With public interest focused ever more intently on the health of our oceans and the creatures living in them in terms of conservation, I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to Paul Cox, Managing Director of the Shark Trust, about how his organisation is making intelligent and creative use of partnerships to build its supporter base and achieve its conservation goals.
Conservation without borders
Paul puts it succinctly: Sharks don’t recognise borders. This simple fact underpins an ethos of cooperation and collaboration that has been part of the Shark Trust’s DNA since its inception.
“If you’re small in terms of headcount, with a large remit, partnership and collaboration is the most efficient and effective way to get things moving,” Paul explains. The Shark Trust certainly puts this theory into practice, its portfolio of partnerships ranging from long-term and detailed advocacy work with policymakers to on-the-ground alliances with eco-tourism operators and hands-on citizen science projects like the Great Egg Case Hunt.
Getting creative with commerce
As a recent convert to paddle-boarding, I was eager to hear about the Trust’s collaboration with Shark SUPs. Working with the Trust’s scientific illustrators, the company has developed a range of paddleboards inspired by the patterns of different shark skins, at the same time spreading the conservation message to the brand’s customer base through fact sheets included with the product. “It’s about how you can work together to tell a story,” says Paul.
Getting people thinking and working together is key to a big date in the marine conservation sector’s calendar, The Sharks International Conference. Like the Olympics, this comes round every four years and the Shark Trust is excited to be hosting the next conference in Valencia later this year following their successful joint bid. “It’s an opportunity to share goodwill, resources and best practice,” Paul says. “People go away with a renewed sense of can-do”.
The now-familiar threat/opportunity posed by Covid, along with sharp increases in travel costs, means that the conference has gone hybrid. “We have to be more imaginative but if it all goes to plan there are really good opportunities for different groups to get involved”. Remote attendance has its advantages, allowing delegates to dip in and out of sessions and to access an archive of digital recordings when it suits them.
With ConsComm’s help and advice, the Trust has been upping its game on the digital communications front, becoming, Paul believes, “more effective, engaging and entertaining”. Until recently, the only option for addressing clubs, schools and universities was to show up in person, which imposed obvious limitations on the Plymouth-based NGO. Now, however, with two newly developed Zoom packages, “the sky’s the limit.”
A culture of conservation
ConsComm has also facilitated a promising new partnership between the Shark Trust and the Virginia Aquarium. Paul is on the steering committee of the AZA SAFE (Associations of Zoos and Animals – Saving Animals from Extinction) Sharks and Rays programme, exploring ways of coordinating communication of the conservation message through policy support work, sustainable seafood initiatives and the activities of participating aquariums.
At Virginia, working with visitor-facing teams is one part of the jigsaw but to complete the picture means strategically embedding the Shark Trust’s message into the aquarium’s culture from front-of-house to retail and catering to the back office, getting conservation and commerce working in synergy throughout.
The take-home message!
So how can other NGOs use the Shark Trust’s inspiring model to establish and nurture their own collaborations? Paul has a practical checklist:
- Firstly, be clear and consistent about your organisation’s purpose and what you stand for. This feeds into the next point…
- Be clear in your communication with potential partners, and be thoughtful about who you’re talking to and what you want them to take away.
- Go into partnerships openly. Come forward with what you can give as well as what you hope to gain and be prepared to accept that some partnerships aren’t right for your organisation.
- Be a good collaborator. Avoid the battle of the brands. Remember to be equitable and give plenty of credit to your partners.
And finally… be imaginative! Don’t think ‘this can’t work because I’ve not seen it done before’; think ‘how can we make this work?’.
Thanks for your insights, Paul! Lots for us all to think about.
Helen Samuels,
ConsComm Researcher