Both ENDS was set up in 1986 on the initiative of a number of Dutch environmental organisations. It had identified a need for a support centre for environmental organisations in the South to help them locate relevant information and to facilitate their contacts with ‘Northern’ organisations, policy makers and compatible donors.

Our core activities are: information exchange, advice on developing project proposals, and active brokerage in fund-raising. Other activities include supporting campaigns, research, lobby, identifying alternatives and capacity building with Southern (and, more recently, Eastern and Central European) organisations.

We increasingly opt for cooperating with those NGOs we consider as ‘innovators’, and who operate on the basis of an integrated analysis and vision. It is with this type of organisation that we closely collaborate in the Encyclopedia of Sustainability.

Both ENDS is a non-profit organisation registered as a ‘Stichting’ in the Netherlands. It is completely independent and receives financial contributions on a project base from various private charity foundations and development institutions. The annual turnover is approximately Euro 700.000.

In the last three years the work of Both ENDS has been financially supported by: AidEnvironment, Eco-operation, ENDA, European Union, Hivos, IUCN - Botswana Office, W. Alton Jones Foundation (USA), FAO, C.S. Mott Foundation (USA), Netherlands Committee for IUCN, NCDO, NCIV, Netherlands Embassy (Delhi, India), Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS), and Netherlands Ministry of the Environment (VROM), NOVIB, PLASMA (Indonisia), Polish Ecological Club (PKE), Swedish Council for Nature Conservation (SSNC), UNESCO