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A learning-by-doing journey for funders who feel the limits of control-oriented funding and want a rigorous, grounded way to practise something different — without abandoning accountability. Here, learning is the instrument through which a new way for money to flow is brought into being.
What we mean by “learning” here. Not a course, and not study for its own sake. On this journey, learning is a way of coordinating — building together, reflecting together, and evolving together as a whole funding field. It is learning by doing: ko-designing a new architecture and culture of funding while a real community heals real relations. When you see “learning” on this page, read it as building, shared reflection, and evolving together.
The journey supports funders to move their capital strategy from extractive or project-delivery models toward life-centric, relational deployment. It does this through a live, shared-learning relationship with the Nalubaaga Bioregion — learning as a means of coordinating will and resources — where communities are rebuilding their capacity to sense, decide and act together for life in their place.
It is not a theory course. It is a structured encounter with a community process already underway: landstewards, residents, future generations and the wetland are gathering to heal dropped relations and issue Units of Caring that invite money to nourish what has already been decided.
Progressive philanthropies, foundations, family offices, CSR leaders, impact investors and institutional funders who are questioning whether current funding architecture can truly support living systems on their own terms.
Best fit: people with influence over how money moves, and enough curiosity to let their own institution evolve.
Most of this journey is ko-designed and responsive, so we hold a rhythm rather than a fixed timetable.
The community moves a new dropped relation through the Obutaka Gathering Cycle. Funders follow that living process as it unfolds — beginning with Residents ⇋ Waste.
Funders gather for a two-hour circle on a different question about evolving funding — accountability, risk, value, compliance, control. Where possible, cohorts meet in nature in their own country rather than only on screens.
An actual visit to the bioregion — not a site inspection, but time in the place with the people and the wetland whose intelligence the journey follows.
Together we look back on what we have created: the beginnings of a new funding architecture held on the Obuntu Resets platform, and a new culture — a growing community of funders and bioregions.
Honest reflection with fellow funders, facilitators and community-grounded learning on money, power, accountability and interdependence.
Unvarnished learning from the current Obutaka Gathering Cycle, beginning with the Residents ⇋ Waste relation.
Encounter how a community listens to residents, elders, ecological indicators, future generations and the wetland before deciding what money should nourish.
Examine the boundaries, compliance patterns, risk assumptions and reporting habits that shape how your institution relates to living systems.
See how community decisions become fundable commitments without being reduced into conventional proposal logic.
Build the capacity to recognise stewardship value, respond to emergent life processes, and design accountability that strengthens rather than interrupts community agency.
By the end of the twelve months, the most valuable output may not be a funded activity. It may be the early architecture and culture of a new way for money to serve life — infrastructure that other places can use, each in their own way.
Obuntu Resets is the digital membrane between communities and funders. A community that has moved through the Obutaka Gathering Cycle issues Units of Caring — specific, credible commitments. Funders see those commitments and nourish them directly. Place intelligence flows outward; financial nourishment flows inward; each side remains whole.
A new culture grows alongside the architecture: an increasing number of funders, and of bioregions, joining the platform and learning together.
The Funders Learning Journey has a sibling. Activating Bioregional Consciousness is a journey for people rooted in place — practitioners who sense their places hold the answers for systemic transformation but do not yet know where to begin. Where funders learn to follow life, practitioners learn to listen to their own place and surface the relations seeking renewal there.
Run in parallel, the two journeys meet on the Obuntu Resets platform: practitioners surface bioregional initiatives; funders learn to meet them on living-systems terms. Together they grow not a single method, but the shared discipline of relational design — infrastructure for regenerative systems evolution that centres the intelligence of place.
We are still designing the programme. If you are rooted in a place and sense it is asking something of you, you can register early interest and we will keep you close as it takes shape.
A two-hour exploratory circle for progressive funders. No prior commitment. Bring the question you are already holding.
Know a funder who may be ready for this work? Introduce us. With their permission, share their details and we will reach out gently.