📋 Finance Assesments
Activities
Stocktake and Gap Analysis
Between autumn 2024 and early 2025, two directors held ten conversations with [[Dark Matter Labs]], working through fifteen dimensions of how the Tay might one day host bioregional financing facilities without being pulled into finance-as-usual.The stocktake and gap analysis summary names what followed: most effort still moves on grants; directors absorb much of the labour unpaid; the orchestrated live portfolio stays narrow while a longer shelf of ideas waits on restricted funds and courage. Relationships with power and place are understood in the room more often than in a single shared atlas; bioregion-wide visioning is deliberately cautious because neighbours want motion, not another talking shop. Pilots such as the Ericht point toward MRV and a possible nature-finance aggregation path, yet no Tay-dedicated financial vehicle exists—only the question of what must harden first so a facility could be trustworthy rather than ornamental.
Landscape Finance Strategy
The landscape partnership first ran a 4 Returns finance assessment with AlVelAl, allied foundations and enterprises, and Commonland—mapping real interventions and their costs. The results (to early 2025) put total identified need around €177.5 million on a five-year view, with about half of that in grant-like capital. Building on that diagnosis, AlVelAl and Commonland are developing a landscape finance strategy with partners inside the territory and beyond, testing promising mechanisms such as collaboration with the European Investment Bank, cajas rurales (rural savings banks), and other instruments still taking shape—so public, community, and private capital can meet the landscape.