Strategy
By assisting clients with project planning and strategy development, CLF Ventures promotes project integrity, creates positive community relations, and upholds commitments to social and environmental principles. Our team has the strategic planning and communications expertise to make projects run smoothly.
Specific services include:
Market Development
- Market Research and Analysis
CLF Ventures is skilled in conducting market research and quantitative analysis for environmentally beneficial projects. We have a wide range of technical capabilities that, combined with our business expertise and relationships, allow us to provide clients with important insights into the emerging marketplace. - Marketing Strategies for Green Companies or Products
We combine our environmental and business knowledge to develop strategies that help companies market their green products or services with success. - Access to Green Market Segments
CLF Ventures uses our understanding of environmental issues and our technical and scientific expertise to leverage the environmental benefits of products with green market segments. By identifying, verifying, and promoting these benefits, CLF Ventures helps clients gain market share.
Regulatory and Political Strategy
- Regulatory Strategy
Regulatory approvals are key prerequisites for every project. Emerging policy issues may also impact project success. CLF Ventures blends detailed knowledge of these two fields to produce strategies that help our clients launch and implement successful projects. - Political Troubleshooting
CLF Ventures has a solid grasp of the political climate for novel and environmental projects in New England and beyond, and we’ve developed long-term relationships with political stakeholders in the region and elsewhere. CLF Ventures leverages these invaluable assets to help clients effectively manage the political landscape and achieve successful project outcomes. - Regulatory and Permitting Strategies
CLF Ventures helps clients develop and implement effective and efficient permitting strategies, particularly for novel and untested approaches. We use our in-depth knowledge of local, state, and federal regulations and permitting processes to assist our clients with securing the regulatory approvals they need.
Stakeholder Strategy
- Stakeholder Engagement
CLF Ventures helps clients build profitability by improving their relationships with their stakeholders and the environment. Our staff understands complex social and environmental dynamics, and we have demonstrated experience reconciling community conflicts around environmental issues. Our organization has both the technical competence and the facilitation skills to help create consensus and reduce uncertainty.We leverage our environmental reputation and non-profit status to build a positive relationship between our clients and the larger stakeholder community. We also apply Friction Point Analysis ™ to help clients identify and manage issues that can impact project objectives. - Friction Point Analysis™
CLF Ventures helps clients identify and manage “friction points”—issues that, if gone unchecked, can damage project goals and objectives. We access our proprietary networks to prioritize the key technical, environmental, regulatory, and societal concerns that contribute to friction points, then analyze likely risks to the project. Using this analysis, we can create outreach plans that reflect local realities and address the most critical project issues. - Stakeholder Tiger Teams™
To provide a litmus test of how stakeholders may respond to various project scenarios, CLF Ventures convenes a “Tiger Team” to provide customized feedback to clients in a risk-free environment. We draw on our wide network of advocates, thought leaders, and experts to create realistic and effective forums that allow clients to test and refine two-way stakeholder engagement messaging and communications.
Related Success Stories
In 2006, the Boston Foundation (TBF) awarded a $125,000 grant to CLF Ventures – to be matched by other organizations –to conduct a market feasibility study of a $100 million work force housing private equity fund.
CLF Ventures worked with the product design team of this leading nanotechnology company on novel technology during the design phase to address safety issues throughout the product life cycle.
CLFV provided stakeholder outreach, information gathering, and user forum design/facilitation services to improve holistic water management in Vermont.
CLF Ventures has partnered with the Industrial Revolutions LLC investment group to promote Ensolve’s PetroLiminator, an environmentally-sound technology that uses natural biological processes to destroy oil and grease in bilge water.
CLF Ventures worked with Horizon Wind Energy to provide services related to the lack of transmission capacity for the company’s planned Aroostook Wind Project in Aroostook County, Maine.
CLF Ventures made use of its experience launching renewable energy projects in New England to develop a manual for town officials and volunteer leaders that is essential for building community support for new facilities.
CLF Ventures introduced AES to a prospective site for its facility at a proposed eco-industrial park in Londonderry, New Hampshire, and advised AES on permitting strategy and ways to strengthen local support for the project.
CLF Ventures is analyzing the economic and environmental benefits of local food production, including job creation, greenhouse gas mitigation from reduced transportation impacts, and ancillary health and environmental benefits of local food production on underutilized lands.
CLF Ventures helped Yankee Atomic Electric Energy Company with all non-radiological aspects of decommissioning the 160 MW Yankee Nuclear Power Station along the shores of Sherman Reservoir in Rowe, Massachusetts, including site closure, stakeholder outreach and communications, and property disposition.