Creating Replicable Capacity Building Workshops for Rainforest Conservation in Ecuador


Goal: Design and deliver capacity-building workshops to a group of Rainforest Trust’s nonprofit partners from Ecuador and neighboring countries.

Background: Since 1988, Rainforest Trust has protected more than 20 million acres of tropical habitat across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific and has projects underway that will protect an additional 28 million to achieve their goal of 50 million acres by the end of 2020. Their work is based upon building lasting partnerships with local conservation organizations to develop and implement science-based sustainable solutions for permanent protection.

Project: The objective of the DocuSign / Team4Tech / Rainforest Trust collaboration was for DocuSign employees to design and deliver capacity-building workshops to a group of Rainforest Trust’s nonprofit partners from Ecuador and neighboring countries. To set the stage for these workshops, volunteers partnered with Rainforest Trust’s nonprofit partners to determine strengths and weaknesses, understand potential gap areas, and identify opportunities for growth and financial stability.

The DocuSign volunteers:

  • Delivered workshops on human resources, finance, accounting, technology, and fundraising.
  • The team packaged all the content into an online toolkit so that it is now replicable, giving Rainforest Trust a framework to support its partners throughout the world.
    • This replicable train-the-trainer program teaches attendees how to conduct future assessments, how to help organizations with basic planning, and how to find resources for gap areas.