We are thrilled to be submitting a grant proposal next week for the Trust in Practice Awards, an initiative of the Aspen Institute! This is another exciting step in our vision for “a regenerative future in which people live in the right relationship with the land, each other, and biodiversity; and a future where ecosystem health has been restored to pre-colonial contact, and every generation has a higher quality of life than before”.
The Trust in Practice Awards support nonprofit organizations collaborating on new initiatives that build trust across local and virtual communities, while connecting grantees to a national network through the Alliance for Social Trust’s programs and storytelling platforms. Award recipients also participate in the annual Trust in Practice Summit, which celebrates and uplifts the work of those strengthening social trust. As an initiative of the Aspen Institute, Alliance for Social Trust, in partnership with Allstate, advances this mission by convening high-impact, community-based organizations, national institutions, and innovators dedicated to rebuilding and deepening social trust across the United States.
PHOTO CREDIT: Tillamook Bay, Oregon. 2019, by Dan Meyers on Unsplash.
Into Practice: How Regenerate Cascadia Aligns with the Aspen Institute’s Trust in Practice Awards
Across our bioregion, each of Regenerate Cascadia’s ten Landscape Groups have been working together since the Landscape Hub Cultivator launch in Fall, 2025, while many of the Groups’ Stewards have collaborated for years. Each Landscape Group approaches landscape and social problems with open ears according to the unique circumstances of the land, water, people, and built places.
If awarded, Regenerate Cascadia is applying for a one million dollar grant over a two-year award-period which would support shared infrastructure, funded bioregional regeneration teams in each landscape, and convene a $300,000 participatory funding process grounded in the identified needs, and as part of a coherent, regional trust building initiative.
Year One: Holding Shared Cooperation
In the first year, Landscape Groups will nurture local reciprocal convenings, holding shared work together as ongoing communities of practice where partners integrate whole-system regeneration in Cascadia. Building upon what is already underway, year one is about a shared-governance “readiness” year anchored in our Landscape Hub Cultivator (LHC). Through the LHC, each Landscape Group hosts an in-person bioregional (place-based) mapping workshop that brings a broad coalition of local stakeholders into the same room—across differences—to strengthen relationships, surface shared priorities, and create a regeneration strategy with everyone at the table.
A grant award will provide funding to pay staff, and reserve dedicated stipends and honorariums to support participation by trusted community partners and BIPOC communities, so the coalition is shaped by local leadership and lived experience—not just the groups who already have capacity.
This foundational first year is intended for each Landscape Group to develop a trust-based model where 2-3 of established partners have a commitment to life -giving landscape and repair/regeneration as preparation for community mapping and broader stakeholder inclusion.
Year Two: Sustaining Trust Through Coordinated Action
Year Two builds on this foundation. With relationships and systems already in place, landscape partners identify portfolios of regenerative projects, develop shared budgets and context-based indicators, and practice transparent resource deployment together.
Landscape Groups utilize story-sharing tools to narrate: who is involved, what work is underway, and how efforts connect; the roles, the responsibilities and the contributions of each partner are clearly defined and meaningful to the success of the project.
A central trust-building mechanism is participatory budgeting, where stakeholders collectively decide how resources are allocated; a radical trust-building exercise, which if successful, can be modeled at fractal scales. This approach models transparency, shared accountability, and mutual responsibility—key elements emphasized by the Trust in Practice Awards.
A Replicable Model for Trust-Based Investment
A central goal of the LHC initiative is to document and share a replicable model for trust-based, place-based collaboration. Regenerate Cascadia works with bioregional organizing networks across the country and internationally, many of whom are already looking to this pilot as a pathway for aligning community accountability with philanthropic investment.
Our initiative is about explicitly shifting how philanthropy and communities understand readiness, collaboration, and trust-based flow of resources at landscape scale—and documenting a replicable pathway for other regions
As our talented team and Landscape Stewards collaborate on a grant proposal aligned with Aspen Institute, we remain grounded in our mission to “to regenerate the Cascadia bioregion and to create the conditions for a regenerative culture and movement to thrive.”