What is a funding partner?  

Funding Partners are organisations that fund Better Cotton’s organisational activities, and/or Better Cotton projects at farm level. Funding Partners are more than just financial supporters — their support offers valuable advice and guidance along the way.

They are truly partners in everything we achieve, and we are proud that they are part of the Better Cotton Journey. Becoming a Funding Partner means that you are part of the story and can make Better Cotton a reality. 

They are the largest sustainability programme in cotton and are responsible for putting sustainability in cotton on the map. Better Cotton already represents 23% of global cotton production – for a single initiative to be at that level is impressive. To my knowledge, this is unique. The Better Cotton Standard System was a system designed for scale and it has achieved that in a short period.

Meet our Funding Partners

Projects funded by our partners

Here are examples of projects that have recently closed this year. All three were funded by our partner ISEAL, through their innovation fund: 

Delta Project (2018 – 2022) 
The Delta Project encouraged major sustainability standard organisations to collaborate and create a common framework (or language) for sustainability performance monitoring and SDG reporting across diverse agricultural sectors, starting with cotton and coffee. The founding organisations are the Better Cotton (BC), the Global Coffee Platform (GCP), the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) and the International Coffee Association (ICO). The new framework will reposition how we demonstrate sustainability performance; improving how we implement standards and the SDG commitments. For more information and the latest reports, please visit the Delta Framework website

ATLA Project (2020 – 2022) 
Better Cotton partnered with WWF Turkey and IPUD (the Good Practices Association) to implement “The Adaptation to Landscape Approach (ATLA)” project. The ATLA project confirmed the interest for Better Cotton to gradually engage in landscape/jurisdictional approach as these innovative models require long-term timeframes. Benefits include facilitation of broad multi-stakeholder support to address systemic issues, facilitation of longer-term change by fostering ownership and accountability amongst local stakeholders, potential new avenues for funding and investment through public private partnerships, opportunities to work cross-commodities and long-term efficiency in monitoring and scaling.  

Control Mechanism (2021 – 2022) 
The “Control Mechanism for Blended Materials” project set out to understand the various control mechanism used by sustainability systems and the contexts these different mechanisms work best in. The project explored how the application of mass balance at different points in the supply chain can support such material input controls. The research and the lessons learned from this project will assist Better Cotton with our Chain of Custody revision and help increase transparency throughout the supply chain.

Become a funding partner 

If you would like to learn more about becoming a Funding Partner, please contact the Better Cotton Fundraising Team via our contact form below. We are particularly interested in hearing from organisations that have an interest in funding work on the following thematics: gender, traceability, agri data, decent work, climate change and market access.