Bioregional Flow Funding: Community-Driven Capital Cascades
Exploring a new model for democratic resource allocation that centers community legitimacy and bioregional health
Note: This is an early-stage proposal and invitation for discussion. The partners mentioned are listed based on perceived alignment and have not been formally engaged. I’m sharing this vision to gather feedback and explore the possibility of running an MVP pilot aligned with Gitcoin Grants 24.
Read, comment, and provide feedback on the full proposal here.
The Challenge We’re Trying to Solve
Across the regenerative movement, we keep running into the same fundamental problem: global funding mechanisms that lack local legibility, a system in which funds can’t flow from the scale at which capital is pooled into the localized contexts where it is most needed.
Too often, resources flow to projects based on external metrics, organizational capacity, or whoever writes the best grant application—rather than genuine community support and alignment with what landscapes actually need. Traditional funding creates a disconnect between those who control resources and those who understand local contexts, leading to projects that may receive money but lack the community buy-in essential for long-term regenerative impact.
What if we could flip this dynamic? What if communities themselves could coordinate how resources flow to support the regenerative work they know their landscapes need most?
Prototyping Bioregional Flow Funding
In this mechanism brief, I’m exploring a two-tier democratic funding mechanism that puts community legitimacy at the center:
How It Works
Landscape Teams are trusted local coordinators who emerge from existing networks of regenerative practitioners. These aren’t new organizations, but rather the people who communities already recognize as legitimate stewards of their landscapes. They work with their communities to:
- Set criteria for what kinds of projects their landscape needs
- Curate portfolios of projects that align with community priorities
- Facilitate local decision-making about resource allocation
Bioregional Coordination happens through a backbone organization (in the case of the MVP, Regenerate Cascadia) that coordinates between landscape teams across the broader bioregion. This creates connection and resource-sharing while maintaining local autonomy.
Democratic Resource Allocation uses quadratic funding to ensure that projects with broad community support receive proportional resources. The mechanism includes “tunable” components that allow trusted community members to have additional influence, balancing pure democracy with place-based wisdom.
The Flow Process
- Portfolio Development: Landscape teams work with their communities to identify and support projects that align with locally-established criteria
- Bioregional Round: Teams submit their portfolios to a bioregional funding round where communities vote using quadratic funding to distribute a matching pool
- Cascade Distribution: Funds flow down to landscape teams, who then run their own internal rounds to allocate resources to projects within their portfolios
- Impact & Learning: Projects report impact using standardized tools, creating a feedback loop for continuous improvement
Why This Matters
This model addresses several critical gaps in how regenerative work gets funded:
- Community Legitimacy: Decision-making power sits with people who have earned trust through their ongoing work in service of their landscapes
- Local Knowledge: Funding decisions are informed by deep understanding of local contexts, needs, and relationships
- Democratic Participation: Broader community members have meaningful voice in how resources are allocated
- Systemic Integration: Projects are supported not in isolation, but as part of integrated approaches to landscape health
The approach also creates infrastructure for community self-governance around resource allocation—building capacity that extends far beyond any single funding round.
The Pilot Opportunity: Gitcoin Grants 24
I’d like to explore the possibility of running an MVP pilot aligned with Gitcoin Grants 24 in October 2024. This would be a compressed 4-month preparation timeline focusing on 5-10 high-readiness landscape teams in the Pacific Northwest.
The pilot would demonstrate core principles while building foundation for future expansion:
- Test the two-tier coordination model with real communities
- Validate quadratic funding mechanisms for regenerative contexts
- Create replicable templates for other bioregions
- Generate learnings about community-driven funding at scale
Potential Partners & Ecosystem
Again, these are provisional based on perceived alignment—not formal commitments:
- Regenerate Cascadia: Bioregional backbone coordination
- Celo Public Goods & Regen Coordination: Blockchain infrastructure and impact reporting
- Gitcoin: Quadratic funding expertise and platform integration
- OpenCivics: Participatory governance and civic tech
- Kinship Earth: Indigenous-led regenerative practices
- Novo Foundation: Philanthropic networks and foundation expertise
- Open Future Coalition: Alternative economic models and commons governance
- Salmon Nation: Bioregional knowledge and Indigenous community connections
- Ma Earth: Regenerative agriculture integration
- BioFi Project: Regenerative finance and impact measurement
Next Steps
If there’s interest and alignment, the rough timeline would be:
- June: Coalition formation and capacity assessment
- July: Technical infrastructure setup and landscape team selection
- August: Portfolio development and platform testing
- September-October: Gitcoin Grants 24 integration and pilot implementation
Dive Deeper
For those interested in the detailed mechanism design, implementation timeline, risk assessment, and full strategic framework, check out the complete research document. It’s a comprehensive guide covering everything from quadratic funding parameters to impact measurement frameworks.