Pathway 01
Who this pathway serves
The grant instrument is the same across all three; the desk that signs it varies. Each reading begins on the giving line, not the impact-investment line, and ends with a restricted-purpose gift through Kinship Earth.
Foundation program officers
Program officers at climate-focused foundations whose theory of change centers bioregional regeneration. The grant agreement is a standard Kinship Earth restricted-purpose instrument; the diligence packet sits flat against existing fiscal-sponsorship review workflow.
Individual catalytic donors
Individual donors deploying donor-advised fund balances toward catalytic philanthropy. The grant flows into Kinship Earth's general operating line restricted to Protocol activations, which preserves DAF eligibility for sponsoring organizations that scrutinize pass-throughs.
Family-office philanthropic wings
Family offices whose philanthropic wing prioritizes grantmaking over investment-style impact deployment. The pathway honors the family's existing giving cadence and underwriting rhythm rather than asking for a new vehicle on its balance sheet.
What flows through this rail
The capital form is a restricted charitable gift. The rail is Kinship Earth’s 501(c)(3) fiscal-sponsorship governance. The recipient of services is the Planetary Party Protocol stewardship circle, operating under Kinship Earth’s sponsorship of the Protocol’s bioregional-activation work. The dollars enter the charitable rail and stay on the charitable rail; the recovery profile is zero by design.
Key terms
The full template lives in the legal vault. These five terms anchor every variant.
Securities posture
A charitable gift to a 501(c)(3) public charity, with no expectation of profit and no return of capital, falls outside the definition of a security under Section 2(a)(1) of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Howey test. No Reg D, Reg CF, or Reg A registration is required. Kinship Earth’s existing state charitable-solicitation registrations cover inbound capital on the charity side.
Why this rail, not the other
The choice between the charitable rail and the investment rail is fiduciary, not ideological. A program officer underwriting from the charitable-giving line operates inside a different policy stack than the same foundation’s impact-investment desk; the budgets are separate, the approval pathways are separate, the reporting is separate. The Catalytic Grant rail is the one to read when the giving line is the line the capital is leaving from. The capital has no recovery in its mandate. The dollars settle into Kinship Earth’s fiscal-sponsorship governance, deploy through the same trust-based participatory mechanism the charity has used since October 2024, and report on the cadence the program office already runs.
The same dollars on the Nalu’ea Trust rail would be asked to carry a governance instrument they do not need. The same dollars on the Recoverable PRI rail would be asked to live on the balance sheet for years, against a recovery profile a charitable-giving budget is not structured to receive. The Catalytic Grant is the rail that asks for nothing the program officer is not already prepared to give. The honesty of being a gift is the honesty that makes the rail useful.
What happens next
The cadence honors the program officer’s calendar. The conversation moves at the pace of understanding, not the pace of a fundraising cycle. There is no urgency to manufacture; the work itself is already ongoing across the bioregions, and a Stage 0 grant arrives ready to be deployed.
Step 01
A 30-minute conversation with the Planetary Party stewardship team to read the theory of change against the foundation's portfolio thesis. No agreement language is shared at this stage.
Step 02
A short LOI exchange to align on grant size, term, and milestone cadence. Kinship Earth's program team holds the LOI on the charity side.
Step 03
A full Kinship Earth restricted-purpose grant agreement is drafted from the template. Counsel-of-record review is light for this pathway; the underlying instrument is decades-deep.
Open the conversation
The first conversation begins by reaching the Planetary Party stewardship team directly. No portal, no form, no scoring rubric. A short note to Syd Griffith opens the door.
syd@planetary.partyRead deeper
The two-rail explainer on /flow shows how charitable capital moves alongside the patient rail without crossing it. The full agreement template lives on /agreements for counsel review. Both stay open whenever the work calls for them.
