--- title: how to fund a restoration crew canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-fund-a-restoration-crew markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-fund-a-restoration-crew.md subtitle: "the crew is paid when someone buys the certificate. the buyer's way out is not a coin" category: how-to --- # how to fund a restoration crew *the crew is paid when someone buys the certificate. the buyer's way out is not a coin* The crew finished the creek in June. Six people, one season: three hundred willow stakes, two beaver dam analogs, a cattle fence moved back from the bank, a culvert that no longer drops a foot onto bare gravel. The water below it runs clearer than anyone on the crew has seen it. Now it is September. The grant that paid for the spring is spent, the report is filed, and the next grant is a decision someone else makes in February. The creek does not know about February. It keeps the willows or loses them whether or not anyone buys anything. That is the foundation of this page: the living work is real on its own. What follows is how the people who did it get paid, and what to say when a buyer asks how they get out. **Short answer:** a restoration crew is funded when a buyer purchases the certificate that names the crew's agent. The purchase price goes to that agent's account, not into a coin pool. That purchase is the paycheck. The buyer's way out later is the exchange: a floor in `$ENSURE` or a one-for-one swap. The exchange is built and not yet switched on. ## the work comes first Grants, appeals, and the county's cost-share are real money, and they end on a schedule the creek did not agree to. Nothing here replaces them. A crew lead who has made payroll out of a reimbursement grant knows exactly how long "net sixty" feels in July. What this page adds is one more way the same work gets paid, and a way that does not wait on a committee, but it does wait on a buyer. It starts from a plain fact: the creek has value, the work on it has a cost, and somebody who cares about the first can pay the second directly. ## how the crew gets paid The crew, or the council or land trust it works under, can have an onchain account that stands for the place or the work. In **[ensurance](/specific?from=guide)** that account is called an **agent**. One agent issues one **certificate**. The certificate is the thing a buyer purchases, and it names the agent that gets paid. When someone buys that certificate, the price goes to the account the certificate names. That can be the agent's own account, or a split that names who shares it: the crew, the trust that holds the easement, the landowner who moved the fence. The money does not pass through a coin pool on the way. Jay's certificate funds Jay. Yours funds you. That is the funding. Not a token the crew has to sell later, not a pledge, not a line in a budget that clears if the next cycle goes well. A purchase today is a payment today, to the name on the certificate. What did the buyer get? They paid the **cost** of work that was issued on the creek's **value**. The certificate is not the creek and not a deed to it. It is a record that the work was funded, held by the person who funded it. The rules are short in the [manual](/manual/certificates), and [what a natural capital certificate actually holds](/guide/what-a-natural-capital-certificate-actually-holds) covers what it is and is not. One more fact the crew lead should know, because the buyer will ask about it later: every certificate is a token on one contract on Base. Across agents they are equal shares of that one contract. Each one still names exactly one agent, and that name is who gets paid. Equal shares, different paychecks. :::johnson **the purchase is the paycheck.** The buyer paid the crew the day they bought the certificate. The exchange is how the buyer leaves later. It is not how the crew eats this month. [see live certificates →](/specific?from=guide) ::: ## why not just sell the coin Because that is a different instrument doing a different job. A **coin** is the thing whose purchase fills a pool. When a buyer buys the coin, their money becomes the pool. If the crew was allocated some of that coin and sells it to make payroll, that sale is a trade into the pool, and it moves the price down. The coin buyer bought a pool, not the willows. The crew ends up selling the thing that was supposed to signal support in order to pay for the support. | what the buyer bought | where the money went | what selling does | |---|---|---| | a coin | into the pool | the crew's sale drops the price | | a certificate | to the agent the certificate names | nothing; the crew was already paid | The pool is the coin buyer's exit, and fees on later trades are extra. It is not the crew's payroll. [How to fund a watershed](/guide/how-to-fund-a-watershed) walks through that trap on a council's books. ## what to tell a buyer who wants out The crew lead will get this question, usually from the first serious buyer, and the answer should not be a shrug. The buyer's way out is the **exchange**. It has two doors. The first is a floor: turn the certificate in and receive `$ENSURE`, the protocol's coin, at a rate the protocol sets. The second is a swap: trade the certificate one-for-one for another certificate the exchange is holding. The swap is one-for-one because every certificate is an equal share of the same contract. A buyer who funded your creek can later hold a meadow instead, without anyone selling a coin into a pool to make it happen. Say it to them plainly. You bought the value. You did not buy a coin to flip. The money you paid reached the crew the moment you paid it. The door you leave by is separate from that: a floor in `$ENSURE`, or a one-for-one swap, not a price chart. That door is built and not open yet. ## where the exchange stands today The exchange is built. The contract, the pool wallet, the convert and swap actions all exist. It is not switched on. The rate is still zero. So do not send the buyer there today, and do not price a conversation around it. Tell them what is true: the exchange is the designed way out, it is dark until the protocol sets a rate and funds the pool, and nothing about that changes what already happened. The purchase paid the crew. The exit is not the payroll. The same honesty applies to what holding is for. A certificate is designed to pay three yields over time, to holders of that agent, that group, and the whole protocol, and those checks are not already arriving in every wallet. [What stewardship funding is designed to pay](/guide/what-stewardship-funding-is-designed-to-pay) separates what routes today from what is still being built. ## the person writing the check If you landed here as the buyer rather than the crew, [how to invest in nature-based solutions](/guide/how-to-invest-in-nature-based-solutions) is your page. This one is for the people who moved the fence. ## frequently asked questions ### how do you fund a restoration crew? The crew's work is represented by an agent, and that agent issues a certificate. When a buyer purchases the certificate, the price goes to the account the certificate names. That purchase is the funding. Grants and gifts stay in the mix; the certificate is the route that does not wait for a grant cycle, and it does wait on a buyer. ### how does a buyer get out? Once the exchange is switched on: turn the certificate in for `$ENSURE`, or swap it one-for-one for another certificate the exchange holds, from a wallet connected to an agent. Either way the buyer leaves without selling a coin into a pool, and the crew's payment is untouched because it already landed. Today the exchange is built, not on, and the rate is zero. ### can they sell a coin instead? A coin is a different instrument. A coin purchase fills a pool, and selling coins trades against that pool and moves the price. A certificate purchase pays the agent it names. A buyer who wants to fund a specific crew buys the certificate; the coin is not a substitute for it. ### is the exchange on? It is built. It is not on. The rate is still zero. Do not tell a buyer to use it today. When it is switched on, it is the way out, and it still does not change the fact that the purchase already paid the crew. ## next steps If your crew does the work and nobody has named a certificate for it yet, [suggest one](/specific/create?mode=suggest&from=guide). It takes a name and a sentence about the place. If you want to talk it through first, [start a conversation](/contact?from=guide&topic=certificate-paycheck). Say which creek. See [what we do with land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=certificate-paycheck) for the rest of the work we take on alongside groups like yours. ## the series 1. [how conservation fundraising reaches the crew](/guide/how-conservation-fundraising-reaches-the-crew) 2. [how to fund a watershed](/guide/how-to-fund-a-watershed) 3. [how land trust fundraising pays the trust](/guide/how-land-trust-fundraising-pays-the-trust) 4. [what stewardship funding is designed to pay](/guide/what-stewardship-funding-is-designed-to-pay) 5. how to fund a restoration crew (this post)