Regenerative Governance Project
“Regenerative governance is the foundational structure of a regenerative future,
built by people who’ve learned how to cooperate, make decisions together,
give and receive feedback, adapt to change, and self-organize.” ~ Michelle Smith
How do we build governance systems for a regenerative future?
Governance systems that flow like living systems are adaptive, distributed, and resilient. Decisions are made by the people doing the work, in connection with the purposes of the whole. Governance moves through relationships of trust in pluricentric networks of collaboration.
How do we build governance systems that flow like living systems so we can build a regenerative future together?
Do we have the skills and cultural practices that allow us to respond collectively to the conditions and opportunities of our current reality?
We don’t yet. But we can learn them.
The Regenerative Governance Project builds capacity for collaborative collective action through open source tools, practical training, experiential learning labs, communities of practice, and skilled facilitators who make regenerative governance accessible across a bioregion.
For over 12 years we’ve curated methodologies that are internationally tested and work at every level of culture, from mutual aid initiatives and social impact networks to regional institutions and cooperative businesses.
We envision a network of bioregions where the default assumptions about how we make decisions together, hold power, and care for each other and the land are regenerative rather than extractive; where governance has become a living practice, continuously renewed by the people who inhabit it.
That future grows from skills practiced in relationships of trust throughout multi-level place-based networks of collaboration.
A project of the Raft Foundation
Circle Forward is proud to partner with the Raft Foundation as fiscal sponsor for the Regenerative Governance Project.
Raft Foundation is a US-based 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor that brings communities together to support neighbors in need through: collective care, community technology, movement infrastructure and societal transformation
Why This Work Needs Funding
Many communties and bioregions are rich with the kinds of initiatives and organizations that are ready to learn and practice together. However, the kind of deep, relational, practice-based learning that actually changes culture is rarely funded.
The neighborhood associations, mutual aid networks, forming cooperatives, and movement organizations that could use these skills to leverage real systems-change in a region rarely have budget for more than a one-off training, if that. Even well-resourced funders can find it difficult to justify spending on the convenings, learning labs, and coaching that build genuine collective capacity.
The Regenerative Governance Project aims to address this structural gap.
Your support makes it possible to bring this work to the groups that need it most, and to demonstrate, right here in this bioregion, what regenerative governance looks like when it takes root.
Objections Play-shop Series
A safe play-space to practice. For people who are already working with consent-based decision-making, and want to get more skillful, more grounded, and more at ease with objections when things get hard.
Exploring Consent
Twice monthly “power hour” exploring foundational elements for applying the Consent Principle in decision-making. Ask-us-anything!
Orienting to Consent
A deeper dive into the practical application of the Consent Principle in decision-making.
Practicing Consent
Coaching for teams, circles, and working groups who want to foster a culture of trust, respect and shared responsiblity for all.