Activation Guide for Bioregional Organizing Teams
The Enabling Conditions
Effective Bioregional Financing Facilities can only be designed and implemented when there is a robust and healthy foundation of existing organizing and activation in the bioregion, and this foundation can only be built from the leadership of community members dedicated to place-based regeneration.
While this Bioregional Organizing Team may take a unique shape in every context, it will ideally feel quite similar across contexts. In some bioregions, a respected community organization may serve as the Bioregional Organizing Team, whereas other bioregions may witness the fresh emergence of a decentralized network of dedicated individuals and small groups. What matters more than form is the quality of trusting relationships, coherence, and capacity for coordination among these leaders taking shared responsibility for stewarding the community organizing, weaving, and activation.
Creating an explicit Bioregional Regeneration Strategy is an excellent exercise for Bioregional Organizing Teams in both building the trust and coherence that will serve deep into the future, and in evaluating their readiness to take bigger steps together. Working with diverse stakeholders to assess present day health, articulate a vision of bioregional regeneration, and align on the values and key initiatives needed to get there will require communication, collaboration, and ultimately collective decision-making – all critical capacities of that must be well-practiced before launching a BFF.
If one doesn’t already exist, it may be time to create a Bioregional Hub to strengthen a bioregional collaboration network by fostering connections and partnerships, and catalyzing projects and initiatives that align with the Bioregional Regeneration Strategy. These efforts may include:
- Stewarding the Co-creation and Implementation of the Bioregional Regeneration Strategy
- Listening, Ongoing, and Comprehensive Systems Mapping, and Research
- Capacity Building and Upskilling
- Identification and Incubation/Acceleration of Regenerative Business Cases
- Transparent and Real-time Progress Tracking and Data Collection
- Curating Interfaces with Global Networks of Bioregional Hubs and Learning Centers
Once it is clear that a strong and active foundation is in place, a Bioregional Financing Facility can be set up (or evolved from an existing institution) to fund and finance the realization of the vision laid out in the strategy. BFFs do this by working hand in hand with the Bioregional Organizing Team and Bioregional Hub to enable the decentralization of financial resource governance, the design of synergistic project portfolios, and the transition to a regenerative economy. Whereas Bioregional Hubs work to bring together and empower a bioregional regeneration network by facilitating regenerative flow of all capital types, BFFs focus specifically – but not exclusively – on facilitating the regenerative flow of financial capital. Together, the Bioregional Organizing Team, Bioregional Hub, and BFF form the three synergistic legs of a stool that supports bioregional regeneration.
Designing and Implementing a BFF
Bioregional Financing Facilities support the transition to an economy that is less, rather than more, dependent on both financial capital overall and financial capital from outside the region, and where financial flows better align with real flows of value. BFFs will work on creating regenerative flows at multiple levels – at the level of organizations it invests in, and at various levels in nested systems. This includes supporting regenerative organizations in the bioregion with technical assistance, and the development of the enabling environment conditions needed for regenerative organizations to succeed; deepening and expanding markets for regenerative activities; creating regenerating pools of funding to support management of common assets; raising the right type of investment capital; leveraging derisking approaches; and creating cutting edge, integrated MRV strategies.
While each BFF will determine its design based on its particular needs and capacities, we generally recommend four core templates that can build upon one another in succession.
First, a Bioregional Trust acts as a catalytic grant fund – providing grants to a range of priority organizations and initiatives in order to create a strong foundation for bioregional action. It can raise philanthropic and public grant capital as well as receive individual donations (including crowdfunding), and it can allocate these resources to Bioregional Hubs and Bioregional Organizing Teams, priority projects aligned with the Bioregional Regeneration Strategy, and to the evolution of the BFF.
Second, a Bioregional Venture Studio is a non-profit, public benefit corporation, co-operative, steward-owned entity, or DAO that supports the development of a cohort of synergistic regenerative organizations to drive systems change. It may raise capital from philanthropic grants, public sector grants, supply chain finance, and concessional capital. It will seek to invest in and incubate cohorts of early-stage organizations that work together to change a specific system (i.e. the food or energy system) and generate cascading benefits, thus creating deal flow for the third phase.
Third, an Investment Company is a public benefit corporation, co-operative, steward-owned entity, or DAO that develops a portfolio of Systemic Investment Funds and Bioregional Regeneration Bonds. It leverages an integrated capital approach, drawing from market-rate investment capital, concessional capital, grants, and supply chain finance to invest in diversified portfolios of projects & businesses designed to create systemic impact.
Fourth, a Bioregional Bank provides low-interest loans, microloans, lines of credit, and technical assistance to aligned organizations. It can also provide retail banking services to individuals and can develop and issue a complementary or nature-based currency. Supplemented with concessional capital and grant funding, it is funded by guarantees and deposits from bioregional citizens.
To dive deeper into these templates and learn alongside other bioregional organizers working to design and implement BFFs, please join the BioFi Community of Practice! This online community, hosted on Hylo, supports those creating BFFs in sharing tools, insights, and best practices at all levels of practice. The BioFi Community of Practice is also a place where practitioners playing various roles can meet each other to form collaborative partnerships – for example, a Bioregional Organizing Team can find expertise to support their bioregion in designing and implementing a BFF.