As I sat down to write this letter, I thought about how one year ago our team was grieving the fires consuming Los Angeles as intense climate-change fueled droughts and extreme weather. While natural disasters caused over $260 billion in global economic losses in 2025, over $100 billion can be attributed to the LA fires. At the time, our colleague based in Los Angeles joined relief efforts while communities across the country came together to support the families and businesses who lost everything.  

The year started – in flames – and was quickly followed by the dismantling of federal agencies and political norms. Words such as “diversity” and “climate” became vilified. Nonprofit organizations and their staff weathered deep hardship due to federal funding cuts including staff and service reductions to underserved communities. But as we saw with the fires in LA and the chaos in Minnesota, communities have risen up in collaboration to care for each other. 

2025 reinforced how much stronger we are when we work together. Across disciplines and professional communities, I’ve witnessed how adversity has brought together nonprofit coalitions, ESG investors, farmers and land stewards: those who believe that our democratic values are worth fighting for. We believe that all people should be treated with respect, due process, and the rule of law. 

Our team has been deepening our ties in Minnesota and the Midwest over the past year, through organic connections:  

• In September, we attended an incredible series of events during Farm Aid 40 in Minneapolis, including training with the Distressed Borrower Assistance Network (DBAN), attending the pre-concert conference for farmers and farm advocates, and participating in the Homegrown Village where we engaged the public on resources to deploy mission-aligned capital.  

• In September, we also released Financing Trees & Perennial Crops for Your Farm: An Agroforestry Primer in collaboration with Savanna Institute. 

• In October, several members of our team came to Minneapolis to attend and host a session at the 2025 Regenerative Food System Investing Forum. We also held a screening as part of our national Soil Wealth film tour at the historic Capri Theater in North Minneapolis.  

• Throughout the fall and early winter, we hosted a series of webinars for land stewards nationally in collaboration with SHARE (Soil Health Alliance for Research and Engagement), Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and Foodshed Capital.  

These experiences connected us with a number of amazing organizations supporting farmers, land stewards, and food system activists doing critical work to build equitable, resilient food systems. We look forward to collaborating and catalyzing the mission-aligned capital needed to rebuild historically-disinvested Midwestern rural communities.