacts. Their leadership, knowledge, and resilience drive solutions that restore ocean life, rebuild fisheries, and protect livelihoods.
At Blue Ventures, we believe that conservation works best when it’s led by communities, for communities. Over the past year, we’ve made bold organisational changes to scale our support for small-scale fishers and achieve our ambitious 2030 goals. We’ve strengthened our foundations, and refreshed, standardised and professionalised our approach. We’ve expanded our leadership team, enhanced our technical expertise, built and buttressed our partner network, and invested in world-class data systems. These efforts will allow us to reach more communities than ever before, with the resources, training, and financial support they need to drive lasting change in our oceans.
This has also been a year of transition. In October, Ebrima Saidy took over as CEO, following more than two decades of extraordinary leadership from our founder, Al Harris. Al’s vision and commitment to community-led conservation have shaped BV into the organisation it is today. We are deeply grateful for his pioneering work, and we continue to be guided by his words and wisdom as he charts a new course in ocean-climate philanthropy.
In this report, you’ll find inspiring stories of impact from across our growing network – from new marine reserves in Indonesia to policy wins in Madagascar. These achievements remind us of what’s possible when we work together to protect our blue planet. Because none of this progress would have been possible without our partners, supporters, and dedicated colleagues worldwide. We want to express our heartfelt thanks to our donors, board, and the communities we serve for their unwavering trust, commitment, and belief in our mission.
We look forward to the journey ahead and all that we can accomplish together.
What we do
We fund
Flexible, long-term support to local conservation partners rebuilding small-scale fisheries and restoring ocean life.
We train
Local partners to strengthen their leadership, management and technical skills so they expand their reach and accelerate their impact.
We advocate
For the rights and interests of the biggest group of ocean users – small-scale fishers – to make sure they’re at the centre of ocean decision-making.
Readying for scale
This year has been one of change for Blue Ventures, but also one of adaptability and resilience. Amidst a leadership transition, rising costs of living across many of our locations, and major political and economic disruptions globally, we delivered meaningful impact and are immensely proud of our achievements.
Over the year, we made good progress in expanding our reach, with a particular focus on the West Africa region, and despite a re-baselining of our core metrics exceeded our target on the area of ocean under local management and protection by almost 20%. We also pushed for governments to meet their ocean protection commitments and put small scale fishers at the forefront of ocean decision-making.
As outlined in last year's forward-looking commentary, a key focus this year has been on resetting and renewing our organisational infrastructure to support our ambitious 2030 goals. To this end, we successfully recruited our new CEO, broadened and diversified the executive leadership team, expanded our partner network team, and onboarded a dedicated data science team. We also accelerated the rollout of digital data collection, refined our monitoring systems and processes, and implemented a new CRM system to enable us to manage and analyse data on our partners more effectively.
Read on and we'll introduce you to all these achievements and more. We'll showcase some highlights from our work on community-based fisheries management, secure rights, financial inclusion, food security, data, climate and gender. We'll update you on our advocacy efforts to create a fairer fishing system that benefits nature and small-scale fishers alike. We'll spotlight some of the partnerships that make this work possible and increasingly powerful. And we'll recognise the incredible generosity of our growing global network of supporters, who came together to generate more than £16.5 million in 2023-24.
Reach and impact
44 delivery partners supported
£3.4m regranted to frontline organisations
11 countries in which we are active
564,000 people reached by our work
417 communities supported
21,135 km2 ocean waters protected within Locally Managed Marine Areas
As we scale our work to 2030, we've refined how we track our reach and impact, ensuring greater transparency and accuracy. As a result, our headline numbers look a little different from last year.
MEASURING OUR REACH
Previously, we counted all communities influenced by our approach - including those adopting LMMAs independently or benefiting from policy changes we helped secure. To provide a clearer picture, we now report only the communities working to deliver LMMAs with direct support from us or our partners. Policy and advocacy impacts remain essential but will be tracked separately.
