Ma Earth Round 3
An overview of the platform, the round, and the proposal I am bringing to you
Prepared by Dani for our sociocracy consent round, May 18, 2026.
What this document is
I have been drafting our application to Ma Earth’s Round 3 funding cycle. Tim has questions already; Travis, Arturo, and Forrest will have their own. Rather than answer in fragments, I want to give you the whole picture in one place: what Ma Earth is and why it fits us, what this round specifically asks of applicants, why I shaped our proposal the way I did, and what I would ask you to hold in mind as we get specific together about how the funds will actually be used.
The application draft itself ([ma-earth-application-draft-v3.md](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pgOtd48xfuROtvX3z_yxYgydcGgV1zFzzkaFCuFVIm8/edit?tab=t.0)) is the artifact we will refine through the consent round. This document is the context that lets you read it with clear eyes.
Ma Earth: what the platform is and why it fits DBC
Ma Earth is a fundraising platform built for land-based regenerative projects. Stewards of the land create profiles, propose projects, and run crowdfunding campaigns alongside dozens of other aligned projects during designated “funding rounds.” The platform’s mission is to channel resources to nature projects that combine ecological restoration with community resilience and cultural continuity. Their orientation is regenerative, holistic, and rooted in the kinds of practices we have been doing here for years.
Two things about Ma Earth’s approach matter for us in particular:
First, their funding model uses what is called quadratic matching. In plain language, a matching pool amplifies the contribution of small individual donors. Many small donations from many different people generate more matched funds than a few large ones. This means our campaign success depends less on finding one or two big backers and more on activating the warm community that already knows our work. The Seed Festival contacts from May 16 matter. Our friends and neighbors matter. Community participation is the engine.
Second, Ma Earth sits inside the on-chain regenerative ecosystem that DBC has been part of since founding. We have funded stewardship through Giveth and Gitcoin, reported impact on Bloom Network, and operated under umbrella fiscal sponsorship through Legacy Global in the United States. Ma Earth is the next aligned platform in that lineage, and our existing track record there is part of what makes us a strong applicant. We are not strangers to this register; we have been practicing inside it for years.
DBC was invited to apply to Round 3. That invitation matters as context: this is not a cold pitch. The platform already sees alignment with our work.
Round 3: what they are asking for, in plain language
The application has twelve fields plus the option to attach up to five supporting documents. The structure runs in this order:
The first five fields describe the organization (DBC): name, location, links, a 150–1,000 character description, and a logo. These are mostly straightforward.
Fields six through eleven describe the project: up to three categories from their list of twelve, the project location, a header photo or video, the project story (150–300 words; the centerpiece), the project name (under 60 characters, becomes the campaign title), and the project timeline.
Field twelve is optional and only visible to reviewers. It is where additional context can go that does not belong in the public campaign page.
The application is due by May 31. I am working to a May 24 internal target, which gives us a one-week buffer for any final adjustments after our consent round.
The categories we can choose from are: Restoration, Conservation, Agriculture, Water, Soil, Biodiversity, Community, Education, Energy, Technology, Disaster Relief, and Other. Up to three.
The reviewers are looking for projects that are: nature-based and regenerative; comprehensive in how they relate to the whole landscape and community; feasible within a defined timeframe (typically 6–24 months); connected to the people doing the work (personal passion, stewardship, traditional knowledge); community-oriented; and verifiable, meaning that what we claim is true and demonstrable.
The mistakes they explicitly call out are: vague timelines, no clear connection between funding and outcomes, missing details about who is doing the work or who benefits, and no evidence of community support. Our project has the opposite of all of these, which is why I think we are well positioned.
How I shaped our proposal, and why
When the invitation came, I started by asking what proposal would best serve the four views I hold in any decision: what is good for the people most directly involved, what is good for the broader community, what is good for the soil and water and life of the place, and what is good for the framework of practice we have been building together at DBC. The proposal I have drafted is what came out of that listening.
Why a three-property project. Diamante Luz, Luz del Bosque, and the parcel where Travis lives and runs Regenesis already form a contiguous stretch of land from the valley road to the Río Tigre. We have been contributing to the Paso de la Dante corridor informally for years. The strongest, most honest proposal is the one that names this and asks for resources to formalize what has already been growing. A single-property proposal would have understated what is real; a wider proposal would have overstated what we can carry in twelve months.
