Watershed Fund
We ar Neighborhood Economics are in the process of building the fund with Eagle Market Streets CDC to do zero interest small expansion $10,000 philanthropic investment (give to invest) loans from the Impact Assets platform letting small civic and community groups have a sub account letting them give to invest, with the money coming out at $10,000 for small expansion loans and $5,000 for emergency short term crop disruption loans through Eagle.
Water and the growing Asheville area Climate
Stephanie Swepson Twitty and Eagle Market Streets CDC, will host the fund and take a fiscal sponsorship fee. Neberecon will tell the story and engage people with the fund and the issues in the food system they could be engaged in. Due diligence procedures and pipeline development are in process. Being ever mindful that we need to produce a resilient food system that will be ready for the time when it no longer makes sense to ship in food. So this is a future proofing initiative that is also a collective climate change response.
partners in the existing farm system technical assistance, business advisory, networking and connections, some funding
In its current, (late Feb 2024) design the fund has two lenses. One is focused statewide on BIPOC farmers. The other, still in feasibility stage is looking at the herbal industry in the Asheville, NC bioregion, including services, spas, real estate and classes, etc.
The Watershed Fund also has a WatershedDividend
A significant partner in the Watershed Fund is ReSeed which will sell the carbon from the fund’s BIPOC farm/farmer pipeline and as well as the farms in the portfolio across the state as well as the growers in the Biomedicinal pipeline and portfolio of investees working in Biomedicinal Food Forest in the Asheville economic bioregion
Lalita Booth is working on designing the Watershed Fund and the #WatershedDividend.
A still in process Initial design of the Watershed Fund
Links to this page
- Gratitude on tap (← links)
- Investing in Farmers (← links)
- Neighborhood Economics, AVL (← links)
- Eagle Market Streets (← links)
- Rayburn Farms (← links)
- ReSeed (← links)
- Farmers sell carbon easily (← links)
- North Carolina Native Plant Society (← links)
- Warren Wilson Student Entrepreneur pilot project (← links)