✍🏾 Investment Vehicles
Activities
Seacoast Trust
Recognizing that the work of regeneration requires long-term, patient capital, Spruce Root became the fiscal sponsor of the Seacoast Trust—a permanent funding mechanism created to provide access to capital for Indigenous-led conservation projects that place local communities at the center of efforts to achieve a healthy environment. The Seacoast Trust's guiding principles include respecting community voices, upholding Indigenous governance and leadership, and valuing the integrity of all knowledge systems—including those anchored in 10,000 plus years of Indigenous history, traditions, and stewardship. The Trust will fund the work of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. Projects slated for funding include Native forest partnerships, healthy salmon habitat, Indigenous Guardians programs, youth leadership opportunities, food sovereignty, climate migration, regenerative economies, and reduced carbon footprints. The Trust provides grants for work programs, loans for small Tribal businesses, Southeast Tribal Land Purchases, and local infrastructure projects, as well as exchange-traded and impact funds, network coordination and capacity building. In 2022, the Seacoast Trust reached an initial $20 million funding goal with the help of Sealaska, The Nature Conservancy, and the Rasmuson, Hewlett, Edgerton, Chorus, and Wilburforce foundations. But the real vision is much larger: the goal of the trust is to reach $100 million in order to fully fund the work of Sustainable Southeast Partnership in perpetuity—ensuring that this work doesn't depend on the vagaries of grant cycles, but can continue for generations.
Small Business Lending
Spruce Root's approach to economic development starts with recognition: many entrepreneurs in Southeast Alaska don't have access to affordable capital through traditional financing channels. But Spruce Root sees beyond credit scores and collateral. Their small business lending program targets entrepreneurs who may not qualify elsewhere, but who contribute to economic development and community well-being in the region. Before potential borrowers even apply for a loan, Spruce Root provides business and career coaching. And they continue supporting them after the loan is issued. The loans can fund startup capital, working capital, business expansion, and more. Between 2012 and 2022, Spruce Root deployed $1.2 million in loan capital. In 2022 alone, they issued loans to four Alaska small businesses totaling $350,000. In 2023, new loans deployed amounted to just under $900,000—a sign of growing momentum and trust.
Salmon Returns
Salmon Returns is a cross-border bioregional fund grounded in the migratory pathways of wild Pacific salmon, representing what founder Cheryl Chen calls a biocultural finance collaborative for regenerating place, culture, and economy. Salmon Returns reimagines finance as an act of cultural and ecological healing, where capital returns—like the salmon—to nourish the very systems that sustain life. The fund operates through the BRIDGE Framework—a living blueprint that ensures every investment is rooted in place (Bioregional Grounding), improves biocultural function (Regenerative Design), draws from Indigenous worldviews (Indigenous Values), distributes value and governance (Distributed Ownership), circulates value rather than accumulating it (Gift Logic), and generates circular returns that sustain future projects (Enterprise Continuity). Salmon Returns supports the transition to regenerative economies by restoring biocultural landscapes, scaling community-led enterprises, and transforming finance systems. The fund has developed an emerging portfolio across the Upper Columbia River Basin and Okanagan region, the Coastal Temperate Rainforest, and the Klamath River Basin—partnering with Indigenous and local leaders to advance regenerative agriculture, watershed stewardship, and ecosystem renewal. Flagship efforts like the Okanagan Catalyst Network bring together farmers, Indigenous nations, food cooperatives, and wholesale distributors to regenerate the regional food system. The fund has mobilized over $15 million for early projects, with $15M already flowing into aligned land acquisition and distribution infrastructure. Currently raising $2M in Phase 1, with a longer-term target of $100M in catalytic capital to unlock over $1 billion in public/private investment by 2035. By 2030, the fund aims to be self-regenerating through investment returns.
Cascadia Regeneration Fund
The Cascadia Regeneration Fund (“Cascade”) is Regenerate Cascadia’s vision for a living financial architecture for bioregional transition. Cities can raise billions for transit or schools; comparable mechanisms for watershed regeneration barely exist. The fund is structured as a bioregional trust, with nonprofit standing in the U.S. and Canada. The main vehicle combines three back-end donor-advised funds (DAFs) into one flow fund feeding localized landscape sub-funds, governed and regranted by hubs developed through the Bioregion Program. Governance stays as local as possible; funding reflects ongoing evaluation from communities doing the work. The intent is to let money flow like water through a coherent strategy, with metrics defined on the ground. Seeding has reached $40,000 toward an initial $100,000 goal by December 2025 to test regranting—setting up larger flows from 2026.
