beyond grants: how wildfire collaboratives can fund perpetual protection

Your wildfire collaborative just secured an $850k grant. The fuels treatment will take two years. The grant cycle runs three. What happens in year four?

This is the math that keeps every wildfire collaborative director up at night. Not because the work isn't valuable—a 30:1 return on investment proves it is—but because the funding model treats landscape-scale resilience like a one-time project instead of what it actually is: critical infrastructure that requires perpetual stewardship.

the grant treadmill

Wildfire collaboratives operate at the intersection of urgent need and uncertain funding. You coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries—towns, fire districts, counties, state and federal agencies—to do work that no single entity can do alone. The outcomes are measurable: reduced fire intensity, protected evacuation routes, secured water supplies, lower post-fire flood risk.

But the funding follows a familiar pattern:

The value you create persists for decades. The funding that created it? Gone in 36 months.

why traditional funding falls short

Wildfire resilience isn't a project. It's a condition that requires ongoing investment. Fuels grow back. Prescribed fire needs repeated application. Risk models need updating. Community preparedness requires continuous engagement.

Grants fund interventions. They don't fund maintenance. They don't fund the institutional capacity to keep showing up, year after year, across every boundary in your watershed.

The gap isn't in what you do—it's in how the funding model sees what you do.

You're building infrastructure. You're funded like a nonprofit program.

a different frame: wildfire resilience as natural capital

What if the forests, watersheds, and landscapes you protect were valued not just for their ecological importance but for the services they provide—services that have quantifiable economic value?

Ecosystem services are the benefits nature provides: clean water, climate regulation, flood mitigation, air quality, recreation, and yes—risk resilience. These services flow continuously from healthy ecosystems. When wildfire degrades a watershed, those services diminish. When you restore forest health, those services increase.

This isn't abstract. It's the logic behind why water utilities invest in source water protection. Why insurers are starting to price nature into risk models. Why FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program now recognizes nature-based solutions.

The question is: how do you capture that value and direct it back to the work?

ensurance: proactive protection with perpetual funding

Ensurance is a mechanism that transforms how resilience work gets funded. Unlike insurance (which pays after damage), ensurance funds protection upfront—and creates a path to permanent, self-sustaining funding.

Here's how it works:

1. value the services

Your landscape provides quantifiable ecosystem services. The forests above Glenwood Springs regulate water flow, filter air, store carbon, and reduce downstream flood risk. These services have economic value—value that accrues to water utilities, property owners, municipalities, and insurers whether they pay for it or not.

2. create instruments tied to outcomes

Ensurance creates financial instruments—coins and certificates—that represent participation in protecting and restoring specific natural assets. When people hold these instruments, they're not donating. They're investing in the value those assets provide.

3. generate perpetual proceeds

Trading activity on these instruments generates proceeds that flow back to the stewards doing the work. Not grant cycles. Not one-time donations. Continuous funding tied to market activity.

what this means for collaboratives

Imagine your collaborative had access to a funding stream that:

• Grows with participation — More holders means more trading means more proceeds
• Doesn't require reapplication — The mechanism is permanent once established
• Aligns incentives — Investors benefit when your landscape thrives
• Compounds over time — Early stewardship creates lasting infrastructure

This isn't a replacement for grants. It's an additional layer—one that can fund the long-term maintenance, monitoring, and institutional capacity that grants never cover.

the 30:1 opportunity

Wildfire collaboratives already demonstrate extraordinary return on investment. The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative reports approximately 30:1 returns relative to local seed funding. That's not speculation—that's measured value creation.

The problem isn't proving the value. The problem is capturing it in a way that sustains the work.

Ensurance is designed for exactly this situation: proven value creation that lacks a sustainable funding mechanism.

what a wildfire ensurance program could look like

A watershed-scale ensurance program might include:

• A general ensurance coin for the broader landscape (e.g., $ROARINGFORK) that generates proceeds from trading activity
• Specific certificates tied to particular treatment areas, evacuation corridors, or source water protection zones
• Agent accounts representing the collaborative, member fire districts, and partner municipalities—each receiving proceeds based on their stewardship role
• Transparent routing so every holder can see exactly where value flows

The collaborative becomes a node in a value network—not just a grant recipient, but an infrastructure operator with aligned capital.

the path forward

Ensurance is new. It requires learning a different model. But the core logic should feel familiar to anyone who's spent years explaining why proactive mitigation costs less than reactive response.

You already know that a dollar spent on fuels treatment returns thirty in avoided losses. Ensurance creates a mechanism to capture some of that return and reinvest it in perpetual stewardship.

Interested in exploring what this could look like for your collaborative?

Start a conversation →