*This document was produced with the support of the Earth Regenerators network, Possible Planet (also named the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions [CRCS]), and Serve Commons PBC [Serve].* Legal disclaimers are provided at the end of the document.

“As with every new life, the progress that Earth Regenerators are making around the world requires increasing amounts of specialized attention and care. Wherever you are right now in your regenerative life journey, Vivero is a uniquely impactful place for you to participate in the awe-inspiring evolution of Earth Regeneration.”

Rachel Olson - Visionary Steward, Earth Regenerators

Full Presentation & Living Miro Documents

Our Written Content, Visual Presentation, and Greenpaper “Lite” - can be found below.

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMb8ycVA=/?moveToWidget=3458764549772834532&cot=14

About the Earth Regenerators Community

Earth Regenerators (ER) started in 2020 as a study group and has gradually evolved into a community of practice organized to found and steward grassroots projects in ecosystem restoration, permaculture design, art, regenerative finance, and more.

Today, we are a virtual community of over 4,500 people representing a range of bioregions. We actively care for our Mother Earth, a reproductive and resilient planet, in all her diversity of life.

As a community of practice held together in our desire to advance Earth stewardship, we engage pro-socially in hands‐on learning, experiential education, and project incubation - actively organizing bioregional approaches to organizing and stewarding the land. As a geographically distributed community, we are working toward creating a network of bioregional learning centers, focused on documenting and sharing stewardship practices and strategies between bioregions.

In October 2021, the Earth Regenerators Fund group was formed to discuss fundraising, participatory budgeting, and distribution of resources to support fellowships and projects for Earth stewardship. The intention was to co-create a regenerative finance platform within ER for giving and receiving, and the invitation to collaborate was extended to all ER study group members. The call to organize was well met.

On Saturday, February 19th, 2022, Jonathan Cloud signed the Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement[3], instantiating the Earth Regenerators Fund.

As one of the first beneficiaries of the fund, Rachel Olsen was provided with the resources to participate in earth regeneration on the ground in Barichara, Colombia. Following her experience, Rachel drafted a plan for cultivating a regenerative gift economy[2], which she named Vivero. It was this document that informed the creation of the dedicated fundraising application shortly after, which was adopted by the Earth Regenerators Fund Group.

Why Vivero?

Vivero is a Spanish word for nursery. It is a term used for both tree and plant nurseries, where new fragile seedlings and cuttings are propagated and sheltered and nurtured until they are ready to be planted into their final habitat.

As a working metaphor, Vivero is a virtual collaboration space to seed, cultivate, and share regenerative stories, projects, and ideas in a context of care and mutual aid. This is the home for our inspiration. As a dedicated commons ("non-market") accounting mechanism for funding regenerative work, Vivero offers the Earth Regenerators network of contributors the capacity to organize and direct both monetary and non-monetary resources to a community-sourced list of individuals, projects, and social initiatives.

What is Vivero?

Through the emergence of community-led dialogue and the formation of several working groups, we’ve labored in collaboration with a non-profit fiscal host and a technical partner to create Vivero - a participatory giving trust concept for the Earth Regenerators Fund that enables social coordination and fund accounting features via an easy-to-use mobile app to curate and fund regenerative work.

Accessing Vivero as a Web & Mobile Application

The beta version web and mobile-compatible application can be accessed at app.vivero.co.com - it is not accessible via the Apple or Android app store. It is easily accessed via our website.

Vivero: Decomposing the Participatory Giving Trust Concept

(1) participatory [adjective] - par·​tic·​i·​pa·​to·​ry
: sharing, having a share or part in common with others 
especially : providing the opportunity for individual participation    

(2) giving [transitive verb]
: to designate as a share or portion
: to offer for consideration, acceptance, or use  
: to allow one to have or take.

(3) trust
: property interest held by one person for the benefit of another
: combination of organizations formed by a legal agreement
especially : one that reduces or threatens to reduce competition

In daily life, trust is built between individuals or groups through a relationship. In a legally-established trust, a party (or parties) known as a trustor(s) gives another party, the trustee(s), the right to hold title to and manage property or assets for the benefit of a third party or purpose.

In the case of the Earth Regenerators Fund, Vivero represents a trust mechanism for our shared resources directed to support the growth of Earth stewardship commoning within bioregional landscapes - which serves as our shared purpose.

In Practice

Vivero is a collective treasury consisting of both an endowment and a giving balance, which pools financial resources held in a trust. Vivero, as an application, relies on participatory activity by contributors to direct trustee distributions to purpose-aligned beneficiaries.