A similar shift applies to our partner reporting. We now distinguish between delivery partners - those actively funded and supported in fisheries management and marine conservation - and advocacy and strategic partners, who contribute in other ways. Using this updated methodology, we are currently working with 44 delivery partners, supporting 417 communities and 564,000 people worldwide.
MEASURING OUR IMPACT
We've also improved how we measure the impact of our work. While we previously focused on catch per unit effort and compliance with fisheries rules, we're now using two composite metrics that provide a more holistic view of impact:
The Community Fisheries Health Index tracks improvements in marine ecosystems and management practices, using key indicators like fish weight, species diversity, size and maturity to measure overall fishery health.
The Community Benefit Index assesses how healthier fisheries translate into real benefits for coastal communities, tracking income from fishing, as well as changes to food security, and social cohesion.
Together, these indices provide a full picture of LMMA effectiveness - showing both ecological recovery and the tangible benefits for communities. We are now establishing baseline figures across all countries to ensure we can track and demonstrate progress effectively.
A year of impact
ACCELERATING AFRICAN MARINE LEADERSHIP
We launched the second cohort of the African Marine Conservation Leadership Programme in partnership with Maliasili. Eighteen leaders from 10 leading local and national marine conservation organisations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique came together to strengthen their skills and capacity through a tailored programme of coaching and in-person sessions.
We also supported the first-ever African Community Conservation Forum in Kenya, bringing together community conservationists to share solutions to increase impact in community-led conservation and strengthen networks of practice.
IMPROVING OCTOPUS FISHERIES IN INDONESIA
In Sulawesi, we launched an Octopus Fisheries Improvement Project, Indonesia’s first government-backed initiative of its kind. The project supports nearly 2,000 fishers to improve the co-management and sustainability of the artisanal octopus fishery, and is already starting to influence practices across the region.
NEW COMMUNITY-LED MARINE RESERVE IN INDONESIA
The fishing community in Serandori village in Flores established a permanent marine reserve, protecting vital coral reef and seagrass habitats at the heart of the coral triangle. This milestone follows years of temporary closures supported by BV to help rebuild stocks, and is part of our broader work with 79 communities and 17 local partner organisations across Indonesia.
PERMANENT PROTECTION FOR THE BARREN ISLES EDGES CLOSER
In Madagascar, our efforts to secure permanent protection for the region’s largest Marine Protected Area were given a boost when two government ministers made an unprecedented visit to the Barren Isles MPA. With the backing of the government and support from the Blue Action Fund, permanent protection is now tantalisingly close, building on over a decade of work with local fishers in the area, and the granting of temporary protected status in 2014.
A NEW APPROACH TO HEALTH
We transitioned away from directly providing health services in favour of a new partner approach that is better aligned with our mission and path to scale. As a result, we’re supporting the Safidy community health programme and the Population Health Environment Network in Madagascar to become independent entities. And we’re focusing on connecting coastal communities with specialist health providers, working to build coordination and synergy between health and environment programmes on an unprecedented scale.
Partner Highlight: Tananua Flores, Indonesia
The Tananua Flores Foundation supports coastal fishing communities in Ende and Nagekeo, Flores and advocates for sustainable fisheries and locally managed marine areas in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province. We’ve provided technical and financial support to this brilliant organisation since 2019.
“Our partnership with Blue Ventures has allowed us to achieve several important milestones, boosting our capacity and earning recognition from the regional government. With Blue Ventures’ assistance, fishing communities have transitioned to a more cooperative approach to resource management. We’ve improved fishers’ capacity in fisheries management and strengthened our data collection and analysis systems, using the mobile data platform developed in partnership with Blue Ventures.”
“Two significant impacts stand out: securing funding from the village government for fishers’ capacity-building and earning community trust to join the multi-stakeholder group preparing the formal request for a permanent reserve in Ende.”
— Pius Jodho, Marine Programme Manager, Tananua Flores
Advocating for change
Our work advocating for the rights of small-scale fishers continues to gain pace, and enjoyed several successes this year.
