Telling the story
of a bioregional
movement
Across bioregions, land stewards, organizers, and culture bearers are laying the foundations for communities to govern, resource, and regenerate their own places — most of it invisible to the wider world.
Kinship Earth helps tell that story, bioregion by bioregion. As a capital and capacity builder, we amplify what communities are already doing and put the storytelling to work attracting resources. If you're part of a bioregional community, a partnership begins here.
Explore Bioregional Activations
Kinship Earth’s track record
$360K+
deployed to the field
23
Flow Funders, 3 cohorts
30+
bioregions reached
Trust-based Flow Funding, in the hands of the people closest to the work — since October 2024.
Why this work
A pattern, emerging in many places at once
All over the world, communities are reaching the same realization on their own: almost everything their region needs to thrive is already there — in its people, and the work already underway. No central organization, no single campaign — a movement surfacing place by place.
What's missing is the connective tissue to see each other, trust each other, and coordinate.
What bioregionalism is
A bioregion is a place defined by its living systems — its watersheds, foodsheds, and cultures — not by political borders. Bioregionalism holds that the people who live in a place are best positioned to care for it: to steward its water, grow its food, generate its energy, and govern its commons. The movement is communities everywhere organizing around the places they share.
Why storytelling
Most of this work is invisible. Storytelling changes that — gathering what communities already create and weaving it into a picture clear enough to move resources. We help tell each bioregion's story in its own voice, and the larger story of what's possible when places organize. This is storytelling as infrastructure — as essential to resourcing a bioregion as the funds themselves.
Why flow funding — and why bioregional
Kinship Earth was built on flow funding: moving unrestricted resources to the people closest to the work, and trusting them to decide. Storytelling and flow funding are two halves of one idea — one makes the work visible, the other moves resources to it without strings. Our aim is bioregional flow funds: trust-based capital a bioregion governs and circulates for itself, to resource its own renewal over time.
Every form of capital
Grants are only the beginning. We're energized by communities unlocking other forms of capital — impact investment, ecological credits, recoverable capital — and we partner with those who specialize in each. Different work calls for different capital; our role is to help it find a clear, trusted home.
How we partner
We don't tell your story for you
All over the world, communities are reaching the same realization on their own: almost everything their region needs to thrive is already there — in its people, and the work already underway. No central organization, no single campaign — a movement surfacing place by place.
What's missing is the connective tissue to see each other, trust each other, and coordinate.
What we're looking for
Telling your story starts with showing bioregionalism in practice — across the areas that keep a place alive:
Regenerative food
Water & watersheds
Community energy
Land & soil
Culture & ceremony
Local governance
Once enough is shared and the network can see your bioregion organizing, our producer steps in to help shape your story into something that travels.
· your bioregion
[Bioregion name here]
Bioregional story · 4 of 6 areas shared
Regenerative food
5 Stories
Water & watersheds
3 Stories
Community energy
2 Stories
Culture & ceremony
4 Stories
Land & soil
add content
Local governance
add content
2 more areas to unlock producer support
Share what you already have
Send the videos, footage, and photos you've already made — the everyday record of the work, in your own voice.
Make more, if you want to
We don't film it for you. When you want something new, we connect you with filmmakers and storytellers rooted in your bioregion.
Learn to circulate it
Telling the story is only half of it. We help you learn to circulate what you create — so it reaches the audiences, supporters, and resources your work deserves.
Get rewarded — and amplify each other
As your storytelling attracts resources, they flow back to your bioregion as grants and seed your own flow fund. Contributors also join a network that cross-promotes, so each story lifts the others.
Your story — and its value — stay yours
Bioregional groups own their stories — the voice and narrative stay with the community. When that content raises money, the value circulates back to the people who did and filmed the work. We name that intention together at the start. This principle is firm.
Partner with us if you are:
A bioregional organizing group ready to tell the story of your place
A filmmaker, photographer, or writer rooted in a bioregion we work in
A community sitting on footage that deserves a wider audience
What it makes possible
Two ways the story raises money
The content we gather and shape together works in two directions, and both serve the bioregion.
