About
MISSION STATEMENT
Croatan Institute is an independent, nonprofit research and action institute whose mission is to build social equity and ecological resilience by leveraging finance to create pathways to a just economy.
VISION STATEMENT
We envision an equitable world where finance supports flourishing communities, vibrant places, and resilient economies.
VALUES
In our work we strive to be: Rigorous – Interdisciplinary – Inclusive – Independent – Trusted
Our Work
Croatan Institute is an independent, nonprofit research and action institute building ecologically resilient and socially equitable food, fiber, and forestry communities through transformative finance.
The thread that connects all our work is transformative finance. Transformative finance is the lens through which we consider systemic change on a regional, national, and international basis.
Croatan Institute delivers impact through three main pathways:
- Advising & Technical Assistance: applied research and place-based technical assistance for investors plus communities along the food, fiber, and forestry value chain.
- Unlocking Capital: develop innovative financial frameworks and data analytics for sustainable and impact investing.
- Field-Building: shift the financial landscape by working with investors and policymakers through demonstrated community models, while providing accessible financial education to youth, emerging farmers, landowners, and small businesses. Plus, organizing action-oriented dialogues and events to connect capital providers with capital seekers and build non-extractive, equitable relationships.
Our work is built on trust and inclusion. Croatan Institute leads with relationship-building and partnerships, aligning with practitioners in the field and coalition-led movements.
We deliver rigorous research and actionable insight on the following cross-cutting themes:
Strategic Plan 2024-2029
Croatan Institute’s second Strategic Plan is a carefully considered framework that will guide our organizational priorities and strengthen our collective impact over the next five years.
Within this plan, you can learn more about who we are, who we serve, and our theory of change. Our achievements from our first Strategic Plan 2021-2023 positioned us to dive into our three new strategic goals:
- building out our most impactful finance levers for systems change,
- amplifying our systems approach and deepening relationships with mission-aligned partners, and
- enhancing our long-term organizational sustainability through continued refinement of our cooperative stewardship model.
Our full Strategic Plan provides an overview of the outcomes of this process and a foundation for the Institute’s next phase of development.
Our Impact
Since our launch on Earth Day in 2014, we have worked collaboratively with more than 200 organizations, including: environmental nonprofits, community development organizations, farmers and land stewards, impact investors, foundations, and government agencies, on complex problems at the intersection of finance, climate justice, racial equity, and ecological resilience.
We are proud to celebrate over a decade of legacy including:
- unlocking over $5 million in capital and project finance,
- authoring +40 applied research publications,
- supporting +110 projects nationally and internationally,
- and convening +30 in-person and online dialogues.
The video below features Institute partners William Barber III, the Founder and CEO of Rural Beacon Initiative, and Michael Reilly, Executive Director of Foodshed Capital. Dive into some of our work across the Southeast with Croatan Institute Senior Fellow and President Josh Humphreys and Senior Fellow Sharlene Brown.
Our Team
Croatan Institute was initially incubated at Tellus Institute, the Boston-based sustainability think tank where several of the founding team members and advisers began their collaboration.
Now, Croatan Institute is headquartered in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, where our distributed team collaborates across the United States (South, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, Midwest, West Coast), Panama, and Geneva, Switzerland.
We are a group of interdisciplinary scholars, scientists, financial activists, advocates, and analysts. Learn more about Our Team here.
Why “Croatan”?
Croatan Institute’s name draws inspiration from the Native American Croatan people associated with the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, the first effort at English settlement in the Americas. In the late sixteenth century, families of more than 100 English-speaking colonists settled on an island nestled between the Outer Banks and the inland coast of present-day North Carolina. Within the space of less than three years, the colonists had mysteriously vanished. When the colony’s governor returned to rejoin the settlers, his crew found an abandoned settlement with the word “Croatoan” carved in a gate post and the letters “CRO” on the trunk of a tree.
The name Croatan Institute evokes competing social and environmental references associated with the Croatan people’s past and persistent problems of global encounter and exchange, social cooperation and conflict, environmental conservation and ecological regeneration, state power and possibility, and unmet demands for recognition and justice. Read more.
EQUITY AND INCLUSION STATEMENT
To solve some of the greatest challenges facing our world today, Croatan Institute recognizes that diverse stakeholders offer distinct perspectives that must be integrated into our collective efforts to build social equity and ecological resilience.
We acknowledge that racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and other systemic forms of prejudice reinforce not only the power and privilege of America’s White majority but also the influence of post-colonial empires on emerging economies. This global understanding of the imperatives of equity and inclusion, rooted in our interdisciplinary approaches to research and problem-solving, pushes us to embrace a wide array of life journeys and perspectives. While identity may begin with what we see, we recognize that diversity is often far more complex than what public conversations about race might lead us to believe. A person’s life story is collectively shaped by their identities in complex ways. Our commitment is consequently to honor the complexities of individuals and communities while we partner to build bridges to a more just economy.
As a nonprofit research and action institute, we are on a journey to embed equity and inclusion across our organization—into our governance, operations, and partnerships. We have been fortunate to have thoughtful advisers on this journey from the outset, and we continue to create policies, practices, and platforms that reflect the need for social equity.
Since its founding, Croatan Institute has been committed to the principles of equity and inclusion in its actions:
- When the Institute publicly launched in 2014, our multi-racial founding team was advised by a Board of Advisers reflecting racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ diversity.
- In 2014 we convened an internal brain trust of fellows and advisers to explore the lack of diversity in finance. The seed planted by this group blossomed into our Racial Equity, Economics, Finance, and Sustainability (REEFS) program in 2018.
- In 2015 we released a major collaborative study on “Investing for Positive Impact on Women.”
- In 2016 we released “Investing in LGBTQ+ Equality,” a pathbreaking paper, and simultaneously organized investors with more than $2 trillion in assets to oppose North Carolina’s transphobic “Bathroom Bill.”
- In 2018 we created an organizational policy to formalize our practice of embedding equity in vendor selection.
- In 2020 we created an honorarium compensation policy for speakers and interviewees from low-resource communities and organizations led by people of color.
- From 2020-present, we’ve grown and assembled a team of staff, affiliated fellows, and Board members that bring together a diverse range of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, socio-economic, and immigrant identities.
Equity Honoraria Policy
We recognize the burden on low-resource and minority stakeholders to participate in Institute projects and events. We have therefore committed to fairly compensating Indigenous Peoples, racial and ethnic minorities, and low-resource organizations for their contribution to our work by providing an honorarium for their time and input.
Founders Circle
In 2015 – 2019, Croatan Institute launched an ambitious five-year founding campaign inviting 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, Founders Circle members helped 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. We are grateful to our Founders Circle members for their generous support:

