Field Guide to Investing in a Regenerative Economy

In her classic paper, “Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in a System,” Donella Meadows explained that if you want to change a system one of the most important places to intervene is through the narrative within which the system operates.  The Field Guide is an ecosystem of interconnected stories that bring to life our vision of a regenerative economy—how financial capital can be a restorative rather than a destructive agent as it supports place-based enterprises and regenerative practices that empower individuals and heal the land, communities, and regional economies in which they operate. It is a paradigm-shifting story in which finance plays a supporting, not leading, role.  

Our first Field Guide study, Grasslands, is a custom grazing business in South Dakota and Montana that utilizes holistic management practices to harness the power of the photosynthetic process and convert it into financial, human, and ecological capital.  The subject of our second Field Guide study, the Evergreen Cooperatives initiative, is a remarkable experiment in “community healing”:  a group of worker-owned, anchor-institution-based “green” cooperative companies that are catalyzing true democratized wealth-building in Cleveland’s inner city.  With the third field study, we begin to explore the evolution of the architecture of the financial system itself with the story of the Patient Capital Collaborative, an impact fund that brings to bear the collective expertise of angel investors to help nurture and fund early-stage companies attempting to make meaningful social and environmental impact in the world.  Our fourth Field Guide study, and our first eBook, examines the Manufacturing Renaissance Council, an innovative collaboration among unlikely public and private partners united by a common belief: that manufacturing can and must play a regenerative role in the next industrial era.