You
Raise money on your own terms
The films and media become assets your community owns — to fundraise, build visibility, and attract supporters directly. No permanent middle layer; you gain capacity that outlasts any single project.
Kinship Earth
We raise capital on your behalf
Gathering media across many bioregions lets Kinship Earth act as a funding intermediary. We use the storytelling to reach donors, foundations, and investors — and channel what we raise back to communities as grants and to seed their own bioregional flow funds.
Each cycle deepens the next. Over time, the bioregion grows more visible, more connected, and more fundable.
Where we are today
Today we do this work in-house, to attract resources we move to communities as grants and to seed their flow funds. Our aim is a funded storytelling arm that can pay communities directly to create more.
On the ground
Where the work is happening
Featured bioregion
The Cloud Forest, Veracruz
High in the montane cloud forest around Xalapa and Coatepec, a community of land stewards, coffee growers, and culture bearers is regenerating watersheds and local economies. As the Mexico activation gets underway, we're gathering the footage the community already has and connecting them with local filmmakers for new stories on the ground.
Northeast Turtle Island
Cascadia
Colombia
Veracruz Cloud Forest
Montego Bay, Jamaica
and beyond
Bioregional Activations are now underway in the Hudson Valley and Mexico City.
Explore the Bioregional Activation Series →
Getting clear on where resources flow
Clarity before capital
Raising capital for a bioregion only matters if everyone is clear about where it goes and who decides.
So before money moves, we get clear on two things: which group in your bioregion can receive the funds, and who decides — collectively — how they're used.
We've seen what happens when capital lands without a clear home, so we build that clarity with you first — the structure and shared agreements that let funds arrive with integrity. Resourcing should strengthen local self-determination, not bypass it.
It's the same trust-based logic that runs through all our Flow Funding — the people closest to the work decide where the resources go.
From storytelling to activation
Activations & Planetary Parties
Storytelling is where a partnership begins — but it's the first step, not the journey. Once your story is in place, a bioregion is ready for the deeper work: a Bioregional Activation.
An activation builds the relationships, readiness, and clarity that resourcing depends on. It runs through the Planetary Party Protocol's five phases — adapted to each place, online and in person — culminating in a Planetary Party. One cycle, designed to begin again.
01
Sense
Pre-activation
Deep listening and ceremony — surfacing what the land and people are asking for. Held primarily online and in small circles.
See
Mapping
Online sessions that build a living map of the bioregion's assets, needs, offers, and relationships — before anyone gathers in person.
Activate
In-person gatherings at bioregional hubs
Embodied relationship-building, governance practice, storytelling, and design labs — where mapped insight becomes lived coordination.
02
03
04
Celebrate
aka the Planetary Party
The peak of the protocol: a festival weaving culture, ceremony, and coordinated action — making the bioregion visible and drawing resources to local projects. Every party shares the films created across the bioregion.
05
Regenerate
Harvest & next cycle
Learnings are documented, the Flow Fund is seeded or strengthened, and the living system is handed to local stewards — ready to begin again.
Five phases · one cycle · designed to repeat
Each turn leaves lasting regenerative infrastructure behind — and storytelling lives inside every phase, taking center stage at the Celebrate gathering.
Who this is for
The door opens with storytelling
For a bioregional community, the first step is gathering your media and shaping the story of your place — preparing you to attract and steward resources in service to your place. From there, an activation takes you through the deeper arc.
BIOREGIONAL COMMUNITY
Ready to tell the story of your place
Start a storytelling conversation →
BIOREGIONAL COMMUNITY
Ready to tell the story of your place
Start a storytelling conversation →
BIOREGIONAL COMMUNITY
Ready to tell the story of your place
Start a storytelling conversation →
BIOREGIONAL COMMUNITY
Ready to tell the story of your place
Start a storytelling conversation →
Start a conversation
Tell us about your place
Share a little about you and the bioregion you're rooted in, and we'll be in touch.
Prefer email? Reach us at kins@kinshipearth.org.
“We're trusting those who know the needs of their communities to do the work, and to deploy capital however they see fit. That's what Flow Funding is.”
Syd Harvey Griffith · Executive Director
Contact
Latest developments
What's new at Kinship Earth →
Sites
kinshipearth.org · flowfunding.org