Our Mission
“We believe innovation and the power of disruption can change the status quo to better protect cultural landscapes and our way of life.”
Tom McMurray, MVF President
Our mission is to invest in the next generation of leaders and support their entrepreneurial efforts to build new health and conservation nonprofits with a clear mission focus. The goal has always been to affect positive environmental change to protect human ecosystems around the globe. We are active participants in our program areas where grants, film projects and active field work are essential to our partners and our success.
We are group of entrepreneurs, scientists, film makers, venture capitalist and health care professionals who work closely together on focused project areas covering mental health, cultural landscapes and documentary films. While we do not accept unsolicited grants we are open to enquiries for game changing projects. Contact us.
Keeping Country
The Kimberley, Western Australia An MVF documentary filmThe Kimberley, in Northwestern Australia is the size of California with only 40,000 residents. Nowhere else on the planet have people lived as long within, and in balance with, a landscape. Now, a cultural legacy over 40,000 years old is at risk from mining and development.
After the Spill
New Orleans, LA
in 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the coast of Louisiana. Five years later the Deepwater Horizon exploded and spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the worst ecological disaster in North American history. John Bowermaster’s timeless film reminds us all what can happen and the consequences of cleaning up people’s lives as well as the ocean and wetlands.
Environmental Startups
Since 2001 we have funded a number of startup nonprofits where our initial grants were the seed money necessary to hire key people and launch conservation initiatives. In many cases we joined the board and helped scale up operations, raise additional funds and develop collaborations to increase the impact of the organization. Groups like The Ocean Foundation who is celebrating its 20th year in 2022 and Ocean Champions gave us an opportunity help these founders create new and more powerful nonprofits to protect earth’s ecosystems. We supported iNaturalist and worked with them to build a citizen science app for the Chesapeake Bay. We help fund the CS App Coastal Walkabout in Australia working with scientists from Murdoch University and Duke University. We have also made large grants to existing organizations to help them grow and scale up impactful mental health programs. The goal has always been to find visionary founders and help them achieve their vision.
Cultural Landscapes
Documenting cultural landscapes has been the most important and most rewarding part of Marine Ventures’ work. The immersive time spent in places like the Mississippi and Colorado River Deltas and Western Australia showed us a more important reason to protect these places. And it was only when we spent days and weeks living in these places did we learn the real reason to protect and sustain a way of life. In each of the places we have worked there was a cultural landscape defined by the people, their history, culture, traditions and language. Country is the term often used by Aboriginal peoples to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected. The term contains complex ideas about law, place, custom, language, spiritual belief, cultural practice, material sustenance, family and identity. And our documentary “Keeping Country” explores the battle to protect a way of life from being overrun by the oil and gas industry.
Our Team
As Marine Ventures enters its third decade of operation, we continue to learn and refine where we can have meaningful impact. The goal has always been to affect positive environmental change to protect human ecosystems around the globe. From the early days of funding applied science, advocacy groups, media projects and citizen science, we have evolved to our current focus on investing in technological climate solutions thru a variety of vehicles, continuing to document important cultural stories to educate us all of what is at stake. Finally we continue e to expand our grants program into the health area focusing on mental health, child trafficking and women reproductive rights. And most importantly our partners are what make this work so meaningful. They inspire us, educate us and give us hope.