Family Forest Impact Foundation

Sector(s) Sustainability

Guarantee Use Case:

The Problem: Deforestation and unsustainable forestry practices do not only fail to prevent global warming but help to accelerate the problem. Over 45% of U.S. farmland is in small private family farms and approximately 39% of all U.S. forest lands are owned by small family forest owners. Because of their size and financial standing, these small private landowners do not have the scale, financial resources or expertise to participate in cutting edge nature-based carbon capture programs or carbon credit markets.

Proposed Solution: The American Forest Foundation (AFF) and the Nature Conservancy jointly created the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP), housed within the Family Forest Impact Foundation (an affiliate fund of nonprofit AFF), to provide financial and technical resources to help small private farm and forest owners become critical partners in scaling nature-based climate solutions. This program implements sustainable afforestation and forest management practices that result in healthier forests, higher quality timber, improved wildlife habitat and increased carbon storage (“carbon sequestration”). The FFCP enables small-scale private forest owners across 20 states (primarily Southeast & Appalachian states) to access the voluntary carbon market, providing landowners with income they can use towards forest management costs and/or to help pay property taxes. In addition, FFCP invites farming landowners in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina with 30+ acres of unplanted fields to receive funding and afforestation support to replant and diversify their land through the Fields & Forests program.

The Credit Gap: Planting new trees and instituting improved forest management practices takes significant upfront costs (including on-going incentive payments to the small private landowners). In addition, it takes many years to grow trees and generate and verify the increased carbon removal and sequestration from those practices. All of this must occur before FFCP can “mint” the voluntary carbon credits to sell on carbon markets or to Fortune 500 companies looking to meet NetZero community pledges. FFCP issued a $10 million green bond, which CIGP is guaranteeing with the American Forest Foundation to help raise the upfront cash needed to finance the Family Forest Carbon Program. Through this bond and the additional expected support of grants, new project debt financing, and the sales of future carbon credit, FFCP is expected to raise over $575 million over the next two decades to support the program.

Direct Impact:

• Acres Enrolled: 900,000
• Families supported: 8,000
• CO2e emissions removed/sequestered: 20.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
• Enrolled Acreage in distressed or LMI census tracts: 72%

Indirect Impact:

The Family Forest Carbon Program is expected to generate over $280 million of incentive payments to the small-scale private landowners, many of which are living in distressed, severely distressed or low-to-moderate income communities. In December 2025, FFCP issued its first carbon credits and delivered upon its first tranche of carbon credits under a carbon credit purchase contract with specialty outdoor retailer REI. Also, in February 2026, the Fields to Forest Program planted its one millionth tree.

Additionally, FFIF and AFF are at the vanguard of implementing the “gold standard” for forest carbon accounting methodologies, which help prevent the risk of “green-washing” in carbon credit transactions. Unlike other mainstream carbon credit accounting methodologies, FFCP does not use a projected baseline of carbon capture benefits but rather uses a dynamic baseline which compares carbon sequestered on land enrolled in the program to comparable forests not enrolled in the program—in real time. By measuring the difference between forests, this methodology can pinpoint the FFCP as the variable that contributed to the carbon benefit—providing increased accuracy and transparency. This new methodology is approved by Verra, the globally recognized nonprofit organization that oversees the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).