This case study documents partnership between regenerative coordination practitioners and the Institute for Community Sustainability, showing how regen principles apply to community development beyond purely environmental or blockchain contexts. The collaboration demonstrates practical integration of regenerative economics, participatory governance, and community-led sustainability initiatives—bridging academic research with grassroots practice while centering local knowledge and self-determination. Rather than imposing predetermined frameworks, the partnership creates space for communities to define sustainability on their own terms while providing coordination tools, research support, and connections to broader regenerative movements. The work shows how regenerative approaches can strengthen community capacity without extracting value toward external actors or requiring communities to adopt specific technological solutions.
Key Highlights
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Community-Led Sustainability: The partnership centers community definitions of sustainability rather than imposing external metrics, recognizing that thriving looks different across contexts and requires local knowledge about what enables collective flourishing in specific places and cultures.
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Regenerative Coordination Practice: The case study demonstrates practical application of regenerative coordination principles—creating conditions for community self-organization, supporting capacity-building, and facilitating connections rather than directing outcomes through centralized control.
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Research-Practice Integration: The collaboration bridges academic sustainability research with community practice, ensuring that theoretical frameworks serve grassroots needs while community experiences inform scholarly understanding—creating reciprocal knowledge exchange rather than extractive research on communities.
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Participatory Governance Structures: The partnership develops governance approaches enabling communities to make collective decisions about sustainability priorities, resource allocation, and coordination mechanisms—demonstrating how participatory structures work in non-blockchain contexts while offering patterns applicable to DAO governance.
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Network Strengthening: Rather than creating dependency on partnership resources, the work focuses on strengthening community capacity and connections within broader regenerative movements, building sustainable infrastructure for ongoing coordination beyond initial collaboration.
Practical Applications
This partnership model enables regenerative community development:
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Community organizations can adapt the collaboration framework when partnering with academic institutions or funders, ensuring relationships serve community self-determination rather than extracting knowledge or requiring adoption of predetermined solutions
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Sustainability practitioners can use the case study to understand how regenerative principles apply beyond environmental contexts, showing how coordination, governance, and economics shape community capacity for self-organized flourishing
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Research institutions can apply the reciprocal knowledge exchange model when engaging communities, creating relationships where academic frameworks serve grassroots needs while community wisdom informs scholarly development
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Funders can reference the partnership approach when supporting community sustainability, understanding how to resource community-led work without imposing external priorities or creating dependency on philanthropic capital
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DAO practitioners can study the participatory governance structures documented in the case study, learning how communities make collective decisions in non-blockchain contexts to inform design of coordination primitives
Connection With SuperBenefit
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The partnership’s emphasis on community-led definitions of sustainability resonates with SuperBenefit’s pattern-based approach that provides adaptable frameworks rather than prescriptive solutions—demonstrating how coordination tools should enable communities to define thriving on their own terms instead of imposing predetermined metrics that may not reflect local values and knowledge.
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Regen Coordination’s practical application of regenerative principles to community development validates SuperBenefit’s conviction that regenerative economics extends beyond environmental sustainability to encompass how communities coordinate, make decisions, and distribute resources—showing that regenerative approaches address fundamental questions about power, participation, and collective flourishing.
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The focus on building sustainable community capacity rather than creating dependency provides model for how SuperBenefit can ensure DAO primitives strengthen communities’ ability to coordinate autonomously rather than locking them into specific platforms or requiring ongoing technical support that concentrates power with developers.
Related Concepts
- Coordination - Mechanisms for collective decision-making
- Governance - Democratic and participatory frameworks
- Community - Network organizing and collaboration
- Power - Distribution and relational dynamics
- Sustainability - Regenerative coordination approaches