NEW GRANTS PROGRAMME TO TRANSFORM BOTTOM TRAWLING
The Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition, which we co-founded and coordinate, launched a grants programme to support campaigns against harmful fishing practices. Initial grants were awarded to organisations in Ghana, Indonesia, Cameroon, and India, helping expand Inshore Exclusion Zones, combat illegal trawling, and promote sustainable practices.
IMPROVING TRANSPARENCY FOR MADAGASCAR’S FISHERIES
We launched Fitsinjo, an independent civil society observatory promoting transparency in Madagascar’s fisheries. Through a combination of community-led surveillance and investigative intelligence, Fitsinjo is working to identify and report illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities – one of the most pernicious threats faced by Madagascar’s 250,000 small-scale fishers. This year, Madagascar also published its first Fisheries Transparency Initiative report, a milestone supported by BV’s partnership with the Ministry of Fisheries.
MAKING WAVES AT OUR OCEAN
We made a splash at the Our Ocean conference in Athens, co-hosting a landmark event that brought together eight African leaders to address the urgent challenges of industrial overfishing and climate breakdown. Commitments made included establishing one of Africa’s largest community-led marine protected areas in Ghana and an ambition to exceed international targets to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030 in Guinea-Bissau.
MAKING FISHING FAIR IN THE EU
In May, we supported a delegation of small-scale fishers to present an open letter to the EU’s Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans & Fisheries in Brussels. The Make Fishing Fair letter, signed by 40 small-scale fishing organisations and supported by over 20 NGOs, calls for the Commission to prioritise small-scale, low-impact fishers over polluting, industrial vessels to create more jobs, boost nature and halt the decline of Europe’s fishing sector.
Members of the Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition from 42 countries
National campaigns to tackle bottom trawling supported
Regional advocacy coalition launched in West Africa with 25 partners.
African nations announcing commitments on community-led fisheries management at our events
Partner Highlight: YAYASAN CITRA MANDIRI MENTAWAI, Indonesia
We’ve provided technical and financial support to YCMM since 2021, focusing on two communities in Sinaka village, West Sumatra, Indonesia.
“Our partnership with BV began over discussions about the challenges in our region’s octopus fisheries and a shared vision for community-based conservation. We saw a great opportunity for Sinaka village, where local leaders and residents were eager to collaborate.”
“The biggest achievement has been building community consensus around locally-led fisheries management, a major shift after 15 years of harmful practices. With Blue Ventures’ support, we implemented a temporary closure and established a local surveillance group, ‘Si Jago Koat,’ which now oversees management and holds ownership of regulations.”
“I’m most proud of the growing awareness and active participation within the community. Seeing residents engage in decision-making and enforce practices like temporary closures is incredibly rewarding. Support from the Sinaka village government has been invaluable too – they’ve allocated funding to strengthen ‘Si Jago Koat’ and its infrastructure, reinforcing our collaborative efforts.”
— Rifai Lubis, Director, YCMM
Organisational highlights
WELCOMING OUR NEW CEO AND STRENGTHENING LEADERSHIP
This year, we welcomed Ebrima Saidy as our new CEO. With decades of experience in community-driven development, including leadership roles at Save the Children International and War Child, Ebrima brings a wealth of expertise to BV. He succeeds our founder, Al Harris, who stepped back after 20 years at the helm.
To support this leadership transition, we expanded our Executive Leadership Team (ELT) from three to seven members, appointing Sharon Young as Chief Partnership Officer, Courtney Cox as Chief Technical Officer, Mehdi Mahjour as Strategy Advisor and also bringing our Madagascar Country Director Gidas Andriamalala into the team. These changes align the ELT with our strategy, improve regional representation, and enhance collaboration across teams.
SIMPLIFYING AND HARMONISING OUR WORK
We refined our structure around BV’s core model to ensure all colleagues and partners follow consistent, best-practice approaches and produce robust, comparable data. This involved reconfiguring our programming team and introducing an interim restructure of our technical division to better support the four core elements of our work.
