The Nurture Now Journey
2026 Edition
We recognise the funding ecosystem is at a crossroads
Organisations are feeling the heavy responsibility of meeting the demands of an increasingly complex crises. Individuals feel the tensions in a funding ecosystems that intends to deliver positive impact and yet often does not fully achieve what is required.
Despite these shared experiences, we often work in silos without spaces to deeply examine root causes, share capacity, carefully innovate, and practically identify pathways towards more regenerative approaches.
What changes when the funding ecosystem has the courage and resourcing it needs to nurture ?
A 6 month Journey
This journey emerges from the insight that the predominant ways of defining success in climate funding are fundamentally bound to extractive systems and protecting capital. Our measurements of impact are connected to the very real responsibilities entailed in stewarding resources, yet the effect this has on the structuring of power and people across the whole ecosystem can be deeply harmful.
This journey invites a collective inquiry that will lay the foundations for new conditions to emerge that allows funding ecosystems, and all they support, to be healthy and to thrive.
Together, during 6 months, we will cover different ground.
Pre-Retreat
Feeling the Tensions – We jump on a 1:1 call with you, to name the tensions you are observing in your eco-system (60 minute call)
Mapping to Co-Design – We jump on a group call to visualise mapping tensions our eco-systems face (pre-retreat group call 90 minutes)
In Person Retreat
Nurture Now Retreat – 3 day, 2 night, in person immersion at 42 Acres in November. Nourished by the beauty and community in this space, we can wild swim, walk, forage, story-tell around the fire while we connect as a group and allow our nervous systems to restore in the present. From this place of deep rest, Nurture Now will facilitate full days to guide you through reflection, emergence and into action.
Post-Retreat
Next Steps & Community–2-3 weeks post retreat we will host open space to further develop the actions born from individual and collective insights to maintain alive your ideas
Taking Action with Support – 5-6 weeks post-retreat we will host a group call to reflect on your insights when beginning to embed and integrate. Sharing Insights.
Our Commitment
Seeding Change - sharing the outcomes to ripple outcomes to other funding circles. Led by Nurture Now, others will be actively encouraged to participate as their capacity allows.
A Living Lab Retreat at 42 Acres (Frome, England)
Nov 23-25, 2026
42 Acres invites guests to experience themselves as nature as they explore ways to take care of, and live in conversation with, our sacred world.
You’re welcome to explore 173 acres of wild spaces – ancient woodland, rewilded meadows, a 7-acre lake, and their pioneering nature restoration projects.
Participants will arrive at 11am on Monday 23rd November and leave at 2pm on Wednesday 25th November.
A Regenerative Estate, Nature Reserve & Wellbeing Retreat Centre
A living lab for the eco-system
Pioneering funders and changemakers are asking the really difficult questions, both of themselves and the systems they operate in. We experienced this when we met.
And yet there are very few facilitated spaces for the whole ecosystem to come together, to wayfind through the tensions inherent in current models for distributing resource, from board through to beneficiary.
Financial support from Be the Earth Foundation is enabling us to offer spaces to those usually unable to participate, allowing us to offer one of the few living labs where the entire eco-system can begin to come together.
The journey is about offering resourcing and restoration to the eco-system (healthy being), while moving more fully into the practical demands of the ‘real’ world, rather than retreating away from it (decisive doing).
What you will gain
By examining the unconscious dynamics that guide our relationship with funding, this pioneering cohort will begin to notice blind spots, reconnect with systemic awareness, and rethink leadership and power dynamics on an interconnected planet.
Conflict across the ecosystem will begin to transform, and the harm experienced by those doing the work will be reduced.
By the end of the journey, you will have:
Experienced for yourself some of the conditions needed for improving (well)being and impact.
Explored a new way of seeing the intersection of individual wellbeing & collective impact, and what this means for you and your organisation.
Identified some of our own and our collective blind spots - the untrue assumptions that are lived as true - that limit and cause harm to ourselves, and across organisations.
Gained insights into other mental models (ways of perceiving) that form the foundations of seismic and achievable change.
Experienced processes that allow you to continue this work after you have completed the journey, for yourself and your organisation.
A clear and achievable set of next steps.
A renewed sense of connection to yourself and your focus.
Who should attend
This journey is for anyone who wants to develop their role in challenging the ways we think and act in our organisations when it comes to grantmaking governance, regenerative economies and healing the harm caused across the climate movement by power, crisis and collapse.
It is open to and designed for professionals working across climate funding ecosystems.
Our philosophy is deeply rooted in interbeing, and as such our understanding of climate is broad (all things are connected). If you are not sure if your work falls within the parameters of climate please feel free to ask us.
Some actors across the ecosystem may include (this is not an exhaustive list):
Trustees of funding organisations
Individual philanthropists or impact investors
Institutional funders, trusts, and foundations
Grant managers (or other decision makers in funding organisations)
Grantees/investees (of all scales)
End beneficiaries (including Nature), if you are the ‘subject’ of climate funding and programming your voice is an important part of this journey of change
Consultants and others in philanthropic and investment advisory and support services
Guides, wisdom keepers, thinkers participating in or shaping the ecosystem
If you don’t see yourself on the list but feel part of the ecosystem we are open to broadening our horizons, please apply.
Journey investment & how to apply
We have up to 25 spaces available for our pioneering cohort.
The question of how resource might flow healthily between us all is one of the key questions that lies at the heart of philanthropy. For that reason, we have chosen to be truly transparent with the costing of the Nurture Now journey.
What Does the Journey Cost?
In order to cover our own costs of organising and facilitating this journey, we will need 15 participants each contributing £1,500, in addition to the Be the Earth Foundation grant.
However, we appreciate that different roles within grantmaking eco-systems come with different levels of resourcing. What makes this journey so valuable is the bringing together of multiple roles within grantmaking systems, rather than simply holding space for either ‘grantee’ or ‘funder’ in individual silos.
Therefore, if you consider yourself well resourced, we invite you to consider ‘paying it forward’ so we can offer subsidised places to those who might not otherwise be able to attend. Our hope is that this will ensure a diverse mix of roles in this pioneering cohort, ultimately benefiting everyone in our joint enquiry.
Register your interest, apply for a subsidised place or offer to ‘pay it forward’ using this application form.
How Have We Costed The Journey?
If you’d like to know how we’ve arrived at the figures we have, how we’ve used the grant from Be The Earth Foundation, our cancellation policy, and what we would do with the additional funds if we were to have more than 15 participants, you can read more here.
Your fee will incude journey participation, accommodation and meals. Travel is not included. You can find the cost and subsidised options on the application form.
If you have other questions, please contact us at nurturenowfornature@gmail.com
Your Hosts
You will be guided and supported by the 3 Nurture Now Founders
Delfina Zagarzazú,
Jo Musker-Sherwood
Sophie Bray
Nurtured by
Financial support from Be the Earth Foundation is enabling us to offer spaces to those usually unable to participate, allowing us to offer one of the few living labs where the entire eco-system can begin to come together.
Nurtured by
We have been fortunate to participate in Global Optimism’s Climate and Nature Leaders Retreat in 2024 at Plum Village France. Our time and inner development there helped plant the seed that sprouted into Nurture Now.