The Center for Regeneration is a coalition of people, businesses, & institutions pursuing global regeneration through education, cooperation, & investment.

When equipped with our greatest resource—one another—we thrive.

Globally, public systems are built to provide shared infrastructure to communities and govern the allocation of resources. Yet due to coordinative challenges—between research and practice, public and private, urban and rural, haves and have-nots—our resources aren’t able to move to where they are needed. When they do, they are rarely applied to their full potential.

The Center for Regeneration (the Center) leverages public-private partnerships to convene communities with the social, technical, and financial tools they need to address coordinative and funding challenges. By facilitating cooperative models and shared infrastructure, the Center aligns private and public resources to bridge research and practice, provide contexts for shared learning, and enable communities to identify, resource, and govern their futures.

The Center grew out of a partnership between Open Future Coalition and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (America's largest HBCU) Small Farm Research and Innovation Center to better deliver services to historically under-resourced communities in the Southeast United States, correct historical inequities of access and funding, and address the systemic causes of these disparities. Learn more about the pilot here.

We are currently partnering with public and private institutions, funders, nonprofits, private enterprises, and individuals who will mutually benefit from public-private partnerships to support their community efforts.

Explore the Center

Partners gain access to:

Shared Infrastructure

Access to Open Future Coalition’s tech, social, and financial tools, including Open Impact’s enterprise platform for program coordination, delivery, and reporting.
In-Kind Resources

From shared faculty, researchers, experts, and support staff to facilities, labs, and nature preserves (each of which can be made eligible for public matching funds.)
Public-Private Matching

Fund shared programs and infrastructure by leveraging the financial and in-kind contributions and impacts of partners to pursue public matching grants and other sources of public funds.
Collective Funding & Impact Reporting

Access to private and public funds through Local Impact Capital, along with customized reporting tools and dashboards to meet partner, stakeholder, and funder needs.
Project Support & Development

Support in planning, coordinating, and implementing individual and shared projects, identifying sources of funding, and facilitating and managing agreements.
Knowledge Sharing & Distributed Research

A peer community, with access to education, curricula, research, and subject matter experts across academia and industry.

View Member Deck

Upcoming events

We host a series of monthly partner meetups to foster knowledge exchange and strategic doing while highlighting the efforts of our Partners. Public Salons offer forums for broader dialogue, perspectives, and exchange, while introducing new and prospective Partners to the culture of the Center.

Pilot: Bringing economic equity to our food systems through the U.S. Land Grant system

Today, there’s a nearly 50% disparity in the allocation of federal formula funds from the USDA between predominantly white institutions and historically Black and tribal ones. Further, access to public funding is often predicated on access to private capital. This structural inequity threatens to deepen this disparity further over time. Due to a lack of local public funds, today, there are three private dollars for every one dollar of public funding in the (public) Land-Grant University System.

Over 220 land grant universities in the U.S. provide research, education, and cooperative extension services to support agricultural, community, and economic development at the state, federal, and local levels throughout the United States and abroad. In FY 2022-2023, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget of $431.86 Billion will be guided by the peer review system of the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities and supported with research, education, and extension to achieve the following USDA strategic goals:

Combat Climate Change to Support America’s Working Lands, Natural Resources, and Communities
Ensure America’s Agricultural System is Equitable, Resilient, and Prosperous
Foster an Equitable and Competitive Marketplace for All Agricultural Producers
Provide All Americans Safe Nutritious Food
Expand Opportunities for Economic Development and Improve Quality of Life in Rural and Tribal Communities

The Center aims to close gaps in access to these public resources by restoring local resources to the communities institutions like the USDA are meant to serve, equipping them to directly participate in and guide their access to technical assistance and public funds. The Open Impact platform connects small farmers, agricultural producers, and public and community partners with technical assistance and cooperative efforts supporting the USDA Strategic Goals and records and validates their actions to align public funding with these efforts and institutions.

Through our current pilot in North Carolina and Southern Appalachia, we have an opportunity to support over 100 groups supporting more than 10,000 farmers, food and agricultural producers, and business, science, and technical assistance providers who support them over the coming year. We plan to expand to launch regional pilots in six regions across the U.S. in the coming year.

There are 14 branches of the US federal government, such as housing, health, and energy, each with similar needs. We hope to help them all.

The center plans to expand globally in 2023.