A Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF) is a community-owned financial institution that applies a participatory, transparent, and place-based approach to driving the decentralization of financial resource governance, the design of project portfolios for systemic change, and the transition to a regenerative economy. The BFF model was developed by regenerational economist Samantha Power and advanced through the global BioFi Project.
Where conventional financial institutions operate through sector-based or asset-class frameworks, a BFF organizes capital around the needs of a specific bioregion. It functions as connective tissue between pools of capital (foundations, Donor-Advised Funds, impact investors, public funding) and the networks of community organizations, land stewards, and regenerative projects operating within that bioregion.
The Three Legs of Bioregional Regeneration
The BFF model identifies three interdependent structures necessary for bioregional regeneration. The first is a Bioregional Organizing Team, which brings together key bioregional actors, activates stakeholders, builds networks of trust, and facilitates collective regeneration efforts. The second is a Bioregional Hub (or network of hubs), which provides coordination infrastructure for education, resource sharing, data management, and community governance. The third is the Bioregional Financing Facility itself, which focuses specifically on facilitating the regenerative flow of financial capital.
In the Cascadia context, these three legs map closely to the existing Regenerate Cascadia structure: the BioRegen program serves as the organizing infrastructure, the Landscape Hub Cultivator is developing the hub network, and Cascadia BioFi is building the financial facility.
How BFFs Work
BFFs enable integrated capital raised from a variety of sources to flow to aggregated portfolios of systemically coordinated regenerative projects on the ground. In return, regeneration benefits flow back to investors in a community-determined, non-extractive way. The model envisions three core facility types, which can be developed in phases as a bioregion's organizing and governance capacity matures.
A Bioregional Trust is the first facility to emerge, channeling philanthropic grants and concessionary capital to support foundational organizing work, community capacity building, and early-stage regenerative projects. This is the stage the Cascadia Regeneration Fund currently occupies.
A Bioregional Investment Company develops Systemic Investment Funds and Bioregional Regeneration Bonds, which aggregate and match-make investment capital with portfolios of projects that are ready for larger-scale financing.
A Bioregional Bank lends specifically to organizations providing goods and services aligned with the Bioregional Regeneration Strategy, and can support the development of complementary currencies and nature-based financial instruments.
Governance
Governance within a BFF is designed to be participatory and distributed. Key questions include what values guide the facility, who participates in decision-making, what frameworks and processes are used, and how power imbalances are addressed. The BFF model emphasizes working with existing authorities, building relationships of solidarity and reciprocity between bioregions, and ensuring that governance structures reflect the living systems they serve.
A critical principle is that BFFs support the transition to economies that are less dependent on financial capital from outside the region, where financial flows better align with real flows of value. However, this aim must be navigated carefully within the historical context of colonialism and extraction, ensuring that capital localization efforts engage in decolonial processes of reconciliation and healing.
The Global Movement
The BioFi Project envisions a network of Bioregional Financing Facilities serving every bioregion on Earth. The project supports Cultivator Cohorts of bioregional organizing teams that are developing BFFs in their respective bioregions. Regenerate Cascadia is a participant in this cohort and one of the first practical implementations of the BFF model. The Cascadia program serves as both a case study and a testing ground for the approach described in the BioFi Project's 2024 publication, Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet.