Cascadia is an idea, identity, movement and bioregion, that has been growing since the 1980s, driven by a vision of sustainability, environmental stewardship, and cultural connection to the land. Advocates for Cascadia promote a deeper understanding and integration of the region’s natural systems into social, economic and political practices, fostering resilience and sustainability. This vision encourages collaboration across borders and sectors to create a more sustainable and interconnected future for all inhabitants of the bioregion.
Together, we work together to create a regenerative framework for the Cascadia bioregion.
The term Cascadia was first used in 1981 by Seattle University professor David McCloskey, as a way to better describe our growing regional identity, and adopted hundreds of early organizers, academics, indigenous activists, policy planners, and environmentalists who came together for what become termed Cascadian Bioregional Congresses. McCloskey describes Cascadia as “a land of falling waters.” He notes the blending of the natural integrity and the sociocultural unity that gives Cascadia its character. Culture stems from place, and we will have more in common with each other, than those in a distant seat of power with little vested interest in our region or people. The Cascadia movement works to create more democratic, decentralized, sustainable, local and ethical models for the world, and is built on the idea that every person can be active around the issues they care about.
A Regenerate Cascadia Hub is a place-based group that represents a discrete landscape. It works to weave together, connect, empower, and support on-the-ground and regenerative work communities to administer a bioregional fund within that landscape. The Hubs work together with a network of hubs in their watershed, ecoregion, and Cascadia bioregion as a whole, with the long-term purpose of regenerating, restoring, and bettering the area they serve for all inhabitants. Each Hub has a Steward Team and at least one Backbone Steward who helps with getting the word out and information on the website. If managing funds, the Steward team is also accountable for basic reporting and administrative requirements and can undertake its projects.
Regenerate Hub, Regenerate Guild, Project, and Bioregional Learning Center or Site is a very specific term used in Regenerate Cascadia as a broader organization and movement, and it offers many benefits. Each of these is a specific program of Regenerate Cascadia and exists under the 501(c)3 umbrella of Regenerate Cascadia, receiving the benefits of being a part of a federally recognized nonprofit organization.
If you are interested in Fiscal Sponsorship for your group or project, we invite you to join us for a board meeting, a staff meeting, or a one-on-one Zoom call with Clare, Brandon, or our program officer – to introduce yourself and the project – and get to know us a bit better as well.
After receiving your document, we will be in touch with you within a week for further review. When ready, your application will be reviewed by our staff and board of directories and the final step will be signing a Memo of Understanding between your project and Regenerate Cascadia.
Before starting this process, people should know that applications can take up to 2 months to approve and must be approved by our board of directors. However, the more familiar we are with your project and the more able we talk through things, the faster the process will be. We thank you ahead of time for your understanding. When you submit, we’ll follow up within the week and can also talk with you a bit more about your schedule.
Before submitting, we highly recommend discussing this application and budget with a Regenerate Cascadia team member. We’re here to answer any questions, and we would love to help you run through your application or budget.
For questions or assistance, contact:
cascadia@deptofbioregion.org
Year 1: Funding A Bioregional Regeneration Strategy: 2024 Sensemaking In The Landscape
Much of what Regenerate Cascadia is trying to do does not currently exist, and we recognize that we don’t have the capacity yet to support what is needed in the landscapes or happening on the ground. Because of this, we are using the remainder of 2024 to work with Regenerate Cascadia Stewards, who have stepped forward to help us sense what is needed to design a Bioregional Regeneration Strategy for those interested in potentially growing:
This includes developing a shared vision, mission, and purpose, identifying core design challenges, principles, values, and a theory of change that can guide our work. This information will all be brought together as part of Regenerate Cascadia’s first-year “Bioregional Regeneration Strategy,” which will help inform our priorities, needs, and funding requests in the future. We also hope it will serve as a basis for similar efforts by groups in the field.
Regenerate Cascadia is allocating a series of micro-grants to potential groups to hire process facilitators (who may be members of that group) to work with those Stewards to anchor the following processes to create a document that will make up a part of our Bioregional Regeneration Strategy and be used to guide our future fundraising requests.
Each Hub monitors and maintains a portion of a Cascadia Bioregional Regeneration Fund. This fund and the governance of it, also called a Bioregional Financing Facility, is still under construction.
