Co-investing in Nature Design Lab

Solve a live funding challenge—and turn the learning into reusable practice

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The COIN Design Lab works with funders, finance vehicles, intermediaries and landscape organizations on real funding and finance decisions. The Lab brings together cohorts of cases, each led by a sponsor directly involved in tackling a nature funding challenge, with meaningful shared challenges.

Each case begins with a live problem, not a predetermined COIN solution. The partner brings the relevant strategy, relationships, institutional authority, technical expertise and existing mechanisms. COIN brings structured diagnosis, comparative experience, funding and finance design, and a growing body of lessons from other approaches.

A case may ask:

• Where could additional funding make the greatest difference?
• Which contributors have a credible reason to participate?
• Is the need best met through funding, financing, an existing mechanism, or a combination?
• How could donor, government, beneficiary or corporate funding work together?
• What evidence and claims are actually needed?
• Can an existing water fund, conservation fund, public program, Indigenous-led institution, carbon program or finance vehicle already do most of what is required?

The objective is a practical route forward, not another strategy exercise.

What a Lab case can produce

Depending on the problem, a case can develop:

A clearer diagnosis
The relevant natural capital, governance, institutions, existing funding and finance, binding constraints and consequential opportunities.

Fundable opportunities
A small number of bounded opportunities that different contributors can understand, assess and support.

A co-investment design
The appropriate contributor mix, funding channels, institutional roles, relationship to existing vehicles, and evidence and claims approach.

An implementation pathway
Clear decisions about what should move forward, what still needs testing, who should be involved and what happens next.

A cohort built for learning and challenge

Lab cases can be developed in small cohorts so that lessons travel across different settings without forcing them toward the same solution.

Case partners bring the live problem, institutional context, relationships and substantive expertise.

Advisors and practitioners bring specialized experience—from Indigenous governance and water finance to climate, evidence, public funding and financial structuring—where a case needs it.

Independent reviewers provide structured challenge at key points, testing assumptions, contribution logic, evidence and readiness before a proposed approach is treated as robust.

The cohort creates opportunities to compare cases, identify recurring patterns and expose weak assumptions earlier. Some lessons may remain highly specific to one place; others can contribute to Architecture Cases, Funding Blueprints or other reusable practice.

Build from what already works

The Lab does not assume that better nature funding requires creating something new.

Cases draw on strong mechanisms the field has already built—water funds, Indigenous-led funds, jurisdictional programs, conservation funds, public payment systems, carbon programs, blended-finance vehicles and others. Where an existing approach already works, the task may be to strengthen it, connect another contributor, fill a missing function or adapt a proven design rather than create a new structure.

Cases also contribute learning back to the wider COIN work. Recurring lessons can become Architecture Cases, Funding Blueprints or other reusable practice—but only where experience shows that the learning genuinely travels.

Have a live funding or finance challenge that could benefit from this kind of work?