The CFF Toolbox
Strategic Tools and Approaches for Community and Family Forests
FSC offers the CFF toolbox to support community and family forests in building readiness, fostering partnerships, and strengthening the outcomes of certification. These tools can be used independently or as part of a coordinated approach to ensure that forest-dependent communities are empowered to engage meaningfully with FSC certification, on their own terms and at their own pace.
Community & Family Forests Work Area
Capturing market benefits of FSC certification: Market Tools
Support Tools for Readiness and Engagement
Certification alone is not enough to ensure that community and family forests thrive. To generate long-term value and tangible benefits, these forests often need targeted support, especially given the unique challenges they face, such as small-scale operations, low volumes, non-commercial species, and limited business or technical capacity.
FSC offers a range of practical tools to support communities and family forests on their journey towards certification, from assessing readiness and building partnerships to exploring viable economic opportunities during the pre-certification phase. These tools are adaptable and meant to be applied flexibly, depending on local needs and context.
Screening Tool
A quantitative tool that estimates the success probability of certification initiatives, helping prioritize pilot projects. It highlights key limiting factors, guiding where to invest resources. This also...
Partnership Scoping Tool
Supports FSC and collaborators in identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing strategic partners to implement the CFF Toolbox effectively, ensuring impact and scalability across regions, themes, and community and...
Economic viability tool
A tool designed to empower communities to assess and decide, in a (traditional) collective process, what they can do to increase benefits from the forest, and probably other natural resources.
Collective Impact methodology
To use when a typical market approach is not possible, focusing on a collaborative approach to address the disabling factors.
Tools to Enhance Value and Capacity for Certified Operations
Achieving certification is a significant milestone, but the long-term success of FSC-certified community and family forests depends on their ability to sustain value from certification. FSC offers strategic tools to strengthen operational capacity, improve technical knowledge, and increase visibility in value chains. These tools support certified operations in consolidating their market presence, expanding impact, and building resilient networks of collaboration and support.
Community of Practice
A participatory network of practitioners who share knowledge, train others, and apply FSC tools. It builds committed leadership and peer support systems that strengthen quality and long-term impact in...
Timber Training Programme and Vol. Aggregator...
(Available upon request) These tools enhance technical and organizational capacity in timber value chains. The training builds sustainable management skills, while the aggregator consolidates certified timber...