Permanent financial infrastructure, owned by a place
A BFF is not a fund with a local flavour. It is a different institution, with a different mandate, a different clock and a different definition of return.
Four commitments
- Place-based
- Grounded in the ecological, cultural and economic realities of each bioregion.
- Collaborative
- Bringing together diverse stakeholders to co-design financial architecture for managing systemic risks.
- Long-term
- Patient capital for systemic change that endures beyond its authors.
- An ecology of mechanisms
- Many financial instruments and institutions, keeping value circulating locally.
What changes when the place holds the mandate
- 01
Place-based Allocation
Rather than focussing on thematic verticals
BFFs focus on one whole place or bioregion. Their mandate is derived from what the place needs, as defined in the — not from a sector thesis written elsewhere.
- 02
Long Time Horizons
Rather than defining fixed 3, 5 or 10 year timeframes
BFFs are established and invest across multi-generational time horizons. They are built as permanent infrastructure, which changes what can be attempted within them.
- 03
Multi-capital Returns
Rather than extracting only financial returns from a degraded bioregion
BFFs acknowledge the multiple kinds of value being produced — ecological, social, cultural, financial — and structure those as returns to capital allocators.
- 04
Shared Risk
Rather than leaving delivery risk and the liability of failure to those affected
BFFs promote fair risk-sharing among involved parties and structure agreements accordingly. Risk sits with those best able to carry it, not those least able to refuse it.
- 05
Poly-capital Orchestration
Rather than specialising in one type of finance
BFFs orchestrate many types of capital and employ a diverse, interoperable set of instruments — grant, debt, equity, guarantee, and forms still being invented.
- 06
Polycentric & Embedded Governance
Rather than leaving decision-making to experts
BFFs employ many kinds of intelligence and decentralise allocation governance, holding decisions close to the consequences they produce.
- 07
Synergistic Portfolios
Rather than investing in discrete projects or businesses
BFFs orchestrate multiple types of project into synergistic portfolios that address systemic risk — where each holding makes the others more likely to succeed.
- 08
Adaptive Learning
Rather than being guided by fixed, single-point KPIs
BFFs measure success with holistic and iterate constantly on new insight, treating the portfolio as an instrument for learning.
A whole portfolio of bioregions is designing and building these facilities already.
See where