We also clarified BV’s focus, moving away from directly implementing activities like education and community health to concentrate on connecting communities with specialist service providers for unmet needs beyond our core model. To better support partner organisations and maintain consistent oversight across our growing network, we created a partner networks directorate, led by Sharon Young.
INVESTING IN DATA TO DRIVE IMPACT
Data are central to BV’s mission, from supporting community-led fisheries management to advancing global understanding of small-scale fisheries. This year, we achieved a major milestone: consistent data digitisation and near-real-time feedback across all sites and countries, using a mobile-based digital platform.
The new platform launched in Indonesia and the Philippines in November 2023 and has since expanded to Timor-Leste, Madagascar, and West and East Africa. Early results show the transformative potential of better data for the partners and communities we support globally.
We also integrated Barefoot Ocean’s world-class data science team into BV. They’ve been at the heart of our efforts to build a cutting-edge data system to monitor fisheries in near real-time and track changes at the community level over the last two years. Joining forces with them is pivotal to achieving our shared vision of small-scale fishing communities empowered by better data.
DECENTRALISING BV
Our geographic reach continued to expand, with new partnerships and programmes in Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, and Cabo Verde. To reduce reliance on our UK team and enhance regional capacity, we established four regional hubs in Senegal, Kenya, Madagascar, and Indonesia.
These hubs coordinate regional programming and operations, supporting country teams more effectively. This decentralisation strengthens regional leadership and fosters greater autonomy and collaboration, advancing our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Supporting partners for the long term
Our Frontline Community Fund (FCF) is transforming coastal conservation by channelling flexible, multi-year funding and tailored technical support to high-impact local organisations working on the frontlines of the ocean emergency. This year, we took bold steps to scale our local partnerships, deliver funding to where it is needed most and lay the groundwork for achieving our 2030 ambitions.
STRENGTHENING THE PARTNER NETWORK TEAM
We built and enhanced our Partner Network Team, appointing a Chief of Partnerships and specialists in scoping, funding, and partner engagement. Regional hubs in Asia, East Africa, West Africa, and Madagascar now have dedicated Regional Heads of Partnerships and Partner Coordinators, ensuring localised support and seamless collaboration.
STREAMLINING OUR REGRANTING
We created a tailored regranting policy to provide flexible, long-term funding while maintaining transparency and alignment with our values. The new policy streamlines partner onboarding, monitoring, and capacity building, ensuring we fund organisations that share our vision for sustainable impact.
BUILDING THE PARTNER PIPELINE
To identify and evaluate high-impact partners, we developed a scoping strategy that combines desk-based research, stakeholder mapping, and targeted field missions. This systematic approach ensures we partner with the most aligned and effective community-based organisations.
CREATING NEW TOOLS AND SYSTEMS
In April 2024, we launched a bespoke Customer Relationship Management system to enhance partner engagement and track the lifecycle of funding and support. Alongside this, we made improvements to due diligence, contracting, and award procedures, boosting efficiency and compliance.
SCALING WITH DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS
We completed a data-driven survey of the addressable global market for our partner work. This has allowed us to pinpoint priority regions with the greatest potential for high-impact scaling and improve our strategic resource allocation
These efforts mark a transformative year for the Frontline Community Fund, positioning it to deliver even greater impact in the years ahead.
Partners in growing pipeline
New partnerships activated
Regional Advisory Council in Asia developed
Creating a thriving BV
In 2023/24, we made significant organisational improvements through strategic investments in our People Team and the launch of a new People Strategy focused on talent, efficiency, and culture.
Key achievements included launching a diversity, equality, and inclusion strategy, establishing a women’s network, and strengthening the Senior Leadership Team.
We also introduced a leadership development programme for women, talent mapping and succession planning, and an organisation-wide mentorship programme. A new performance management approach, Develop to Perform, emphasises results and behaviours, creating accountability and driving development.
