Leaving every town better than we found it.
Coastly protects and amplifies local economies, it never owns or extracts them. A framework for regenerating surf towns, so the app and the towns thrive together.
The wave gets discovered. The locals get pushed out.
Capital arrives, land prices explode, and the people who built the place get pushed to the margins, until the workers who serve the town can no longer afford to live in it. Meanwhile the wave is a renewable economic engine. The only question is who captures that value. Today it is whoever bought the land. Coastly changes where the value flows, town by town.
of coastal businesses in Costa Rica's Guanacaste are now foreign-owned.
a year: the value of surfing in a single town (Save The Waves “Surfonomics”).
of a town's impact spend stays in the town it helps launch.
The regeneration is the moat, not charity.
A competitor can clone an app. They cannot clone being the platform that housed families, sent kids to college, and protected the break. Communities embrace, and defend, what regenerates them.
Five pillars, one promise.
Every town Coastly enters becomes measurably better for the people from there. Each pillar has a proven model behind it.
The single strongest anti-gentrification tool that exists: keep land and homes in local hands, permanently.
A share of Coastly proceeds funds a local housing fund, amplified by non-profit matching, the World Housing model from MANA 88: developer contributes, non-profit matches, a family receives a home.
Long-term, a trust per town acquires land and leases it to local families at minimal cost, so land stays in community hands forever, the model Lahaina is using post-fire.
Nameable, photographable, and visitable. Contributors can stand in front of what they built.
Coastly Scholars: a college fund and scholarship cohort per town, plus the tutoring that gets kids through school in the first place.
A named college fund, a scholarship cohort, and tutoring, so more local kids finish school and go on to college from their own town.
Hotel con Corazón funds education with roughly 75% of hotel profits and has helped 700+ children finish school across Latin America.
Sponsor a named scholar or a whole cohort. Graduation rates become a number we publish, every year.
Credentials that raise local wages inside the town's own economy, and a pipeline that turns trained locals into owners.
Surf-instructor certification, hospitality management, board shaping and repair, English and digital skills, credentials that raise wages without leaving town.
Financial literacy and savings programs, plus micro-grants for local founders, so locals build and own the businesses that live on Coastly.
Trained locals become Town Captains (earning 20% of our commission), shop owners, and Coastly staff.
Protect the break the whole town depends on, and give the town the data to defend it.
Partner with Save The Waves. Their Surf Protected Area Networks are already live in Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile and the Azores.
Commission a Surfonomics study for each town. Giving a town the dollar value of its wave is powerful politics, press and conservation leverage.
Environmental education in schools, co-branded clean-ups, and surf therapy for local kids (Waves for Change has peer-reviewed evidence).
Identity and belonging, made visible: locals hold the platform's power positions, and the town wears its own name.
Town Captains are locals who receive real revenue-sharing, 20% of our commission in their town. The people who make a place special own a piece of its platform.
Recognition in the app and in town for the families who built the place. Identity and belonging, made visible and permanent.
Sponsor local grom surf teams and contests. The next generation of pros comes from the town, wearing its name.
Every town chooses where the good goes.
A share of platform revenue plus in-app donations flow to up to five vetted local non-profits per town, chosen by the town, run by our Chief of Social Impact. We publish a one-page impact report per town every year: homes funded, scholars enrolled and graduated, locals certified and hired, protected coastline.
Small, real, and photographable within a year.
A listening survey with local families; the town selects its priorities and up to five non-profits.
Enroll the first Coastly Scholars cohort, and fund home #1 with a World Housing-style match.
Formalize Save The Waves, scope a Surfonomics study, run the first clean-up.
Impact report #1 becomes the template every future town copies.
Protect the coast with us.
Family offices, foundations and brands: back the impact fund and see exactly what your capital builds. Tell us a little and we'll be in touch.
Bringing Coastly to your town or listing a business? For Businesses