Why DBC as the applying organization. DBC was founded to be the governance layer that holds multi-property stewardship across the valley. This project is exactly the kind of thing DBC was built to coordinate. Applying through DBC also surfaces our governance practice for reviewers as part of the project itself, which is genuine and reflects what is happening on the ground.
Why these three categories: Restoration, Agriculture, Community. Restoration holds Travis’s seven years of Regenesis permaculture, Tim’s ongoing tending at eartHeart, and the riverside corridor work. Agriculture holds the public-facing native plant nursery at Luz del Bosque and the Free the Food gardens already operating at both Luz del Bosque and the Las Tumbas Salón Comunal. Community holds DBC’s governance practice, the cultural transmission of Coliazul, and the relationship to Las Tumbas. The three categories cover what we are actually doing without diluting the message.
Why we are holding Water, Education and Energy for later rounds. These are named Ma Earth categories that will have dedicated rounds on Ma Earth. We have real work in both (the Río Tigre watershed, Coliazul, the solar installations and on/off grid energy work). Each deserves a focused proposal of its own. Sequencing these for future rounds lets us tell each story properly and demonstrates strategic thinking to the platform, which matters for long-term funding relationships.
Why Coliazul lives inside Community rather than as a separate Education category. Coliazul is the children’s program operating from the rented house adjacent to our properties. It is led by their local primary teacher and supported by Travis (guest-teaching permaculture) and Arturo (guest-teaching science and art with salvaged materials). Coliazul is the reason much of this work matters; the children are growing up inside our practice and learning from it as the cultural air they breathe. Pulling Education out as its own category would narrow our cultural focus to “teaching”; Community is the broader frame that holds Coliazul alongside DBC governance and our other community work as one piece. The eventual centro cultural build to house Coliazul on the land is a substantially larger ask that I propose we sequence as its own future round, building on the momentum from this one.
Why the protopian frame. I wrote the project story to lead with who we are and what is already alive on these lands, rather than with what is broken or what we have not yet done. Reviewers fund continuations of living work more reliably than they fund recoveries from struggle. This is also honest: our work has been alive for years.
Why the children as the why-underneath. Coliazul appears in the opening of the project story for a simple reason: it is the truthful answer to the question of why this all matters. Everything we are tending is for the next generation already growing up inside it. That register lands with quadratic donors (small individual givers who fund what they personally care about) more reliably than any abstract framing of regeneration.
What I would ask you to keep in mind as we get specific about how the funds will be used
This is the heart of what the consent round needs to land. Reviewers are looking for a project that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. They are not looking for poetry; they are looking for an honest, concrete description of what we will do in twelve months with the resources we are asking for. The draft I have prepared names three concrete deliverables that I believe we can carry together:
- A public-facing native plant nursery at the roadside, drawing on Travis’s seven years of propagation at Regenesis and Ara’s stewardship of this publicly facing space on Luz del Bosque.
- Cow removal from lower areas of the Río Tigre conservation area opens access for restoration planting which needs to happen concurrently, then the nursery and waterfall trail serve as living classrooms for Coliazul and other learning groups.
- A multi-property stewardship agreement ratified through DBC’s General Assembly in June, so the three lands can demonstrate solidarity as one node in the corridor for the long term.
What you each know about your own land, capacity, and seasonal rhythms will sharpen each of these. As you read the v3 draft, please hold the following in mind:
Be honest about scope. Twelve months is the proposed window. Whatever we commit to in Field 11 is what supporters are funding us to deliver. If something on the list is more aspirational than achievable, name it and we will move it to a phase 2 mention or to a future round. Honest scope wins reviewers; overpromising costs credibility.
Stay specific. Numbers, species, dates, hectares, the actual names of places and people; these are what make a project feel real to a stranger reading it for the first time. Where you can substitute a vague phrase for a concrete one, please do.
The funds are for the project, not for the centro cultural. The Coliazul centro cultural build is referenced as a future round candidate, with this round positioned to build the momentum that future round will rest on. The funds we are asking for here support the nursery, the trail, a multi-property agreement, and the integration of Coliazul into those spaces as living classrooms. The centro cultural building itself is a separate, larger conversation.
