---
title: how to fund a watershed
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-fund-a-watershed
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-fund-a-watershed.md
subtitle: "the buyer's coin purchase fills the pool. selling your coins to pay the crew drops the price"
category: how-to
---

# how to fund a watershed

*the buyer's coin purchase fills the pool. selling your coins to pay the crew drops the price*

Picture a watershed council with a creek that still needs the work. The willows planted two springs ago need another season of browse fencing. The culvert under the county road still blocks fish. The crew that knows every bend of the reach is ready to go, and the grant that pays them closes out in September.

**To fund a watershed, pay the crew from what a buyer purchases in the watershed's name, not from coins the council sells into a market.** Grants and partners stay real. A certificate for the watershed's agent sends its purchase price to that agent. A coin purchase fills a trading pool, and selling your own coins into it pushes the price down.

The creek is there whether or not anyone buys anything. It carries water, sediment, and fish downstream every day of the year. The question is only how the people who keep it healthy get paid.

## the money a watershed already runs on

Most councils fund the work the same way. State and federal grants. A water provider that pays for a project upstream of its intake. A few major donors, a spring appeal, a membership drive. All of it is real money, and none of it should stop.

Most of it also pays for a project rather than a crew, and it ends on a date someone else sets. That pattern, and how a group can build income under its own name, is covered in [how to fund a conservation group](/guide/how-to-fund-a-conservation-group?from=guide). This post is narrower. It is about one trap that catches councils the first time they put a watershed onchain, and the door that avoids it.

## step 1: know where a coin purchase goes

A **coin** is the thing whose purchase fills a pool. When someone buys a coin the watershed is tied to, their money goes into a trading pool that sits beside the coins. That pool is what lets the next person buy and the first person leave. It is the market. It is not the council's bank account.

Now the trap. Say the council's agent received some of the coin when it was issued. Payroll is due Friday. Selling a few into the pool looks like income.

You might be thinking: it's our coin, so we can sell it. You can. But that sale is the trade that moves the price down. The pool pays you out of the money coin buyers put in, and every coin you sell leaves the remaining coins worth less to the people who bought because they believed in the creek. Do it every month and the council has turned its supporters into its payroll, and paid them back in a falling price.

The money sitting in the pool is not the council's to take out for rent or wages. It is the coin buyer's way out. What can come back from later trades is a fee, and that fee is extra when it comes. It is not a payroll you can plan a field season around.

The [coin catalog](/general?from=guide) shows which coins exist. Read it as a map of coins, not as the crew's paycheck. It is not where the crew's paycheck comes from.

## step 2: give the watershed a certificate

The other door is a **certificate**: the thing a buyer purchases that pays the agent it names. The watershed gets an **agent**, an onchain account that stands for that creek and the work on it. The agent gets one certificate. When someone buys it, the purchase price goes to that agent's account, or to a split the council set up to share the check with the crew. It does not pass through a coin pool. Nobody had to sell anything for the crew to get paid.

That is the whole difference. Jay, a steward with his own agent — his certificate funds him. The watershed's certificate funds the watershed. The buyer did not buy a coin to flip. They bought the value of the work on that creek, and their money went to the people doing it.

| | coin purchase | certificate purchase |
|---|---|---|
| **where the buyer's money goes** | Into the trading pool | To the agent the certificate names |
| **how the council gets cash** | By selling its own coins into that pool | The buyer's purchase pays the agent |
| **what the council's move does to price** | Each sale pushes it down | No pool sale is involved |
| **what the buyer holds** | A coin whose exit is the pool | A certificate that names who got paid |

:::johnson
**pay the crew from what a buyer purchases, not from what you sell.** A certificate for the watershed's agent sends its price straight to that agent. Selling coins only moves money around a pool your supporters need intact.

[read the certificate rules →](/manual/certificates)
:::

This is what **[ensurance](/?from=guide)** is for: one more way the work on a living system gets paid. The creek was there before the agent existed, and it would still be there if nobody bought a thing. Ensurance is how the crew gets funded this season. It is not the creek, and it is not the grant.

## step 3: tell the buyer what they hold

Whoever buys the certificate will ask what they own. Give them four plain answers and stop there.

1. **The purchase already paid.** Their money went to the watershed's agent the moment they bought. That is the crew's money.
2. **It is an equal share of one contract.** Every certificate is a unit on the same contract, each is an equal share of one contract, and each still names one agent. Each one still names one agent, and that name is who gets paid. Post 3 in the series walks through the name on the check.
3. **Holding is designed to pay three yields.** One from that agent, one from its group, one from the whole protocol. That is the design, not a rate, and not three checks already landing in every wallet. Post 4 separates what moves today from what is still being built.
4. **The way out is the exchange, which is built and not switched on yet.** Post 5 covers what to say when a buyer asks.

Notice the order. The yields and the exit are what you can tell a holder. Neither one is the payroll. The purchase is.

## what to tell your board

Hold both at once. The grant was real money, and it ends. The certificate is a direct payment, and it is not a promised rate. Nobody on your board has to choose between them, and nobody has to hear a yield number to understand where the money went.

The price on the certificate is a bridge, not a verdict. It exists so the person who loves the creek can pay the people who keep it. A dollar figure does not say what the creek is worth. It says what this season of work costs, and who just covered it.

The people likely to buy are the same ones who already show up: members, neighbors, the irrigator who has watched the bank come back, the partner who funds you now. The difference is where their money lands. In a certificate, it lands with the watershed. In a coin, it lands in a pool.

## frequently asked questions

### how do you fund a watershed without the next grant?

Put the work on a certificate for the watershed's agent, and let the people who want the creek kept buy it. The purchase price goes to the agent's account or the split the council set up. Grants, appeals, and partners keep going alongside it.

### what happens if we sell our coins?

The sale goes into the pool, and it pushes the price down for everyone who bought the coin. The council gets cash from the money coin buyers put in. Do it to make payroll and the council is spending its supporters' exit. Do not drain the pool to cover rent.

### does a coin buyer pay our crew?

No. A coin buyer's money goes into the trading pool. It stays there as the market for that coin. A certificate buyer pays the agent the certificate names, and that is the money that can reach the crew.

## next steps

The trap is the pool. The door is a certificate that names the watershed. Next in the series, post 3 shows how the certificate names who gets the check.

If your council wants a certificate for its own watershed, [talk to someone who can set one up](/contact?from=guide&topic=certificate-paycheck). For the other ways we work with groups that steward land they care for, see [solutions for land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=certificate-paycheck).

## the series

1. [how conservation fundraising reaches the crew](/guide/how-conservation-fundraising-reaches-the-crew?from=guide) — where the money goes
2. **how to fund a watershed** — this post
3. [how land trust fundraising pays the trust](/guide/how-land-trust-fundraising-pays-the-trust?from=guide) — the name on the check
4. [what stewardship funding is designed to pay](/guide/what-stewardship-funding-is-designed-to-pay?from=guide) — three yields, as the design
5. [how to fund a restoration crew](/guide/how-to-fund-a-restoration-crew?from=guide) — the buyer's way out