Beyond the Money: Why Integrated Capital Must Be Rooted in Relationships
June 2025
By Julie Menter, Program Director, Transformative Financing Structures
This post summarizes key takeaways from a mainstage session I moderated at the 2025 Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders conference on the role of integrated capital in transforming food systems.
Too often, the food and agriculture organizations doing the most important work—advancing equity, regenerative systems, and community resilience—struggle to access capital that truly supports their mission. The financial system pressures them to scale quickly, deliver narrow forms of return, or fit into rigid funding categories: grants on one side and investments on the other. That can leave promising projects underfunded or forced to make hard trade-offs like compromising on impact goals to deliver the financial returns that investors demand.
That’s where integrated capital comes in. Integrated capital means coordinating different types of capital—like grants, loans, guarantees, recoverable grants, and equity—to support long-term impact. Done well, it aligns financial tools with actual project priorities and needs, and can support structures that don’t fit traditional investment molds. Take Organically Grown Company (OGC), a regional produce distributor that transitioned to a perpetual purpose trust model. The company and its investors used a blend of loans and non-voting equity with “a rate of return on balance with distributions to other stakeholders” in order to convert its structure to a perpetual purpose trust and protect its mission for the long term. This is a clear example of integrated capital supporting a new model that wasn't possible with a traditional investment structure.
During the panel, Kathleen Simpson of The Russell Family Foundation described their approach as "total resource activation" – aligning their investments with their grant-making priorities, and also using their influence, networks, and staff time. Renske Lynde of 1st Course Capital added that having a truly mission-aligned investor can be transformative and that social capital and expertise are just as vital as financial resources.
While the emphasis in these conversations is often on technical details such as deal structures, capital stacks and investment terms, a different theme emerged during the panel, which Rudy Espinoza of Inclusive Action for the City summarized succinctly: "It's about people". Integrated capital may involve a range of financial tools like recoverable grants and guarantees, but it only works if it's anchored in relationships, trust, and alignment with community priorities.
Mark Watson of Potlikker Capital spoke about the critical role of someone to "hold the whole" – to coordinate across multiple funding sources, ensure coherence, and shoulder the complexity that too often falls on entrepreneurs. Without that coordinating role, even the best-capitalized projects can flounder.
An interesting example of this, showcased during the session, is the Waterway Partnership, launched in 2023 by the #NoRegrets Initiative and Manzanita Capital Collective. With over $20 million in both low-interest loans and grants moved to date, it’s supporting community-controlled funds focused on regenerative food systems and racial and economic justice. Their work is a reminder that integrated capital is not just about financial tools—”it’s also about shifting power” as Avery Sponholtz from #Noregrets Initiative highlighted. It will require rethinking relationships, decision-making, and who gets to define success.
Effective approaches don't just happen at the systems level, though. They're also about individuals. Rudy Espinoza reminded us that if we want to do this work well, we need to show up in solidarity. That means doing our internal work, confronting our fears, and choosing trust over control.
Integrated capital, when rooted in deep relationships, shared power, and real accountability, can be transformative. I was excited to see this topic prominently featured at the conference, because at the end of the day, we can’t build a regenerative food system with an extractive economic model.
