STEWARDSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE
/ / Advancing stewardship across Culture, Ecology, and Economy.
What does it take to develop people, organizations, and institutions actually capable of stewarding what we all depend on?
// A CONNECTED FIELD
Stewardship does not fit neatly within a single sector. Healthy societies depend upon the ability to steward three interconnected domains together.
CULTURE
Developing a culture of stewarDship
How do people learn to see themselves as responsible for something larger than themselves?
We seek to understand and strengthen the stories, knowledge, relationships, practices, and forms of leadership through which people understand what they belong to, what they are responsible for, and what must be passed forward.
ECOLOGY
stewarding systems that sustain us
How do we build the human capacity required to care for living systems over generations?
We advance approaches that strengthen landscapes, biodiversity, water, soil, resilience, and the natural systems upon which communities and economies depend.
ECONOMY
Building prosperity through stewardship
How do we make stewardship economically viable?
We develop economic frameworks, investment strategies, institutional models, and coordination tools that help communities create durable prosperity while strengthening the places and systems that prosperity depends upon.
What even is 'stewardship'?
We're asking people, instead of robots.
Stay tuned.
// CURRENT WORK
THE STATE OF STEWARDSHIP
// STATE OF STEWARDSHIP
documenting how people understand and practice stewardship today.
Do we have the capacity to meet the challenges ahead?
Across the country, the places and systems we depend on—from forests, watersheds, and working lands to food systems, infrastructure, organizations, and communities—depend in turn on people with the knowledge, capacity, and commitment to care for them over time.
​
State of Stewardship is an applied research initiative examining where stewardship capacity exists, how it is developed and sustained, what threatens or constrains it, and what it will take to strengthen it for the challenges ahead.
// CURRENT WORK
STEWARDSHIP
ECONOMY
// THE STEWARDSHIP ECONOMY
an economy shaped by the
responsibility to manage for the sustainability of both landscapes and communities.
"The Earth is the root and the source of our culture.'
-Rigoberta Manchú
// IN PRACTICE
How we work with partners
01
Understand stewardship capacity
Identify the people, knowledge, relationships, institutions, resources, and practices already sustaining a place or system — and where that capacity is vulnerable, fragmented, or blocked.
02
Strengthen steward leadership
Create the experiences, relationships, communities of practice, and institutional conditions through which people learn to recognize and exercise long-term responsibility.
03
Align people across systems
Create shared language, strategy, and decision-making frameworks for people working across land, business, government, finance, infrastructure, culture, and community development.
04
Develop place-based opportunities
Help partners translate existing assets and stewardship activity into coordinated projects, enterprises, investment strategies, institutional models, and locally governed infrastructure.
05
Build tools that others can use
Develop assessments, planning frameworks, field research, learning experiences, and practical methods that partners can adopt and adapt to their own context.
How do we move from aspiration, to stewardship as the durable foundation for development?
// WORK WITH SDI
Commission a Project
SDI works with communities, regional partnerships, public institutions, nonprofits, businesses, and networks to:
// assess stewardship capacity
// conduct field research and ecosystem mapping
// align cross-sector partners
// develop place-based strategies and initiatives
// create practical tools and frameworks
// design communities of practice and learning experiences
// translate emerging ideas into fundable, implementable work.
Fund or advance the field
Foundations, public institutions, companies, and aligned funding partners can support:
// the State of Stewardship research initiative
// place-based research and demonstration projects
// stewardship assessment and measurement tools
// public research and field-building;
// create practical tools and frameworks
//documentation and storytelling
// the development of adaptable stewardship practices used across different communities and institutions.