Join the Founders Circle
In 2015, Croatan Institute launched an ambitious five-year founding campaign. We invite donors and organizations seeking to play a highly engaged role in the early stages of our work to join the Institute’s Founders Circle.
By pledging to support Croatan Institute with major gifts through 2019, Founders Circle members will seed the Institute with unrestricted anchor funding during this critical phase of our growth, helping us to maintain our independence, deepen our impact, and achieve our vision.
OUR VISION
- To foster finance and investment as instruments for promoting people, places, and the planet.
- To support communities and civil society partners on the ground who are building just, resilient, and prosperous economic systems.
- To advance new approaches to economic development and new strategies for sustainable investment.
- To hold corporations and institutions accountable for their social and environmental impact, and to provide them with alternative models rooted in sustainability and social equity.
- To provide an outside-the-beltway counterpoint to traditional think tanks in a rapidly changing marketplace of ideas.
WHY JOIN THE FOUNDERS CIRCLE?

- Amplify the impact of our work by becoming a leading resource for independent insights into today’s most complex challenges at the nexus of sustainability, finance, and economic development.
- Enrich our work by engaging with wider audiences and forging new partnerships, particularly with resource-constrained communities and organizations.
- Foster a new generation of thought leaders working on the frontiers of finance, social equity, and ecological sustainability.
- Incubate actionable ideas for addressing critical social and environmental problems through creative forms of capital deployment and impact investment.
- Develop a series of intimate symposia for probing critical issues and generating solutions for today’s most pressing social and environmental problems.
Founders Circle donors pledge to support the Institute with major gifts to be fulfilled by the end of 2019. In recognition of their generosity, Founders Circle supporters receive numerous opportunities to engage more deeply in the life of the Institute during the period of this campaign.
$5,000 or more
over five years
Permanent website listing
Discounts and early access to Croatan Institute events, seminars, publications, and datasets
$10,000 or more
over five years
All benefits of the
Stalwarts Circle
Exclusive briefings with Croatan Institute experts
$25,000 or more
over five years
All benefits of the Supporters Circle
Annual site visits to engage directly with partners on the ground
$50,000 or more
over five years
All benefits of the Sustainers Circle
Annual farm-to-fork experience with Institute leaders to strategize over future priorities
FOUNDERS CIRCLE MEMBERS
Archimedes' Point
Christi and Igor Veytskin
Matthew Patsky
Big Path Capital
Richard S. Bookbinder
Breckinridge Capital Advisors
Clean Land LLC
Jason Cooke
Erickson Advisors
Essex Investment Management Company LLC
Dolly H. Gray-Bussard
Praxis Mutual Funds
David and Jocelyn Sand
Trillium Asset Management
Lexie Wolf
Mary Ellen and John Zellerbach