We connect and nurture housing system changemakers to do collaborative work that transforms California’s communities into affordable, equitable, and healthy spaces.
We deepen relationships and foster collaboration to address the most pressing challenges facing the California housing system.
Our Regenerative Communities Program supports community leaders as they build a shared understanding around, and take action on, key regenerative development strategies.
We’re excited to reveal our new brand. Our fresh look and updated messaging represent our renewed commitment to building a regenerative California.
We create the conditions to think and work holistically across the housing system — grounding all work in regenerative development practices — so that together we can create a California where all communities are places where people and the environment thrive together.
We believe that big challenges and opportunities can’t be taken on alone. We create spaces where diverse perspectives meet, relationships grow, and ideas that can regeneratively transform communities emerge.
By creating the space to nurture new work through our programs, we help turn innovative concepts into real-world initiatives that benefit communities across California.
By supporting community-driven projects, we spark local transformations that ripple out to larger systems, fostering resilience and systemic change.
We believe that big challenges and opportunities can’t be taken on alone. We create spaces where diverse perspectives meet, relationships grow, and ideas that can regeneratively transform communities emerge.
By creating the space to nurture new work through our programs, we help turn innovative concepts into real-world initiatives that benefit communities across California.
By supporting community-driven projects, we spark local transformations that ripple out to larger systems, fostering resilience and systemic change.
Your support fuels our work and allows us to better support regenerative communities throughout California. Help transform the housing ecosystem by donating or become a Founding Sponsor of BIG’s new era.
Everyone’s talking about small-scale housing, with one of the biggest questions being how to fund it. On May 15, we brought together over 120 participants for a Virtual Roundtable on Finance to tackle that exact challenge. Panelists Jean Lu (US Bank), Josh Morrison (Frolic Community), Carlos Plazola (Buildzig), Sibley Simon (New Way Homes), and Elizabeth Wampler (Bay Area LISC) led a conversation on what’s working, what’s not, and where the opportunities are for making small, community-rooted housing financially feasible.
On February 6th, we at Build It Green officially launched the Alameda County Small Developer Incubator, a new initiative designed to support small-scale developers in reshaping California’s housing landscape. More than just a single event, the Incubator is a long-term program that will offer ongoing learning, networking, and collaboration opportunities for developers and builders, city officials, financiers, suppliers, construction innovators, and community advocates.
Build It Green recently hosted Building Regenerative Communities: Meeting the Moment for the Path Ahead, an event showcasing the transformative work of the Regenerative Communities Cohort. They’ve spent the past months exploring how regenerative practices can create equitable, collaborative, and thriving communities. It also celebrated the inaugural cohort’s yearlong journey, focusing on how regenerative principles can address challenges in housing, development, and community health.
Fostering collaborative, community-driven approaches is a key aspect to building more regenerative futures—which are not extractive, go beyond sustainability, and build potential for adaptation and resilience. That’s why we were thrilled to have hosted the culminating session of the Regenerative Communities Program (RCP) 2024 Cohort at Build It Green in November.
At Build It Green (BIG) it’s our firm belief that tapping into hope and optimism enables us and our partners to create homes and communities that are affordable, healthy, and equitable and where people and nature thrive together.
Fostering creative, community-driven approaches is key to transforming the housing landscape. That’s why we were excited to co-host the virtual event, “Mix & Match: Building Housing Solutions One Card at a Time,” featuring the designers of Mix & Match, Ben Hoffman, Junior Designer at LMNOP Designs, Inc., and Janette Kim, Principal at All of the Above.
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“This Innovation Fund program is a dynamic learning process on both ends of grantor and grantees, I think that is a signature of what this BIG Network is all about. I really appreciate what you are showing how our reflections and comments are incorporated into the one on one engagements you've had with each grantee, as well as those grantees that didn't get funded. Super work.”
Peter Cohen, Innovation Fund Steering Committee Member
“The thing that makes BIG unique is it brings people together who would never come together otherwise, and helps them develop new ways of working that will help us actually get stuff done.”
Mick Penn, BIG’s Board Treasurer
"Through every interaction, Build It Green has consistently helped connect with brilliant minds, inspiring real-world creative solutions. These collaborations have fostered lasting perspectives that positively impact the homes we live in and the communities we serve."
Tyler Pew, Principal, LMNOP Design Inc.
Alex Coba
Communication Associate
As a proud California native from Stockton, Alex brings a wealth of experience and a versatile skill set. He has a solid communication background with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations from California State University, Chico. Alex is adept at strategic communications and media relations, with experience gathering and sharing stories from his local communities that uplift the unique spirit and values of those places. He is excited to join Build It Green, where he can apply his talents to further BIG’s mission to help communities across California thrive