The Connectivity Partnership
The Connectivity Partnership formalises cooperation among NGOs (WWF-New Zealand, NZ Landcare Trust), agencies, and iwi—pooling knowledge, co-funding, and coordinating corridors and catchments. It helped lift neighbourhood projects toward landscape strategies for biodiversity, pests, and water that braid western science with Māori worldviews. A parallel aim is syndicated investment: government, philanthropy, and impact capital opening shared windows for community priorities.
Panama Venture Studio + Restoration Fund
A venture studio plus restoration fund are designed as one pipeline: co-design place-based methods and enterprises, then move catalytic capital into landscape portfolios and shared infrastructure under governance that privileges community priorities and ecosystem outcomes. Financing may layer philanthropy, public instruments, and canal- or climate-linked tools without reducing outcomes to carbon tonnes alone—using markets where helpful while safeguarding social and ecological integrity.
Northeast BFF & Venture Studio
The group is building paired capital: a bioregional financing facility (trust capital aligned with an intertribal table) and a venture studio for bioregionally rooted enterprises unlikely to emerge from conventional markets. Profits from studio ventures are intended to help fund the broader institutional shift.
Hudson Valley Bioregional Trust & Fund
A Hudson Valley trust and philanthropic fund is being built to move money through the guilds. Convenings have begun; fundraising is aimed so each guild can steward at least roughly $1 million, with allocation led by people closest to the issues.
Diamante Bioregional Trust Development
The Diamante Bioregional Trust is a community-aligned capital channel aimed at grassroots regenerative action. So far, the consortium has raised, spent, and tracked about $125,000—foundational work on a lean budget—while building toward a $125 million goal to take tested approaches across the wider bioregion. A curated set of ready-to-implement projects—water protection, reforestation, legal land defense, cultural revitalization, decentralized education—comes out of years of groundwork with communities bordering the Osa Peninsula.
Bioregional Financing Facility Development
A bioregional funding mechanism currently in development, the CEDPO Financing Facility is designed to receive donations and investments from Costa Rican donors, the Costa Rican government, and international sources. The facility will support the core CEDPO operations team, finance locally led regenerative projects, strengthen community organizations and governance, and maximize available resources through connections with government institutions, NGOs, and universities. CEDPO aims to raise $100,000 annually for operational needs. As of 2025, $35,000 has been secured, hoped to be a three-year commitment, leaving approximately $65,000 annually to be raised.
Appalachia Community Capital Design
Blueprint is developing community capital strategies that embed regenerative values and local decision-making. This includes designing grant and loan mechanisms to fund land-based projects, cooperative enterprises, and creative infrastructure. The group is prototyping governance structures that center equity, lived experience, and intergenerational leadership. They are actively exploring flow fund models and bioregionally rooted donor circles, and they envision a "Community Wealth Table" where local actors co-govern the deployment of resources.
Blue Ridge Foodshed Capital Infrastructure
The Trust is partnering with Abundance Capital to administer the Blue Ridge Foodshed Fund—a catalytic donor-advised fund (DAF). This multi-donor fund receives tax-deductible grants from public, private, and corporate donors, creating a capital pool for grants, zero/low-interest loans, and return-based investments. Returns flow back into the Fund to be reinvested in more initiatives. The team is identifying catalytic projects in three specific landscape clusters across the region. Potential investments include local processing and aggregation centers, mobile market units, cold storage solutions, and co-located services for farmers and food entrepreneurs.
Bioregional Funding Ecosystem
The Bioregional Foundation stewards regenerative value flow and governance in the bioregion. The funding ecosystem is meant to back regenerative projects; mobilize financial, social, and natural resources across the bioregion; track and evaluate progress; convene local groups, organizations, and projects; support meaningful participation in decisions; and improve equitable environmental and socioeconomic outcomes over time. The Earth Regeneration Fund (also called the Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem) frames whole-system social and ecological regeneration. The Legacy Project is launching a Catalytic Cohort to establish the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem—pairing funders with practitioners in a tailored action-learning process. At the September 2024 Bioregional Regenerative Finance Forum in the GTB, the Earth Regeneration Trust was launched alongside the emerging Bioregional Funding Ecosystem.