Quadratic matching changes how we plan campaign activation. When we are designing the use of funds and the public story, remember that our campaign success will depend on many small donations from people we know and people they know. Anything that helps the story travel from one warm community to the next is part of the work. Spanish translation, photos that show the people and the children, plain language that does not require expertise to understand.
The 8 Forms of Capital methodology applies. Whatever contributions each of you make through the project (financial, intellectual, material, social, experiential, spiritual, living, cultural) will be tracked through our existing practice. This is part of why DBC is the right applying organization and part of what makes our governance distinctive to reviewers.
The General Assembly is parallel to the project, not part of it. The June Assembly is real and important, and it does not gate or block project execution. Our clean execution of this round is what gives members tangible evidence that the governance work matters, and it positions DBC well for future round participation. Read these as two parallel strands that strengthen each other.
The funding target is still open. We have not yet set the dollar amount we are asking for. That decision needs to come out of our conversation about what the three deliverables actually require to be done well within twelve months. If you have a sense of what your part costs, please bring it.
How the consent round will work
The order of conversations I am proposing:
First, Tim and I. Field 9 (the story) and Field 10 (the project name), plus the framing of his role as eartHeart steward in the application narrative. Tim has been here longest in continuous tending, and I want his consent on the way the story names him before anything goes further.
Second, Travis. Field 9 with his name and Regenesis prominently featured, and Field 11 to confirm what he can commit to delivering in twelve months.
Third, Arturo and Forrest together. Field 9 with Arturo’s role, the nursery siting at Luz del Bosque, and the question of what makes sense to do in the public-facing portion of LdB and what stays private.
Randall is on the path to a board seat renewal and is included on the application as a Member when we set up the Ma Earth platform; I have briefed him separately and this will come to the DBC meeting next Tuesday at Dluz.
What I am asking you each for is not a vote on the proposal as it stands, but advice: what would make the proposal more honest, more accurate to your work, more useful for what we are actually trying to build. The application is for DBC; the consent is the practice DBC was founded to live by.
Where to look in the v3 draft, and what to focus on
The application I drafted as a starting point is here, and has limited access.
Please submit a request if you would like to collaborate and be granted permissions to do so.
The draft has a clear structure: a pre-submission checklist, strategic notes on category selection, then the application content (Fields 1 through 12), then internal scaffolding (platform setup, refinement notes, what changed from earlier versions).
The fields that need your eyes most:
- Field 4 (Organization description). Around 730 characters. Confirms our on-chain history, names Legacy Global as our fiscal sponsor, and includes the “mistakes and all” line that says we open-source our process.
- Field 9 (Project Story). Around 330 words; we need to bring it to 150–300 during the consent round. Three trim options noted at the end of v3.
- Field 10 (Project Name). Four options ranked; my recommendation is the first, “Native Nursery & Río Tigre Trail, Diamante Valley.” Open to discussion.
- Field 11 (Timeline). June 2026 – June 2027, with three phases. Each phase should map to what each of you can realistically carry.
- Field 12 (Reviewer-only). Where the June Assembly, Legacy Global, and our 8 Forms of Capital methodology are named for the application reviewers.
The internal scaffolding sections (Platform Setup, Sociocracy Consent Round, Refinement Notes) are not part of the application itself; they are working notes for us.
Decisions still open
These are the choices that need to be made by us together before May 24:
- Final project name (4 options listed; my recommendation is Option 2)
- Funding target (no dollar amount in any draft yet)
- Field 9 length trim to land in 150–300 words
- Supporting documents to attach (up to 5; use existing material, reworked for this purpose)
- Any specifics about each person’s role or contribution that the current draft has wrong, missing, or framed in a way that does not match their own sense of the work
- Any places where the public framing of Coliazul (the eight children, the rented house adjacent, the 3-to-5-days-a-week scale) should be softened or sharpened
A closing note
The framework we have been building at DBC says that financial gifts hold a place but do not advance one; engagement is what does. This application is one form of that engagement. Reviewing this draft together, naming what would make it more truthful, deciding what we will actually do, this is the governance practice DBC was founded for, applied to a concrete moment.
I have done my part by holding the proposal up to the four views and bringing it to a place where it can be received. The rest is the practice we already know how to do together.
With love and gratitude,
Dani
Companion document to ma-earth-application-draft-v3.md. Read this first for context, then read the draft.
Created May 18, 2026.