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Community-based Businesses Thrive with Help of Innovative EcoEnterprises Fund

Surfers use it as an all-natural energy drink. Celebrities rave about it. Dermatologists say it makes you look younger. But what really makes the acai (ah-sigh-ee) fruit special is the way that much of it is harvested and brought to market.

In early 2000, eco-savvy entrepreneurs Ryan Black and Ed Nichols founded a company called Sambazon after trying acai with surfers during a trip to northeastern Brazil. Sambazon, short for Saving and Managing the Brazilian Amazon, buys its organic acai from 1,500 local families. The families harvest the fruit by hand in the Varzea Flooded Forest ecoregion, part of the biodiversity-rich Amazon basin. The company is committed to preserving the ecoregion by providing a sustainable, income-generating activity for these local growers.

So far, their community and environment-friendly business model is working: Sambazon is now the largest exporter of acai, and its frozen smoothie mixes and other products can be found in hundreds of retailers across the U.S., including Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and Trader Joe’s.

Sambazon is supported in part by EcoEnterprises Fund, an innovative fund managed by The Nature Conservancy that offers financing to environmentally and socially responsible businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. By providing funds and targeted technical assistance to small-scale projects, EcoEnterprises Fund creates economic incentives for good environmental and social practices.

To be considered for an investment, a company must work with a local nonprofit or community organization to provide ongoing support for crucial conservation or development activities. Once approved, the business venture must undergo continuous monitoring and evaluation by the Fund's Costa Rica-based investment staff.

EcoEnterprises Fund counts 19 projects in its portfolio, including a scallop aquaculture business off Baja California, a family-owned bee farming company in El Salvador, and the owner of ecotourism lodges in Belize.

"They're all so interesting," Fund director Tammy Newmark said of the Fund's current and pending projects. "What has energized me from day one is that you get these outrageously smart, cool, visionary entrepreneurs working in situations that are extremely challenging to bring about conservation and social benefits while achieving solid business results."

EcoEnterprises Fund was launched in 2000 by a group of investors, led by the Conservancy and the Inter-American Development Bank.

"One of the primary goals of the Fund was to overcome traditional barriers between the private and nonprofit sectors and to create collaborative partnerships," Newmark said.

As the Fund celebrates its fifth year, Newmark said her team wants to look at opportunities to help apply the lessons they've learned within the Conservancy, perhaps expanding the funding model into the other regions.

"We have the systems, process, procedure and track record," she said. "This is a successful model for creating the means to protect biodiversity."

For more information:

• Where We Work: The Nature Conservancy in Brazil
  Together with partners, The Nature Conservancy is helping preserve Brazil's distinctive natural landscapes — from the once vast Atlantic Forest to the Pantanal, the world's largest freshwater wetland.
• Places We Protect: The Amazon
  Home to approximately one-third of the Earth’s species, the Amazon Basin is the planet’s greatest reserve of life forms. Encompassing the largest tropical forest in the world, it also accounts for nearly one quarter of the world’s freshwater flow.
• How We Work: Our Partnerships
  The Nature Conservancy pursues non-confrontational, pragmatic, market-based solutions to conservation challenges, which makes it essential for us to work collaboratively with partners.
• How We Work: EcoEnterprises Fund
  EcoEnterprises Fund is a venture fund like no other. We invest capital and technical assistance in environmentally compatible businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our investments return more than profits - they generate income for local people, funding for conservation, and hope for some of the planet's most diverse and dramatic landscapes.
• Our Partner: Sambazon
  Using acai fruit as a vehicle to promote and further sustainability, Sambazon has teamed up with groundbreaking companies and international organizations dedicated to developing cooperation and positive exchange in the Amazon and beyond.
• Archive of our Saves of the Week and Success Stories
  Read more about our work to save the last great places on Earth.