THE PROTEIN PROJECT

From Coalition to Institution

How Dentons Helped The Protein Project Build Its Legal Foundation

In under a year, a small group of fellows from the School for Moral Ambition did what many well-funded advocacy campaigns spend years trying to achieve: they got MEPs from the EPP, Renew and the Greens to sit on the same panel and agree on something. The topic was protein – specifically, how Europe feeds itself sustainably without turning the plate into another front line in the culture war.

That coalition-building work was led by Katrien Martens & Marin Vandamme, who would go on to found The Protein Project, a Brussels-based initiative to depolarise Europe’s protein debate. Rather than picking a side between plant-based advocates and the livestock sector, The Protein Project convenes both (alongside novel-protein innovators, public health groups, farmers and policymakers) around a shared goal: a protein system that works for climate, health, competitiveness and food security at once.

In the six months of their fellowship, Marin mobilised a coalition of more than 90 stakeholders across the protein value chain, published a joint position paper calling for sustainable protein diversification at EU level, and organised a cross-party European Parliament event that brought together MEPs rarely found on the same stage. Meanwhile Katrien launched a health coalition of more than 20 major public health organisations pushing for food system reform to be treated as a health issue, not just an environmental one. The stakes are significant: modelling suggests that moving just 10% closer to EAT-Lancet dietary guidelines across Europe could save an estimated 50,000 lives, spare 200 million animals and cut 13 megatonnes of CO₂ annually.

With The Protein Project, they set out to build on that momentum. One example is their Legume Roadmap, which once brought together the value chain and MEPs from across the political spectrum — and this time, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen himself, who spoke to the substance of the roadmap and, in a fitting sign of how far the coalition had come, wished the initiative a happy birthday from the podium. Alongside legumes, The Protein Project has since expanded its work to fermentation-derived proteins and to research on the link between the EU’s protein strategy and food security.

Momentum like that creates a good problem: an initiative that started as a fast-moving fellowship project needed to become an institution capable of hiring staff, signing contracts and sustaining itself for the long term. Having advanced conversations with funders, Marin and Katrien needed to formalise The Protein Project as a nonprofit under Belgian law – quickly, and with legal foundations solid enough to support growth.

Pro Publico matched The Protein Project with Dentons‘ Brussels office, where partner Laurens Engelen took on the role of pro bono manager for the collaboration, working alongside colleague Martijn Segers to support the nonprofit’s formation.

The scope of the assistance reflected the practical, meticulous groundwork that any new organisation needs but few founders have the possibility to fully afford: drafting the statutes for a Belgian nonprofit (ASBL), and preparing the contractual building blocks – template contracts and internal work rules – needed to bring on staff and external collaborators as the organisation scales. The support has also extended beyond drafting itself: Dentons connected the team with a specialist legal consultant on hiring and HR matters, giving The Protein Project targeted insight into how to approach staffing questions specific to its situation as it prepares to grow, and is currently supporting the registration of The Protein Project’s expanded board.

That range of support – from foundational statutes through to the practical questions that follow, like how to structure a first hire or what an internship should look like under Belgian labour law – is exactly the kind of in-the-weeds guidance that determines whether a young organisation can actually operate, not just exist on paper.

“Starting an impact organisation means wearing every hat at once — designing your projects, building credibility, hiring employees — and then suddenly also needing to be a legal expert or find a large sum of money you don’t have,” says Katrien Martens, co-founder of The Protein Project. “Dentons’ commitment and patience, and the fact that they understood the specific realities of a non-profit rather than treating us like any other client, really helped us a long way. We’re genuinely so grateful to Dentons for their support, and to ProPublico for this great match.”

It’s also a useful illustration of what pro bono legal support can look like for an advocacy organisation at this particular stage: not a single, discrete transaction, but an evolving relationship that adapts as the organisation’s needs become clearer. The Protein Project didn’t just need a nonprofit registered – it needed a legal foundation flexible enough to support a growing team and an expanding policy agenda.

For Pro Publico, the case is a reminder of why matchmaking between civil society and corporate law firms matters most at moments of institutional transition. Coalition-building, position papers and Parliament events can carry an initiative a long way on energy and credibility alone. But turning that momentum into a durable institution – one that can hire, contract and operate with legal certainty – requires exactly the kind of technical legal capacity that a firm like Dentons can provide pro bono, and that a young nonprofit rarely has the budget to buy.

As The Protein Project evolves from a duo of enthusiastic coalition-builders to a credible, institutionalised think-and-do-tank, the legal groundwork laid with Dentons’ support gives it a foundation to keep doing what it does best: getting people who disagree about protein to agree on how to fix the system around it.

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