The BioFi Project is a think-and-do tank partnering with visionary communities to build place-based economies that regenerate – rather than deplete – the ecological and social systems they are embedded in.
We help create place-based institutions that mobilize philanthropy, public funding, and investment capital behind a bioregion’s own strategy for a regenerative economy. We work directly with place-based leaders and coalitions on purpose and investment thesis, portfolio design, governance and legal architecture, and capitalization.
Explore BFFs →
Today’s economy runs on a loop: extract value from living systems, abstract it into money, accumulate it, repeat. Whoever runs that loop fastest wins, so every place trying something different is competing against the game itself. Within bioregions, we map how energy, materials, and money move through local economies, surface the regenerative opportunities hidden in those flows, and help chart strategies to act on them. Across the field, we research and prototype ways to make the alternative loop win for everyone: valuing living systems, turning cooperation into advantage, and keeping wealth circulating where it’s needed.
Economic resilience and opportunity assessments →Current research and experiments →
Economic transformation is a long-term, collective endeavor. We help practitioners and funders learn, through open guides, case studies, and courses; connect, through a global community of practice and monthly Deep Dives; and move together, through convenings and relationships that build shared understanding across places and sectors.
Join the community of practice →
Supporting the design and implementation of a bioregional fund that will serve regenerative enterprises, local governments, and commons stewardship.
Advising on strategy, fund structure, design of the Salmon Biocultural Stewardship Credit, and portfolio composition.
Strengthening organizational capacity and advising on the implementation of the Headwaters Bioregional Fund, developed over two years of co-design.
Our core team members’ home bioregion. Supporting strategy, financial infrastructure design, and regional coordination.
Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet (2024) laid out the rationale and templates for a critical layer of place-based financial institutions. Two years on, bioregional finance is part of the conversation in philanthropy, impact investing, Indigenous-led conservation, local government, and institutional finance.
The 45th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture, with Samantha Power and Tyler Wakefield.
A practical guide for place-based organizations on how Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) can be used to source, channel, and govern capital for their work.
Ecological Design for Place-Based Regeneration. A method for mapping a region's assets, actors, and flows before designing a facility.
An alliance of 28 Indigenous and civil-society organizations across Ecuador and Peru building a multi-jurisdiction fund with five investment windows under Indigenous governance.
How Hawthorne Valley in New York builds its finances on long-term relationships.
Thinking about designing a BFF? This spreadsheet helps you see your initiative's strengths, areas for growth, and next steps. Also available in Spanish.
Samantha Power in conversation with Katie Teague Films.
After seventeen years, the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress reconvenes.
A novel funding mechanism for regeneration.
People everywhere are growing place-based economies that work with life. Much of this work began long before us, and none of it succeeds alone: lasting change depends on many experiments in many places, each reflecting their own context and strengthening the others. We partner closely with some, supported others through our 2025 BioFi Cultivator, and draw inspiration from many more.
This map is a celebration of Bioregional Financing Facilities and other aligned finance initiatives we’re in relationship with, not a census of the field. Allies on other continents are supporting similar work.
Working on a BFF or aligned initiative? Let us know.
The BioFi Community of Practice connects nearly 1,000 practitioners across six continents to share resources and opportunities, find collaborators near and far, ask for help, and coordinate across places. It’s where good ideas spread fast, and where the energy of a growing movement keeps us going.
Each month we host a Deep Dive call with people shaping the field: local initiatives, tool-makers, and thinkers working at every scale. We explore what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s emerging, together.
Join for freeWhether you're building or funding economic transformation in your bioregion, let's explore working together. We're currently stretched beyond our pro-bono capacity, so we are prioritizing paid engagements with governments, funders, investors, and community initiatives.
We map how energy, materials, and money move through your bioregion alongside its ecological limits and risks, then work with regional partners to prioritize opportunities like circular resource use, import replacement, and stronger local supply chains.
Explore assessmentsWe help place-based leaders and coalitions define a facility's role and investment thesis, design its portfolio and capital blend, build governance that keeps wealth in service to place, and prepare to raise capital.
Explore BFFsWe help bioregions turn analysis into strategy, by advising a core team directly or facilitating participatory processes with residents, businesses, local government, and funders to build trust and chart out economic transition pathways.
We support funders and investors to assess where and how their resources can best catalyze economic transformation in their focus bioregion(s).
Like healthy soil, healthy economies don't form overnight. The trust, institutions, and coordination they depend on take years to grow, and rarely show up in quarterly metrics.
Most funding flows to what’s easy to measure. Too little reaches the patient, relational work that creates the conditions for genuine transformation.
We’re looking for funders who want to learn alongside us and the teams we support, not just fund a tidy story.