Within Vivero, beneficiaries are grouped into three categories: (1) individuals (also called fellowships), (2) grassroots initiatives (also called projects), and (3) social enterprises.

Vivero as a Foundation for Regenerative Finance

What makes Vivero unique is its integrative relationship to Web3 instruments, specifically digital assets and proof of stake blockchains. Acting as trustors of the fund, the contributors from the Earth Regenerators network can grow a common pool of resources for community-directed giving and grant-making in perpetuity. By leveraging community staking positions with daily yields ("Harvests") as generators of returns for our grantmaking pool and community treasury, we are able to recreate the dynamics of an endowment fund. Our blockchain-based community endowments enable us to generate returns without relying on centralized market investments.

Vivero as a Not-for-profit Trust Primitive with EcoAsset Treasury Capabilities

As a community-directed trust, the Vivero application enables participants to direct contributions in alignment with the 501(c)(3) purpose through a process of nomination, categorization, discussion, and award. As a cooperative accounting mechanism, Vivero reconciles both fiat currency, digital assets, and ecoassets registered on a blockchain for more accountable reporting.

Fiat contributions to the community treasury (the ER Fund) are facilitated by Stripe and OpenCollective and integrated into the application for transparency. Possible Planet, a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, acts as a fiscal host and trustee, managing funds by the community’s direction. By reconciling fiat contributions and directing them (in part) to a balance of digital assets in our treasury, we are able to expand web3 benefits to a wider and more general audience.

Currently, fund reconciliation is performed manually by a financial steward, as a part of recurring operational practices.

Vivero was designed for branches.

As a web2 application that leverages low-code technologies, Vivero can be "branched" or replicated at the local and bioregional level, providing a similar financing structure for other self-organizing communities.

Vivero, as a participatory treasury, was inspired by DAOs, focusing its attention on participatory giving and the funding of public goods/services.

Where DAOs are blockchain native and bound by their network state, we believe an instance of Vivero has more operational flexibility as a lightweight technology framework designed for smaller, localized groups with more legible organization patterns.

In its current form, the working group sees Vivero as a candidate for a type of oracle for the Regen Network, leveraging the (h)REA (holographic - resources, events, and agents) framework as an interoperability language standard. Each Vivero node could offer an application programming interface (API), providing complementary data to the data, governance, and group modules, functioning as a social coordination structure against the greater ecosystem provided by the ecocredit modules, the regen registry, and the regen marketplace.

Collaborative Partners

What is Possible Planet and the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions?

“Possible Planet is 501(c)(3) nonprofit that bridges the physical and virtual worlds of tomorrow: ReFi and other forms of crypto philanthropy with the goal of Earth regeneration. We recognize that the world does not belong to us; rather, we belong to Gaia, and our deepest and most heart-felt purpose is the stewardship of life on this planet.

In the spirit of the gift economy, the organization is providing this service on a donation-only basis and does not charge the customary 5-15% fiscal sponsorship fee collected by other nonprofits.

In addition to several projects in the US, Possible Planet is the Fiscal Host for the Earth Regenerators, a 4000+ member global community, and for Barichara Ecoversity, its initial demonstration project in Barichara, Colombia.”

Jonathan Cloud - Director, Possible Planet

What is Serve Commons PBC?

“Serve Commons PBC is a public benefit corporation focused on the research and development of digital trust technologies supporting a plural economy that works in service of our living Earth and the life that makes its home here.

In the spirit of giving, Serve has committed to contribute time and energy in the support of the architecture of trusts as a technical primative for non-market economic exchange representing financial insfrastructure grounded in reciprocity”

Todd Youngblood - Director, Serve

Disclaimer - Financial Incentives

As a body of work, Vivero and the Earth Regenerators working groups are primarily focused on the development of non-market or (“commons”)economic exchange.

Currently acting as pro bono and unpaid service providers of Vivero and the Earth Regenerators Fund, CRCS and Serve are eligible to receive voluntary, percent-based financial contributions as determined by trustors. Contributions shared with service providers recognize their continued maintenance and fulfillment of administrative tasks and operational processes which are vital in sustaining the Vivero ecosystem.

Disclaimer - Technology Under Development [“Beta”] Vivero is a concept technology whose underlying design patterns are still behind explored and defined - or in a “beta” stage. Change is expected. Active participation is sought on behalf of the Earth Regenerators network and Earth allies.