Work with COIN takes three connected forms: stewarding the Contribution Capital Operating Framework as a public good, co-developing co-investment mechanisms in real landscapes, and advising funders and initiatives on deploying catalytic funding. They draw on the same tools and feed the same learning.
COIN develops and stewards the Contribution Capital Operating Framework as a public good — convening practitioners, funders, standards experts, and rights-holder institutions; publishing the framework’s settled elements in citable form; and refining its tools against real use.
The principles are fixed — claims proportionate to evidence, deployment through existing institutions, landscape initiatives and rights-holders at the center — while the instruments stay working drafts, concrete enough to use and critique.
The framework is open for any institution to use, and no engagement with COIN confers approval, certification, or privileged standing under it.
COIN co-develops co-investment mechanisms in real landscapes — the fullest expression of the practice. A co-investment window is a bounded route that brings a landscape initiative, the funding mechanisms it draws on, and impact-assessment standards together on terms customized to the landscape, under the shared control of the parties, so decisions are made by the people closest to the problem. It is the one mechanism COIN stays with through development rather than handing off. Current and recent applications span tribal-led watershed restoration, coastal ridge-to-reef stewardship, Indigenous territorial management, and jurisdictional forest programs.
The current field-building focus is a bounded two-year program to develop the first flagship mechanisms alongside the framework, testing both deployment pathways. COIN is seeking a founding consortium — not raising a fund. Foundation and donor partners provide first catalytic commitments; corporate partners make advance commitments and test claims discipline; institutional partners refine the framework and apply it through real opportunities. Contribution capital itself flows directly from funders to existing institutions, never through COIN.
COIN advises donors, companies, landscape initiatives, and their supporting organizations on the practical questions catalytic funding raises: how to deploy it well in a specific landscape, which funding and financing approaches genuinely fit and in what sequence, whether the governance foundations exist to steer the money, and how to respond to evolving corporate climate standards. Engagements are scoped to the client’s problem and draw on whatever analysis and tools fit it. They don’t require adopting contribution capital as a frame — a diagnostic, a funding strategy, or a partner search can stand entirely on its own.
Much of the expertise available to funders is organized around instruments — carbon crediting, debt conversion, blended vehicles, water funds. Upstream of all of them sits work that is just as essential and far harder to source: understanding how a system actually produces outcomes, whether the governance foundations exist to steer it, and which funding and financing approaches genuinely fit. That upstream work is what COIN does.
The practice is generalist by design, because the job is to match finance approaches to landscape needs rather than to advance any particular instrument. COIN does not develop carbon projects, structure debt, or manage funds, and does not take a share of capital mobilized — so the advice and the revenue never point toward a product. Every engagement is built toward the same result: a clear next stage, and the right hands to carry it.
A current advisory focus is corporate response to SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, which takes effect in February 2027. The standard opens room for climate contributions made as funding, and companies are now working out what that means for strategy, budgets, and claims. COIN helps companies read the standard against their situation and build a credible pipeline of fundable nature opportunities under it.
Across mechanism development and advisory, engagements tend to run through three kinds of help. Clients enter wherever their situation requires — these connect, but they are not a required sequence.
Clarity. Analytical work that establishes what is actually going on: how the system produces climate, nature, and livelihood benefits; whether the governance foundations exist; whether the current funding arrangement fits; which funding and financing approaches genuinely compare; and what each contributor can credibly claim.
Design. Turning clarity into an arrangement worth funding: funding and financing strategy for a landscape or portfolio; design of co-investment windows and related mechanisms; governance, decision rights, and safeguards; and claims architecture that keeps each contributor’s claims proportionate to evidence. Design work is developed with the institutions that will live with it, not delivered to them.
Mobilization. Getting the next stage into the right hands: finding a credible project developer, scoping a corporate supply-chain partnership, writing terms of reference, or assembling the team to develop a financing instrument in full — including the funder engagement around a new co-investment window.Much of this analytical work draws on methods COIN has written up as field briefs — on integrated governance and finance, co-creation process design, and partner and project risk assessment. These are working documents, available to clients and collaborators on request.
Donors and foundations that want their funding to be catalytic and lack a practical route to see the opportunity, structure a governed contribution, and report on it honestly.
Companies with contribution budgets or nature commitments and no credible pipeline: a disciplined path from intent to fundable opportunities, with claims that remain proportionate and auditable.
Landscape initiatives that are credible on the ground but illegible to funders: help structuring the funding they need without surrendering control to any platform.
NGOs and technical partners supporting landscape initiatives that now need the funding and financing strategy they were not built to produce.
Engagements are scoped and bounded, from short diagnostics and strategy briefs to multi-month window co-development, and may be supported through contracts or grants as fits the client and the task. COIN works for fees, never for a share of capital mobilized.
Where useful, engagements can draw on the tools of the Contribution Capital Operating Framework, which COIN maintains as a public good; no engagement confers approval, certification, or privileged standing under that framework.