Regular surveys now guide our strategy, with the latest in November 2023 exceeding benchmarks. Scores held steady or improved across 90% of topics, confirming we’re making meaningful progress toward a thriving BV.
As of 30 June 2024, we employed 292 colleagues across Madagascar, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Belize, Mozambique, Tanzania, Cape Verde, and Italy. This reflects a slight increase from 288 in 2023 and a decrease from 312 in 2022. We also funded 24 people to support our work in Kenya and Senegal independently.
Despite a year of growth and change, we kept voluntary turnover below our 10% KPI at 9.2%, reflecting our commitment to building a globally representative, inclusive, and resilient team that supports local talent and serves communities effectively.
New hires from diverse backgrounds
(81% in previous year)
Colleagues based outside the UK
(83% in previous year)
Women colleagues
(43% in previous year)
Colleagues from non-BAME backgrounds
(18% in previous year)
Our values
Communities first
Above all, we listen to community needs, responding in a sensitive and pragmatic way for long lasting benefits.
Valued people & effective teams
We thrive in diverse and inclusive teams where all members have a voice and influence. Our diversity drives our effectiveness.
Openness & humility
We are always learning. We work in a transparent and collaborative way to share our learning with others.
Passion & belief
Our mission is urgent and critical, we have a bias for action and are determined to get the job done.
Innovation & courage
We are resourceful and creative. We are prepared to take risks and challenge broken paradigms.
Grounded in evidence
We have high standards and are not afraid to be self critical. If something doesn’t work, we change tack until we’re on the right course.
Partner Highlight: COMRED, Kenya
Based in Mombasa, COMRED is a Kenyan-led organisation working to create flourishing marine environments that deliver benefits to coastal communities.
BV has been providing flexible, multi-year support to COMRED since 2019, enabling the organisation to expand its focus from four communities to 13, COMRED now reaches more than 105,000 people and coordinates the local management and conservation of more than 145km2 of vital coastal habitats.
Alongside support for fisheries management and conservation activities, COMRED has prioritised organizational development through BV’s African Marine Conservation Leadership Network, received specific training in monitoring and evaluation as well as communications and data systems, and launched their first strategic plan.
"For us the biggest benefit of BV’s model of funding is adaptability. We have realised that as time passes there sometimes comes a need to redesign projects, which can be difficult with more restrictive donors. It also helps that the funding from BV came about from the needs of the communities we work with. That's why we see success in these projects.”
— Dr Patrick Kimani, Director, COMRED
2023/24 Financials
Here’s a summary of our income and expenditure for the year ending 30 June 2024, along with equivalent figures for the previous year.
In 2023/24, we raised £16.5m from a growing global network of supporters who share our values and mission to rebuild fisheries and restore ocean life. This figure is 38% higher than our income in 2022/23.
Expenditure was broadly flat, growing by 0.5m in 2023/.24 to £14.3m. This is in marked contrast to the historical trend of 23% expenditure growth per year over the last five years, and reflects a year in which we have refined our focus to align with our core strategy, while continuing to invest in the critical capabilities required to deliver impact at scale.
You’ll find more details in our Annual Report.
Looking ahead
We have ambitious plans for growth in the years ahead. By 2024/25, we aim to increase the size of our partner network by more than 75%, working with over 100 partners. And within three years, we aim to have reached 200. By 2030, we expect grants to community-based organisations to account for nearly 50% of our expenditure, up from 15% today.
To support this growth, we’re investing in critical capabilities, including world-class expertise in fisheries and community resource management, advanced data science, and peer-to-peer learning networks among partners. These investments will ensure we can provide the technical support needed to deliver our programme at scale, and the best-in-class data needed to support community-level decision-making.
Our annual expenditure is budgeted to grow to £17 million in 2024/25 and £25 million by the end of 2026/27, enabling us to expand our impact across a rapidly growing partner base. With a strong balance sheet, we’ll strategically complement our fundraising efforts by funding areas of our programme less attractive to donors, ensuring sustainable and equitable growth.
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