Regenerate Cascadia is a social movement and capacity-building organization developing a vision and framework to administer a regeneration fund for Cascadia, a bioregion located along the upper Pacific Rim of North America stretching from Southeast Alaska to Northern California, and as far east as the Yellowstone Caldera. A central goal of Regenerate Cascadia is to grow capacity cohesively across the scales of landscapes, ecoregions, and bioregions—something that currently does not exist locally or globally—as part of a multi-generational strategy for the long-term health of the Cascadia bioregion. Regenerate Cascadia is addressing the complex challenges in funding connected landscape outcomes across a bioregion through a whole systems approach that: prioritizes the central role of place-based stewardship; ensures decision-making is held by those at the local level; develops trust-based networks that hold the integrity of the work; and uses a nested scale structure to facilitate information flow, representation, and learning across the whole system.
Regenerate Cascadia’s living structural framework can be viewed as a system for the coherent flow of resources (educational, financial, inspirational, and cultural) that supports ongoing bioregional regeneration outcomes and learning. The framework enables capital to be distributed from a large bioregional fund into smaller landscape-level funds that deliver resources to decentralized projects according to the needs of ecoregions and landscapes. This ensures governance power is held by those closest to the work through trust-based networks of relationships that connect and align diverse projects within a landscape-level vision and strategy. The framework provides a comprehensive intermediary between local communities and funders. This enables effective cooperation, coordination, and governance across the bioregion to optimize strategic outcomes. A key tenet is the commitment to the representation of diverse voices at all scales, including those of ecosystems and keystone species, ensuring feedback loops from across the whole system enable collective intelligence to inform future actions. This supports the whole system to see itself (co-sense), learn (co-presence), and iterate (co-create), enabling connected and concurrent local and bioregional agency to solve problems at the appropriate scales. Regenerate Cascadia’s structures are built with one of the movement’s core goals in mind—to prototype a series of replicable transformational templates that return ‘right relationship’ to the Earth as a central organizing premise for finance, while evolving how we live and work together cooperatively across scales.
A core foundation of Regenerate Cascadia are ‘Regenerate Hubs’, which hold the governance capacity to manage a fund for a discrete landscape across diverse stakeholders. Regenerate Hubs operate in several ways, including: (a) working with local communities and weaving relationships to develop a long-term vision aligned with the overall bioregional vision of Regenerate Cascadia; (b) identifying and engaging voices that need to be present; (c) maintaining a portfolio of regenerative projects within their defined landscape areas; (d) stewarding an annual landscape budget; and (e) maintaining team coherence. Each Hub has a core team that facilitates conditions for cooperation and trust and is accountable for administrative and reporting requirements. Each landscape features Bioregional Learning Centers that facilitate the cocreation of place-based frameworks and serves as foundational education space for sense-making and decision-making in the community. These centers monitor, evaluate, and manage the dynamic flow of an information commons using shared metrics for social, cultural, and ecological impact that supports robust fund reporting and continuous learning. Hubs primarily collaborate with members of
Regenerate Cascadia from within a particular landscape, and are represented by a network of Ecoregional Councils—governance bodies responsible for creating ecoregional budgets that maintain the connections between local and bioregional scales.
Regenerate Cascadia is creating a funding ecosystem so that groups can receive funding immediately and begin to grow our governance as a group and organization.
Outside of this, Hubs, Guilds, and Projects maintain their own budgets, payroll, and staff.
We believe the people living in a place are the best suited to take the lead on issues affecting that area. Through our work, we connect projects, organizations and groups together, and work to strengthen each by providing services such as outreach, website support, fundraising, legal support, and anything else we can do to empower their success.
We sponsor and support any work that builds greater understandings of bioregions, promote place appropriate technologies and policies, provide direct funding for community projects, and support the creation of centers to determine the carrying capacities and regenerative frameworks for each watershed and bioregion we live in.
No matter what, if your work aligns with ours, we would love to:
If you would like sponsorship, we also can help by:
Upon dissolution, the group’s assets will be archived and held for six months, and as long as the group is in good standing, it can be restarted at any time.
Project Leaders are expected and empowered to coordinate all aspects of their project, including organizing all project activities and raising funds independently to support the project.
Please advise Regenerate Cascadia ASAP of any upcoming project events or milestones. The more notice we receive, the more visibility we can lend to your awesome project achievements.
Inside the United States:
Regenerate Cascadia is building an integrated website, network, and platform for regenerative projects and communities within the Cascadia bioregion. This includes:
The digital platform includes a structural framework (see Figure 1) that prioritizes on-the-ground, community-led work within a landscape while thoughtfully aggregating place-based work into larger coordination structures.